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Category Archives: African American Art

Exhibition featuring 19th-century African American master cabinetmaker Thomas Day opens at Renwick Gallery April 12

02 Apr

SmithsonianThe exhibition “Thomas Day: Master Craftsman and Free Man of Color” fully examines the extraordinary career of Thomas Day (1801-about 1861), who owned and operated one of North Carolina’s most successful cabinet shops before the Civil War. Day’s surviving woodworks represent the finest of 19th-century craftsmanship and aesthetics. The exhibition was organized by the North Carolina Museum of History and is on view at the Renwick Gallery in Washington, D.C., from April 12 through July 28.

Day was a master cabinetmaker and entrepreneur whose business flourished during a time when most African Americans were enslaved and free blacks were restricted in their movements and activities. The exhibition showcases 37 pieces of furniture crafted by Day or attributed to his workshop. The exhibition also includes three period quilts from the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, a Bible owned by Day, historic photographs and contemporary photographs of architectural interiors designed by Day.

“Thomas Day’s story of talent, entrepreneurship and hard work exemplifies a distinctly American experience and conveys this nation’s rich artistic and cultural history,” said Elizabeth Broun, The Margaret and Terry Stent Director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. “This exhibition presents careful research and fine historical objects that have special charm still today.”

During the antebellum years (1820–1861), North Carolina planters used both classical architecture and fine furniture to convey economic status and gentility. Day, whose father was a cabinetmaker, opened his shop in 1827 in Milton, N.C., where he created fine furniture and architectural interiors for an elite clientele. Day’s style is characterized by undulating shapes, fluid lines and spiraling forms. He combined his own unique motifs with popular designs to create a distinctive style readily identified with his shop. Day is the only documented American cabinetmaker to offer clients both architectural elements for their Greek Revival homes and furniture incorporating the same classical motifs. To date, woodwork in about 80 homes in rural North Carolina and Virginia has been attributed to Day.

The rocking chair is an American invention, and those offered by Day were unique in design. Day’s rockers include extended arm supports with tight scrolls that serve as both functional hand rests and decorative features. Day created a fluid line from the front to the back of the chair, introducing a subtle sense of motion through the curvilinear design of arms, supports, seat frame and rockers.

In the 1850s, Day transformed the fashionable French Antique style, with abundant displays of intricate scrolls paired with fruit and foliage designs, into a style known as Day’s Exuberant style. A hallmark of this style is positive and negative space within the design elements, a technique he employed for both furniture forms and architectural elements. Day’s stylistic exuberance reached new heights in fancy display cabinets, called a “whatnot.” An example in the exhibition features pierced gallery shelves with sinuous S-curves and scrolls.

View Slide Show

Free Public Programs

A series of free, public programs celebrating Day’s work will be presented at the Renwick Gallery in conjunction with the exhibition. A talk and book signing by Jo Ramsay Leimenstoll, co-author of the book that accompanies the exhibition and professor and historic preservation coordinator at the University of North Carolina, is Friday, April 12, at noon. A panel discussion “Thomas Day: The Man, The Maker, The Mogul” begins at 1 p.m. Friday, May 10; John Franklin, program manager at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, will moderate a discussion with Donna Day, a descendent of Thomas Day; James Roark, the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of American History at Emory University; and Michael Ausbon, associate curator of decorative arts at the North Carolina Museum of History.

Additional programs include a gallery talk by Kennedy Wednesday, May 1, at noon; an exhibition tour with furniture conservator Don Williams Friday, June 7, at noon; a gallery talk by Nona Martin, public programs manager, Wednesday, June 26, at noon; and “In the Time of Day” Saturday, July 27, from noon to 3 p.m. featuring re-enactors and performers in the galleries, demonstrations by furniture maker Jerome Bias and readings from Day’s letters to his daughter by storyteller and historian Fred Motley. Additional information is available online atamericanart.si.edu/calendar. A themed scavenger hunt for children and families, “Day’s Way,” is available daily at the Information Desk during the run of the exhibition.

Publication

An illustrated book accompanies the exhibition ($42; The University of North Carolina Press). Written by Patricia Phillips Marshall, curator of decorative arts for the North Carolina Executive Mansion and the North Carolina Museum of History, and Leimenstoll, the book presents a new understanding of the powerful sense of aesthetics and design that mark Day’s legacy. It is available for purchase in the Renwick Gallery museum store.

