A ragtag bunch of statements that between them might be relevant:
Then
John Renshaw taught me (and others):
“You can tame a wild goose, but a tame goose never goes wild,” he said. “Don’t be in too much of a hurry to bring it under control.”
He looked at work and said “You were coming out from under the table and ‘oooooh,’ you’ve banged your head”
and walked away.
Another time he looked and said “You’re skating, lad. Skating. Oo – Thin ice”
and walked away.
All was metaphor and all, eventually, sank home.
He took some of the students, who had spent the previous two weeks in the printmaking department, outside to the yard and had them build a large framework, to which they were instructed to attach their previous two weeks’ work. He then set about setting fire to the frame, instructing the students to grab a piece of A1 paper and to start to draw as their efforts went up in smoke. Most students grabbed their work off the frame and ran. Those that grabbed their paper and drew, went on.
He talked in terms of mark making. He talked of lines. He talked of it all being about space. He packed us off to look at Velázquez.
He taught us to avoid being precious, to be prepared to overwork a picture to derive more from it. The next picture was the thing.
At the end of the year he brought in some of his own work. I was surprised, given the sort of things he encouraged us to do, at how small the paintings were. I said, “I thought they would be big paintings?” He said “They are big paintings, lad, they are big paintings.”
Now
I look at the work I produce 33 years later and wonder where, in all of the excessively tight control that an I-Pad gives me, lie the ripples of those lessons?
Process
My involvement with the process and its impact upon me are still what interest me most.
Working digitally, it is always possible to retreat in time and to follow a different seam.
I have always in my mind, somewhere, the thought that this is all leading up to “The Picture,” the image that, for me, stands head and shoulders above all others. The product of all of it. The outcome. The result. I hope that I never produce “The Picture” as it ends there.
Potential
I’ve always been more thrilled by potential than realization.
Looking
The images are subservient to the act of looking.
I cannot look at an image as well as I look through the process of cutting, reassembling and/or erasing that image.
I recall J.G. Ballard saying that he did not want his children to read his books as it was too intimate a relationship for them to have with him.
When I am erasing areas of old paintings it can also feel too intimate. I enter a room in the National Gallery and seeing one of ‘my’ renaissance paintings across the room, blush slightly with the feeling that others know.
Momentum
At full tilt I feel that were I to lay upon the cold wet morning grass then I would sizzle.
The loss of momentum brings the leaden drag of gravity.
Images
The images are diary entries that trigger a recollection of an experience and/or a sequence of thoughts.
Sometimes they are markers, or signposts, of another seam of ideas, sometimes of dead ends.
Mining
Like a hunter, I track images to use. I gather them together and then mine them until I have extracted all that I can currently use.
The potential of a newly struck seam can take years off.
Inevitably the slagheaps pile up around me, making it difficult to find anything and to choose only 15 images.
N.B. No canaries were harmed in the production of the work.
It is all just the act of looking and of being engaged with a process.
It is all process and the impact of the process on the act of looking.
I am not focussed on the images. They interest me, but not as much as the process and the act of looking that they involve.
I see my work as debris, as fall out from my involvement with a process. The pictures were always subservient to the process and the act of looking.
Romare Bearden is considered one of the most important American artists of the 20th century. He depicted aspects of black culture in a Cubist style….Born in North Carolina, he landed in New York City and studied with George Grosz. His early paintings were realistic with religous themes. Later, his works depict aspects of family culture in a semiabstract collage and Cubist style. He was also a songwriter and designed sets for the Alvin Ailey Company. http://www.biography.com/people/romare-bearden-40540#synopsis
Collage
col·lage noun 1. a piece of art made by sticking various different materials such as photographs and pieces of paper or fabric onto a backing.https://www.oxforddictionaries.com/
Romare Bearden has left a significant mark on the African American art community many years after he has gone. He is the most prolific semi-abstract collage artist to be recognized in the realm of art. His influence cannot be easily dismissed. This article will attempt to do just that.
Being the most prolific semi-abstract artist means absolutely nothing in the pursuit of art. Anyone can manufacture a ton of crap, but production is not the sum of what makes a great artist. If production alone were the criteria to be successful many artists would have met and exceed Bearden’s position in the “Black canon.” This article questions his status as the major influencer he is to the African American art community.
There is an argument that Bearden is in many ways the first abstract art introduced to the African American art community. That is simply not the case. Harlem Renaissance artists like Aaron Douglas’ s cubism preceded Bearden by decades and is certainly more an artist. The collage practice period is a gross attempt at creativity. To cut and paste imagery is an ugly mode of praxis.
