Artistic Family Tree - David Hammons

Over the next few weeks i'll be posting a list of inspirational artists, in response to a current project for Art and Ecology.  We have been asked to devise a family tree, delegating artist in sequential order of influence.  There are so many artists to think about and consider. In my own practice if feel the the intent of my art is always changing, however somethings remain significant even if not originally recognized as such.  Things like identity have strongly influenced my work, maybe more so in the last few years as I am finally beginning to believe in who I am and my place in this crazy world.

David Hammons (born 1943) is a sculptor, installation and performance African American artist from Springfield IL in the 1960's.

 Bliz-aard Ball Sale (1983), a performance piece in which Hammons situates himself alongside street vendors in downtown Manhattan in order to sell snowballs which are priced according to size. This act serves both as a parody on commodity exchange and a commentary on the capitalistic nature of art fostered by art galleries. Furthermore, it puts a satirical premium on ‘whiteness’, ridiculing the superficial luxury of racial classification as well as critiquing the hard social realities of street vending experienced by those who have been discriminated against in terms of race or class.

 Hammons was one of many pioneering African- American artists commited to civil rights and the Black Power movement.  For the past 40 years Hammonds has explored race, creativity and politics without gallery representation. In recent years Hammons’ art has evolved into increasingly incorporeal undertakings, but in many ways the artist himself has continued to figure – to be a figure – in his work. As his fame has grown, he has earned a reputation for his evasive manoeuvres, for defying art world protocols. Yet the more Hammons side-steps the public sphere, the more present he seems, the more his own identity comes to be at issue. When a New York Times reviewer makes a point of referring to ‘the artist himself, whom I’ve never met, and chances are, never will’, it’s clear we are in the realm of something like personal mystique. But for Hammons persona is more than epiphenomenal: his work seems to a large extent to be about how he functions in the world. And it includes the conversation around it, the dialogue – public and private – that surrounds the artist’s activities.

Throwback: Sketch Journal- In my mind games

Some of these date back a while. I used have so much more time to draw freely. That will be a goal of mine this summer.

Fall 2012 Collaborative Print

In the fall I was granted the opportunity to work with another artist, Sara Tremblay, on a collaborative print project. Sara is a photographer, who also draws and works with video. We compiled a series of intaglio prints reminiscent of the cyclical  phases of the moon. There are eight key stages of the moon however Sara experimented with about 36 different steel plates. All the plates were hand cut and the edges buffed. The markings were created out of general wear, rust, hammering, smashing the plates on various surfaces, and rubbing the plates on the floor.  We experimented with a multitude of colors, silver, gold, black, varying shades of blue and used a collage technique "Chine-collé" to emphasise the phases. In the end Sara was attracted to the embossing, and cut the plates into 8 phases, that worked like a collection of puzzle pieces. The phase was then inked and connected with its other side, so the prints are fully embossed but only half inked.

Poetics of Cloth

Here is a sample of my series of animated stills, when completed I'm hoping to incorporate some music from the ever inspiring Flying Lotus.

Artist: Kwaku Adoma Ananse

Akosua Adoma Owusu creates films and videos that blend popular culture, music and mythology from both West African and American sources, examining the crossover and exchange of cultural representation in the contemporary African diaspora. Her videos range from documentaries to pastiche to experimental abstraction.
 Drawing on this narrative, Owusu explores the parallels and differences of merging cultures, using the double-sided trickster character of Kwaku Ananse, halfspider and half-man, as a guiding metaphor.

In Anancy, as in her other films, Owusu blends lush, colorful imagery with diverse musical accompaniment. She has investigated cross-cultural pollination in other ways, for instance through examinations of beauty practices and their relationship to racial politics. Her cinematic vision encompasses the increasing ubiquity and lingering unease of transnational identity.

http://akosuaadoma.com/home.html

Resisting Invisibility: Black Faculty in Art and Art History in Canada

"There is an ongoing invisibility and even erasure of talented black intellectuals, artists, writers and scholars in the Canadian academy. But we also need to acknowledge and challenge the dominant lens through which this invisibility tends to be examined. Contrary to popular belief, not all issues, objects, events and materials of relevance to race, racism, colonialism, slavery and the Black Diaspora can be situated within or examined from the perspective of social science disciplines such as politics, sociology, psychology or law. Art and visual culture more broadly were and continue to be central to western programs of slavery, colonialism and ongoing conditions of racial oppression and marginalization.  Monarchs, colonial administrators and European citizens had to be convinced of the rightness of the colonial project and the morality and economic viability of empire building."
-Charmaine Nelson

Charmiane is the only black female art historian in Canada, teaching Black Diasporic Art at McGill University. I find this alarming and infuriating, that there is a lack of accessibility to Black History and Black Art History studies in Canadian universities. Why is this so?
The neglect of Afro-American art, history and distortion of the facts concerning Negroes in most history books, is the  deprivation of a heritage, that plays a valuable role in Canadian and American Culture. A knowledge of history is crucial if we want an understanding of the past in relationship to current discourse. Historical ignorance breeds contemporary ignorance!


Here is a link to Charmiane speaking about the presence or lack there of African representation at the  UAAC Universities Art Association of Canada annual convention and the American equivalent CAA  College Art Association.
http://www.congress2013.ca/blog/resisting-invisibility-black-faculty-art-and-art-history-canada

Digital Print: Afrocentric/ Diaspora

I've begun to create and compile a series of prints related to african culture and its relationship to colonization and the African diaspora. In fusing these ideologies, with the digital process, the amalgamation of  the modern and traditional creates a hybrid of patterns embedded with a multitude of meanings. I'm hoping to incorporate color through screen as well as compile color using stop motion for a small video.