Credit

“Thomas Day: Master Craftsman and Free Man of Color” is based on an exhibition organized by the North Carolina Museum of History. The James Renwick Alliance supports the exhibition presentation at the Renwick Gallery.

About the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum

The Smithsonian American Art Museum celebrates the vision and creativity of Americans with artworks in all media spanning more than three centuries. The museum’s branch for craft and decorative art, the Renwick Gallery, is located on Pennsylvania Avenue at 17th Street N.W. It is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. (closed Dec. 25). Admission is free. Metrorail station: Farragut North (Red line) and Farragut West (Blue and Orange lines). Follow the museum on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Flickr, ArtBabble, iTunes and YouTube. Museum information (recorded): (202) 633-7970. Smithsonian information: (202) 633-1000. Website: americanart.si.edu.

 
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Posted by on April 2, 2013 in African American Art

 

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Awards honor African-American authors, illustrators

23 Feb

 

  • By Karen MacPherson Scripps Howard News Service

Contributed photo/Simon & Schuster Bryan Collier earns the Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award for “I, Too, Am America.”

Each year, the Coretta Scott King Book Awards put a spotlight on the best children’s books created by African-American authors and illustrators.

Established in 1969 by two librarians, these awards have been a cornerstone of the effort to diversify American children’s literature.

The winners are chosen annually by a committee of librarians and other children’s-literature experts, under the sponsorship of the Ethnic & Multicultural Information Exchange Round Table, a group within the American Library Association. The 2013 award winners were announced in late January.

Here’s a look at the latest winners.

Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award:

Bryan Collier has won numerous awards since he began publishing children’s books nearly 15 years ago, including a number of Coretta Scott King Awards. This year, he picked up another Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award for his stunningly evocative illustrations for “I, Too, Am America” (Simon & Schuster, $16.99, ages 6 up).

The text of the book is a brief, well-known poem by Langston Hughes; the poem is a love song to the “darker brother,” who is also an integral part of the nation’s history. Hughes’ poem is general in nature, but, in his illustrations, Collier interprets the text as if it were being told by Pullman porters, those African-Americans who served passengers on trains from the end of the Civil War through the 1960s.

Collier uses his trademark mixed-media style for the illustrations, adding in a flag motif. Writing in a note at the back of the book, Collier says he used the flag motif to show “how far African-Americans have come in this country since the Pullman porters’ time, and even

since Hughes’s time, and how bright our future can be.”

Note: Although it didn’t win any awards, Collier’s illustrations also offer a visual treat in “Fifty Cents and a Dream: Young Booker T. Washington” (Little Brown, $16.99, ages 7-10). Combined with a lyrical text written by Jabari Asim, Collier’s illustrations underscore the determination and courage of a well-known African-American hero.

Two Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor books were selected:

In “Ellen’s Broom” (Putnam, $16.99, ages 4-8), illustrator Daniel Minter uses a technique in which linoleum block prints are printed by hand and then painted.

The result is vibrant artwork that highlights both the joy and sorrow of a family of newly freed slaves who star in the text written by Kelly Starling Lyons. The main character is a young girl named Ellen, who is fascinated by the broom that is displayed above the fireplace in her family’s home, especially after she learns that, because they were slaves, her parents couldn’t legally marry. Instead, they “jumped the broom” to show their commitment to each other.

Now that they are free, Ellen’s parents decide to legally marry, and the broom plays a major part in their special day — with a little help from Ellen. Lyons’ text is simply told, while Minter’s illustrations portray a close-knit family just learning what freedom is all about.

The text by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. is a classic, but artist Kadir Nelson brings new power and inspiration through his artwork in “I Have a Dream” (Schwartz & Wade/Random House, $18.99, ages 8 up).

As always, Nelson’s illustrations, done in oil paint, are majestic, yet they also underline King’s humanity, as well as the humanity of those for whom his speech was meant. With his artwork, Nelson helps readers to truly understand King’s passion for nonviolent change.

Coretta Scott King Author Award:

In “Hand in Hand: Ten Black Men Who Changed America” (Hyperion, $19.99, ages 8 up), author Andrea Davis Pinkney offers stirring, meticulously researched biographies of a range of African-American heroes, from baseball’s Jackie Robinson to President Barack Obama.

While this volume could easily be used for school reports because of its wealth of information, Andrea Davis Pinkney’s entertaining, lively text, combined with husband Brian Pinkney’s illustrations, make this a book that also can be used for pleasure reading — especially for those times when a bit of inspiration would come in handy.