Any artist who likes the foundation of the arts (drawing, painting, and 3-D works) could never appreciate such a practice void of artistry. Collage as a medium is an offense to these foundations. If this is an artist’s entry point these artists eventually will need to return to those foundations. Bearden’s accomplishment is the fact that he produced this collage farce for his entire career repeatedly with little to no change. The fact that he could dredge through this monotonous cutting and gluing speaks to a kind of attrition that has not to do with art, rather a kind of masochism.
Kitsch
Kitsch noun 1. art, objects, or design considered to be in poor taste because of excessive garishness or sentimentality, but sometimes appreciated in an ironic or knowing way: “the lava lamp is an example of sixties kitsch” adjective 1. considered to be in poor taste but appreciated in an ironic or knowing way: “the front room is stuffed with kitsch knickknacks, little glass and gilt ornaments”https://www.oxforddictionaries.com/
Kitsch is a more appropriate discussion for Bearden’s prolific production. Knickknacks of African American culture scrapbooked on a large rectangle for consumption. The Harlem renaissance was not Kitsch. They were interested in realism. They used analytic and synthetic cubism to access an abstract realism. Those artists used their art to literally build a vernacular of tangible African American history not to be scrapbooked, rather a present lived moment. Bearden’s work subverts and erases the very foundation the Harlem renaissance built and reduced it to a postcard.
Bearden is used as a model for many artists to aspire to, and many artists succumb to his success as the rubric of their own practice. Many “Black galleries” are saturated with this dated knickknack art that only succeeds as a poor copy of an original consumable. These artists that choose to pick up the mantle of Bearden waste their lives never developing work for themselves. Why do “Black galleries” and collectors support this obvious cliché as the pinnacle of African American contribution? Especially when Bearden himself credits European study as his major source of influence, not the “Black canon.”
Collections By Maynard Eaton
Jerry Thomas Jr. and Alan Avery may have engineered Atlanta’s single most significant black art exhibition ever this past weekend. Their unprecedented collaboration produced an historic cultural event for dozens of the city’s Who’s Who art aristocrats to admire and purchase rare original works by Romare Bearden, America’s preeminent African American artist.
The Lamp, by Romare Bearden
“We are the first two art dealers – regardless of color – that have collaborated,” says Alan Avery, owner of the Alan Avery Art Company in Buckhead. “It doesn’t happen in Atlanta. But, I think it is even more significant that we are from different races and that we come from different backgrounds, but that we are collaborating for the strength of Atlanta, the Atlanta art scene and the Atlanta collector base.”
“Bearden is one of the all-time great artists,” adds Jerry Thomas, the owner and highly regarded impresario of Jerry Thomas Arts. “He would not only enjoy the prices that his works are bringing but also the mixed audience of both blacks and whites. I think that would have been very important to him. What makes it ever more significant is the collaboration between me and Alan Avery. Hopefully this will not only be the beginning of such collaborations, but will set a new mold for the country in terms of blacks and whites working together to produce more shows.”
Bearden’s work now commands a hefty price tag, with the pieces on display at Alan Avery’s gallery ranging from $40,000 to $400,000. It was an uptown show for an upscale cross-section of Atlanta’s elite, and the metro area’s sophisticated art connoisseurs. They didn’t blink at the prices. Six of Bearden’s prize pieces were sold the first day, and the exhibition continues through January.http://saportareport.com/romare-bearden-exhibition-the-tipping-point-of-atlantas-black-arts-renaissance/
From a financial standpoint $400,000 is a great investment, but at what cost. To train the next generation to replicate this means of production is appalling. An artist in 2017 doing a copy of Bearden, believing it to be a true representation of the African American community is beyond delusional yet many Black artists are doing just that. The stagnation located in the African American art community can be placed squarely at the feet of these collectors and galleries that praise the romanticized kitsch element present in all of Bearden’s production. There are many artists within the “Black canon” which would be more suitable as an entry point for African American artists.
Christopher Hutchinson is an accomplished Jamaican conceptual artist, professor and contributor to the art community as a writer, critic and founder of the nonprofit Smoke School of Art. He is a Professor of Art at Atlanta Metropolitan State College and has been featured as a lecturer including prestigious engagements at University of Alabama and the Auburn Avenue Research Library. For two decades, Chris has been a practicing artist. His works have been exhibited in internationally recognized institutions including City College New York (CUNY) and featured at the world’s leading international galleries such as Art Basel Miami. He has always had an innate passion for creating spaces where Africans and people of African descent contribute to an inclusive contemporary dialogue—ever evolving, not reflexive but pioneering. This requires challenging the rubric of the canon of art history, a systemic space of exclusion for the Other: women and non-Whites, and where necessary he rewrites it. He received his Master of Fine Arts Degree in Painting from Savannah College of Art & Design, Atlanta and his Bachelor of Arts Degree from the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Alabama.