Two Coretta Scott King Author Honor books were chosen:

In “Each Kindness” (Penguin, $16.99, ages 4-8), author Jacqueline Woodson tells the story of a young girl named Chloe who refuses to be friendly with a new girl named Maya.

Even Chloe doesn’t quite understand why she is being mean to Maya, but Chloe’s decision to turn against Maya means that other girls will follow her lead. As a result, Maya has no friends and spends recess by herself, despite her repeated early efforts to reach out and make friends with Chloe and others.

Then, one day, Maya’s seat is empty, and she never returns to school. Chloe suddenly feels ashamed of how unkind she has been to Maya and wants to make it up to her. But it’s too late, because Maya and her family moved away. Chloe has learned about kindness, but she will never be able to be kind to Maya.

Woodson’s affecting story, with its strong echoes of Eleanor Estes’ classic “The Hundred Dresses,” is beautifully brought to life by the watercolor illustrations by E.B. Lewis. Overall, this is a book that will undoubtedly be used by parents and teachers as a way to help children understand that, as Woodson writes, “each kindness makes the whole world a little bit better.”

Author Vaunda Micheaux Nelson combines history and fiction in “No Crystal Stair” (Carolrhoda, $17.95, ages 12 up) as she tells the fascinating story of her great-uncle, Lewis Michaux, who created a bookstore in Harlem that became the premier place to find books by and about African-Americans.

Featuring eye-catching line drawings by R. Gregory Christie, “No Crystal Stair” is an unusual combination of fact and fiction. Nelson also incorporates photos into the text.

Nelson tells her story chronologically, from a variety of viewpoints, giving a well-rounded picture of Michaux, who had a checkered past but also a passion for promoting African-American authors.

The result is an intriguing portrait of a man who was called the “Harlem Professor.” At the book’s conclusion, Nelson includes reminiscences of key African-Americans, including poet Nikki Giovanni and award-winning artist Ashley Bryan, whose lives and work were deeply affected by Michaux and his Harlem bookstore.

 

 
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Posted by on February 23, 2013 in African American Art

 

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Ken Johnson, Times Art Critic, Taken To Task In Open Letter

03 Dec

Ken Johnson Racist

An open letter is demanding New York Times critic Ken Johnson acknowledge racist and sexist language in his recent writings.

The art critic’s review of “Now Dig This! Art & Black Los Angeles” and November’s preview of “The Female Gaze: Women Artists Making Their World” are being called out for their generalizations of black and female artists. The open letter states:

“Using irresponsible generalities, Johnson compares women and African-American artists to white male artists, only to find them lacking.”

Johnson’s “Now Dig This!” review states: “Black artists didn’t invent assemblage…Thanks to white artists like George Herms, Bruce Conner and Ed Kienholz, assemblage was popular on the West Coast in the 1960s.” The open letter counters:

“No historian, artist or curator has ever made a claim that anyone, black or white, “invented” assemblage. In fact, assemblage has roots in many cultures and it is well documented that European and American Modernist artists borrowed heavily from African art in their use of the form.”

On his Facebook page, Johnson later acknowledged that the initial statement, “taken out of context seems needlessly provocative,” but argues “my overall point, however, I think is consistent with Ms. Jones’s [the museum curator's] description of the historical and social milieu in which black sculptors were working in Los Angeles in the 1960s.”

Johnson’s review also pushes buttons towards the end when it praises the artists whose work “you don’t have to be black to feel,” which seems to place the burden on the black artist to appeal to the white viewer.

ArtFagCity’s Paddy Johnson suggests Johnson should focus less on the distanceseparating art and personal experience when she writes, “Rather than wondering at the size of the gap between how white visitors and black visitors view ‘Dig This!,’ we should be looking at what can be done—and what has been done, by curator Kellie Jones—to shrink it.”

Soon after the “Now Dig This!” review Johnson seemed to make another uninformed generalization, this time about female artists:

“The day that any woman earns the big bucks that men like Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst rake in is still a long way off. Sexism is probably a good enough explanation for inequities in the market. But might it also have something to do with the nature of the art that women tend to make?”

Johnson does not go on to elaborate on what kind of women do tend to make, because of course women do not tend to make any certain kind of art. Instead Johnson seems to place women at fault for their lack of representation in the art market, even though he mentions sexism in the art market. This isn’t the first time Johnson has been under fire for his opinions, however. ARTINFO reminds us that Johnson’s previous reviews have been accused of being insensitive toward both Asian and Chicano artists.

The open letter concludes: “Johnson replays stereotypes of inscrutable blackness and inadequate femininity in the guise of serious inquiry, but that inquiry never happens.” It demands that the New York Times acknowledge its lapse in judgment for publishing Johnson’s contentious reviews.

With 1,182 signatures and counting, it’s difficult to ignore this call to arms, especially since the petition includes prominent artists and critics such as Emily Roysdon, Clifford Owens, Lucy Raven and Lorraine O’Grady as well as curators Chon Noriega, Brooke Davis Anderson and Dan Cameron.

What do you think, readers? Are Johnson’s statements prejudiced or are readers being overly sensitive? See the open letter here and leave your opinion in the comments below.

Clarification: Although the document was posted on iPetition.com, the writers of the letter have suggested that it is merely an “open letter,” and not a petition. Language has been changed throughout to reflect this fact.

 
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Posted by on December 3, 2012 in African American Art

 

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Curator Talk at the American Art Museum on African-American Art Exhibition

01 Aug

Jacob Lawrence’s 1941 Bar and Grill depicts the reality of segregation of the Jim Crow South, a new experience to the Harlem artist. American Art Museum

In black and white, she sits reclined between the knees of an older woman. Her hair is half braided, her eyes glance sideways toward the camera. The image, on display at the American Art Museum, is a moment in photographer Tony Gleaton’s Tengo Casi 500 Años (I am nearly 500 years old), but when Renée Ater saw it, she could have sworn she was looking at herself.

Though the young girl in the photograph is sitting in Honduras, Mecklenburg says when Ater, a professor of art history at the University of Maryland, saw her, she said, “It’s like looking in a mirror from when I was that age.” Ater explained to Mecklenburg, “Getting your hair braided was something that involved community, it wasn’t one person who did all your braids. If people’s hands got tired or you got wiggly or something, people would shift off and so it became a way for a girl to be part of the women’s group.”

The idea of an individual encountering community and society animates much of the work in the American Art Museum’s exhibit, “African American Art: Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights Era, and Beyond,” as is the case with Jacob Lawrence’s Bar and Grill, created after his first trip to the highly segregated South. But Mecklenburg, who will give her curator talk tomorrow says of the show, “In some ways it’s–I don’t know if I should say this out loud–but it’s sort of anti-thematic.” Organized loosely around ideas of spirituality, African diaspora, injustice and labor, the show jumps from artist to artist, medium to medium, year to year. The show features the work of 43 artists and several new acquisitions, including Lawrence’s painting. A huge figure in African-American art, Lawrence’s work can often overshadow artists dealing with divergent concerns.

The exhibit features recent work, including Felrath Hines’ 1986 Red Stripe with Green Background. American Art Museum

One such artist was Felrath Hines who served as the head of the conservation lab first at the National Portrait Gallery and later at the Hirshhorn. Hines’ Red Stripe with Green Background sits surrounded by portraits and sculptures of found objects. In contrast to the cubist social realism of Lawrence’s pieces, Hines’ abstract geometric forms are calm and open, devoid of protest. “They are these incredibly pristine, absolutely perfectly calibrated geometric abstractions. There is a mood to each of them,” says Mecklenburg. He is an artist’s artist, having studied at the prestigious Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. And he is a black artist.

Mecklenburg wanted to organize a group of artists under the banner of African-American art to show how incredibly diverse that can be, that there was no one thing on the minds of black artists. “We tend to categorize things to make it easier to understand to help us understand relationships, but when you look at the reality it’s complicated, it’s a little messy.”

“We’re a museum of American art and one of our missions and convictions is that we need to be a museum representative of all American artists, of the broad range of who we are as a country,” says Mecklenburg. It’s an obvious statement now, but when the Metropolitan Museum of Art organized its 1969 exhibit, “Harlem On My Mind,” it decided not to feature any Harlem artists. Black artists, including Hines, protested the lack of representation not just in the exhibit ostensibly about Harlem, but in major permanent collections as well.

Mixing multiple religious traditions, Keith Morrison creates a unique view into his world and memory. 1988, American Art Museum

The show also benefits because Mecklenburg knows many of the artists personally. She knows, for instance, that Keith Morrison’s bizarre painting Zombie Jamboree is not just a study of the interwoven religious traditions Morrison grew up with in Jamaica, but a fantastical memory from his childhood. “One of his friends had drowned in a lake when they were boys,” says Mecklenburg, “especially when you’re a young kid, you don’t know where your friend has gone and you don’t know what’s happened to him, but you hear stories. So you have this incredible, vivid imagination–he certainly did.”

Rather than create a chronology of artistic development, Mecklenburg has created a constellation, a cosmic conversation each artist was both a part of and distinct from.

“What I’m hoping is that people will see a universe of ideas that will expand their understanding of African-American culture, there isn’t anything monolithic about African-American culture and art. I’m hoping that they will come away seeing that the work is as diverse, as beautiful, as far-ranging aesthetically and in terms of meaning and concept as art in any other community.”

See a slideshow of images in the exhibit here.

 
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Posted by on August 1, 2012 in African American Art

 

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The Annual African Festival of the Arts 2012

31 Jul

http://africanfestivalchicago.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/22480_230236584849_707619849_3069573_3714600_n-277x300.jpg

The Africa International House USA, Inc. (AIH) produces high quality cultural programs that represent arts and cultures of the African Diaspora. Our intent is to promote and preserve African-based cultures, educate the public about Africa and its cultural contributions to humanity, and continue to contribute in a significant way to the cultural and socio-economic survival of African immigrants in Chicago.

The Annual African Festival of the Arts (AFA) is a spectacular celebration of arts and culture from across the African Diaspora.

It is the largest neighborhood festival in Chicago, and said to be the largest of its kind in the U.S.
Thousands of people from around the world come to Chicago’s Washington Park, Labor Day Weekend for this authentic African experience. They are transported to African villages across the Diaspora with vibrant drumming, storytelling, dancing, interactive demonstrations, historical artifacts, colorful and rich fabrics, informative health and wellness workshops, as well as fascinating entertainment.
This year marks the 23rd anniversary of the festival and a perfect opportunity for Reflections of Our Culture…this year’s 2012 theme.As we reflect, …we must go back and reclaim our past so we can move forward and understand why and how we came to be who we are today.

 
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Posted by on July 31, 2012 in African American Art, African Diaspora News, Events

 

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Africa’s Influence on Diaspora Art in US

23 Jul

The West African man is dressed in the khaki uniform and red fez worn by French colonial soldiers of the era. But he wasn’t a French soldier – he was a famous Senegalese dancer based in Paris at the time, Francois Benga.

Now immortalized in James A Porter’s 1935 painting, “Soldado Senegales,” his portrait today hangs among the many art works on display at the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s “African American Art: Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights Era and Beyond” exhibit. Though not all of the exhibit’s works claim African influence, the portrait by Porter is one of the many examples of the close relationship between the U.S.-based Harlem Renaissance and the Negritude movement in France.

The Harlem Renaissance, which began in the U.S. around 1919, emerged as a movement to challenge racism and stereotypes through the arts. Just a decade later, Africans living in France, who were influenced by the Harlem Renaissance, developed their own style –  Negritude — as a way to use art to throw off French colonial racism.

“There’s a very close relationship, because these artists, particularly those who are in France in the 1930s and into the1940s, were very much connected with what was going on in French art, literature, thought,” said Virginia Mecklenburg, a Senior Curator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. “The poet Langston Hughes is also talking about things like tradition and heritage and how something that was originally African, how it transforms in a sort of river as it flows into and is the source really for culture in other countries in the diaspora, including in the United States.”

The exhibit’s 100 works – photographs, sculptures and paintings – span a variety of eras and ideas. Mecklenburg said that in two of the self-portraits on display, the artists chose to highlight their African heritage.

Loïs Mailou Jones placed African sculpture in her piece and Malvin Gray Johnson chose to paint African masks next to himself. “These self-portraits are a way of saying who they are as artists as they look out at us, and there are things in the background of their studio rooms that give indications of how they want to identify themselves. In both instances, they want to talk about being African-American in terms of Africa.”

The exhibit will run through September 3 in Washington, and afterward it will travel to additional U.S. venues through 2014.

By Ricci Shyrock

 
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Posted by on July 23, 2012 in African American Art

 

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Safety First: an interview wit’ the local visual artistic sensation Safety First

13 Jul

by Minister of Information JR

All paintings are the work of Safety First of Black Diamond Shining.

Safety First is one third of the super art crew Black Diamond Shining, which also consists of Dead Eyes and Ras Terms. These brothas are very talented visual artists who seem to be everywhere in the Bay where people are talking about young Black and Brown art by contemporary artists.I ran into the work of Safety First and Ras Terms at the popular World Ground Cafe in East Oakland and thought to myself that I had to make sure that the rest of the Bay View readers knew that the Black Diamond Shining crew is meticulously working on their artistic legacy, because they are some up and coming legends, making art on the Bay Area-Northern Cali scene.

We have to buy and support local art so that we can keep our local dope artists in business. Check out Safety First in his own words …

M.O.I. JR: When did you realize that you were an artist and that that is what you wanted to do with your life?

Safety First: I would have to say I realized that around 14 or 15 but didn’t really get that’s the only thing I wanted to do until I was 30.

M.O.I. JR: How were you trained?

Safety First: A lot of doodling during class, in school and comic book/cartoon characters as a kid, some high school art classes and a semester of art college in Brooklyn.

M.O.I. JR: Who inspires your work?

Safety First: Definitely everyone in Black Diamond Shining. Painting with them has been a huge influence. There’s a lot of local artists whose work I dig. Karen and Malik Seneferu, Eesuu, Emory Douglas, Favianna, Trust Your Struggle, just to name a few people. There’s a ton of awesome artists in Oakland, though – so much talent here.

One of my biggest influences is Justin Bua. Seeing his work as a kid is the first time I saw someone paint hiphop art that wasn’t all graff or spraypaint. Buddy Esquire and Phase 2 for all those early hand drawn hiphop flyers. My homie back home, Jay Stooks. His art still influences me.

When I was a kid getting to visit New York City I was intrigued by walls that just looked like a million different artists had worked on them, with a million different mediums. Getting to see West FC and Ezo paint walls was a big deal to me as a kid.

As a kid in Ithaca, N.Y., I always liked the work of Belladonna, Pride, Swine and Dance. Of course various forms of African art influence me. I’m really into the South African barber shop paintings, and I like checking out contemporary African artists on the internet. I also really dig sign paintings and like Lester Clay and signs by Pam. Both of those artists are from New Orleans. I’m really into paintings of food. Oh yeah, and don’t forget Basquiat.

M.O.I. JR: What is your creative process like?

Safety First: Paint until the voices in my head say it’s finished.

M.O.I. JR: Can you tell me a little bit about your crew Black Diamonds Shining? How did you guys come together? Why?

Safety First: Well, BDS came together from me and Ras Terms and Deadeyes having shows and always including each other in them. You know one of us would have a solo show and call up the others to bring art or participate in some way. Why did we come together? Because it was pre-destined and out of our hands to come together. You’d have to ask my ancestors what’s going on there.

M.O.I. JR: Where can the public see your art? Where can they purchase it?

Safety First: You can see it on Facebook at safetyfirstpopbds and Facebook at blackdiamondsshining. Also you can see work on Tumblr at firstcomessafety. I’ve got work currently hanging at World Ground Cafe up on MacArthur in East Oakland. A lot of those paintings are collaborations with Ras Terms.

I’ve also got banners hanging in the Laurel District on the poles right now. Also my work is in downtown Oakland at the new store Nneka at 1431 Broadway. They have art by myself and Ras Terms, and T-shirts by local company Dreamers Rule, that feature Deadeyes and I.

M.O.I. JR: How do people get in touch with you?

Safety First: Facebook is really the best way right now, and you can find me on Facebook at safetyfirstpopbds.

The People’s Minister of Information JR is associate editor of the Bay View, author of “Block Reportin’” and filmmaker of “Operation Small Axe” and “Block Reportin’ 101,” available, along with many more interviews, atwww.blockreportradio.com. He also hosts two weekly shows on KPFA 94.1 FM and kpfa.org: The Morning Mix every Wednesday, 8-9 a.m., and The Block Report every Friday night-Saturday morning, midnight-2 a.m. He can be reached at blockreportradio@gmail.com.

 
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Posted by on July 13, 2012 in African American Art

 

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Exploring African-American Fatherhood

15 Jun

By DAVID GONZALEZ

What compels you to shoot? That was the question David Alan Harvey asked his students during a workshop last year in Brooklyn. We all have our reasons — if not our obsessions — flashes of realization that come through the viewfinder and into our hearts. For Zun Lee, one of the students, the answer was uneasily evident.

As a street photographer, he had always been attracted to fleeting scenes of fathers and children. He was drawn to those moments, even if he wasn’t quite sure why.

Well, maybe he was.

“In 2004, I discovered my biological dad was African-American,” said Mr. Lee, who had been raised in a Korean family in Germany. “It had basically been a one-night stand. He ran away when he learned she was pregnant. She doesn’t even remember his name anymore.”

That revelation would inform his latest work — “Father Figure,” an exploration into the lives of black fathers.  Working over the last year in New York, Chicago and Toronto, where he now lives and works as a health consultant, he has delved into the lives of men who have made the choice to stay near their children as best they can.

His goal is to show an everyday, ordinary love between children and fathers. The kind of moments that get lost in the shuffle of media caricatures.

“On either side it’s stereotypical,” Mr. Lee said. “On one side it’s the Jerry Springer, Maury Povich stuff about irresponsible dads who run away from their baby mama and don’t take responsibility. On the other hand of the discourse, you have Dr. Cliff Huxtable, the über-dad. In the media, there is very little in the middle, of the everyday dad who may not be perfect, he may be struggling, but he’s present in their child’s life.”

Mr. Lee knows about being in the middle. His mother, a nurse, had moved to Germany in the 1960s. After he was born, she married a fellow Korean who was working there as a journalist. They raised him, though his relationship with his stepfather was rocky. Even looking in the mirror, something did not add up: he didn’t look like anybody in his family.

As luck would have it, he grew close to African-American families stationed at American bases in Frankfurt. Rebuffed by Germans children his age — and being a bit of a latchkey child himself — his grew close to one boy, Jamal, and his family. He spent most of his time with them, picking up on everything from music and food to how they spoke.

Zun LeeAnthony Francis bathed his daughter, Tena. Camp Lejeune, N.C.

“Learning about my biological father wasn’t just a traumatic experience,” Mr. Lee said. “Learning the news was in a weird sense a homecoming.”

Mr. Lee grew up to be a doctor — a profession he left after deciding the clinical side wasn’t for him. Yet an encounter with a patient slowly set him on the path to photography. He had once been a painter, before medical studies took up all his time. While doing a residency in New York in 1993, he treated Rigoberto Torres, an artist who suffered neurological damage after an asthma attack left him unable to breathe for several minutes.

Mr. Torres – and his collaborator, John Ahearn — encouraged Mr. Lee to not give up on art.

“They asked me what were my passions beyond medicine,” Mr. Lee recalled. “So if you ask me, why do I photograph? I can trace it to that conversation. It stayed with me as something I could do instead of painting. I owe John and Rigoberto everything.”

Fast-forward almost two decades to Brooklyn, where Mr. Lee was enrolled in the David Alan Harvey workshop. Already shooting on the streets, he decided to follow Mr. Harvey’s urging and plumb the swirl of emotions that led him to look at the world in a certain way. Mr. Harvey suggested he not just stick with the project, but get deeper into the lives of his subjects. At times, the emotions have touched close to home.

“Being in the presence of these dads was difficult for me,” he said. “They were interacting with their kids, which is something I didn’t have growing up. I had a dad growing up, but he wasn’t a model dad. For me, seeing things I never had as a child was hard to witness, never mind having to shoot in those circumstances.”

He has continued to work with three or four families, particularly one in the Bronx that has welcomed him warmly. He has also reached out to sociologists and other researchers who have done work on African-American families and fathers. One of them, LaRon Nelson, a faculty member and assistant dean for Global and Community Affairs at the University of South Florida, praised the project.

“There is a spirit, an essence, a sense of shared meaning that somehow most images don’t exude,” Dr. Nelson said.  “I had not noticed this myself, until I saw Zun’s pictures and had them juxtaposed with the images of black fathers that were cataloged in my memory from years of media consumption. I knew instantly that I was seeing the ‘thing,’ the spirit, essence, shared meaning, about which the fathers had found so absent from the public domain.”

Mr. Lee now plans to take four months to devote to the project. In some ways, it has gone way beyond photography.

It has even been redemptive.

“This is a chance for me to find a way to connect my personal story to the photos I’m doing,” Mr. Lee said. “I’m not talking about taking pretty pictures, but finding out what is the one thing that compels me to do this. It’s taking it one level further.”

DESCRIPTION
Zun LeeEkow Nimako and Janeesa. Toronto.

Picture Gallery

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Posted by on June 15, 2012 in African American Art

 

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