Welcome to my surreal world. It’s not an effort, it’s a way of life. It is personal, it is intellectual, it is romantic and most of all, it is real.
Shaded
All of us trying to forget someone. But I know I won’t be able to forget, I can only forgive.
Round and Round
Follow me down to the valley bellow. Moonlight is bleeding, out of your soul.
Let’s go on an adventure
Please, take risks.
Fear keeps us focused on our past or worried about the future. If we can just learn to overcome our fear, we can realise that right now, we are okay.
At this moment, you can hear the voices and see the beautiful faces of our loved ones. But that’s not it. Life has much deeper meaning to itself and we must fulfil it. That can only be done by breaking the limits of human imagination, by doing the impossible. You won’t know until you try.
Bubble Galaxy
Never underestimate yourself. Every idea or a thought you get is worth a lot. People often think it’s not good enough and drop it but just give it some time and take it forward. You never know what’s worth what.
Unconditional
I will love you like I love the colour blue.
Don’t hold me back
But, even if you colour them with beautiful feelings, they’ll still cry and they’ll still smile.
Coloured Hands
Yes, I’ve been failed a couple of times. There were situations where I felt this is just unreal and everything was falling apart. What do you do during these times?
Some people survive and talk about it. Some survive and go unnoticed. Some survive, heal and create.
I survived and inspired myself. Looking back tells me, I found parts of me that I thought never existed. Now, I just grow. The notion of getting better each day inspires me and I vow to help myself love life.
Remember, the pain you suffer is never wasted.
Looking for alternate place
Everyone’s talking about escaping. Always thinking. Always dreaming.
How can I make it possible
So close, yet so far.
Inseparable
You can be the ocean, I’ll be the shore.
Why
The burden is real, isn’t it?
Crooked you
Home? What does it mean? It’s different for different people.It might be a place, a thing, a moment to re-live, a feeling.
For me, it is a person.
Blurred lines
Miles apart
they sat down near a window
face against the glass
He exhaled. She knew it was him.
Never knew the names
only the eyes.
He was a clown, she had cancer,
she never cried around him
he never wore a mask.
They stared at each other
infinity in the eyes
they both saw a never-ending path
they both found destiny.
Then came the day
he was left alone but in abundance
like a shattered piece of glass
with a less comforting silence.
Rest of the life he wrote his heart out
on a paper in his diary.
It was his imagination
and her love.
And every time it rained
each conversation a paperboat
floated away with a secret tale.
Desert divers
The worst thing is watching someone drown and not being able to convince them that they can save themselves by just standing up.
It then turns to one of those upsetting moments when you lose respect for someone you really cared.
People ruin everything
One of the things I recently realised is that, people ruin beautiful things.
Travel, love, inspire, experience and tell nobody.
People expect.
People judge.
People kill happiness.
Materialistic Society
Digital lie.
People matter.
Talk to each other.
Look in the eyes instead of looking at the texts and mails.
Hold hands instead of holding phones.
Gather more moments and less pictures of those moments that you just wasted taking a picture.
Use the digital generation for what they are supposed to but don’t let it consume you.
Don’t forget that we live in a physical world where people, emotions and feelings matter.
Embrace them. Would you?
Smoke on the universe
The planet is fine.
The people are fucked.
Words
Can you see your days blighted by darkness?
Is it true you beat your fists on the floor?
Stuck in a world of isolation
While the ivy grows over the door – Pink Floyd( Lost for words)
Small world
Let’s celebrate the light and the space. We often underestimate them.
Artist: pastiche.in
I’m a Digital Artist from India, currently studying Architecture at Oxford School of Architecture. I make surreal collages to communicate ideas and emotions and I think that I’ve found a way for my brain to have orgasms.
Carla Aaron-Lopez writes regularly for Creative Thresholds about the experience of being an emerging artist. Her previous posts are: “Notes from kingCARLA,” “Notes from kingCARLA 2,” “Notes from kingCARLA 3,” and “That Moment When Artists Snap.” “Reiterating the Erotic” is a lecture she gave recently in Atlanta, GA for a Feminist Symposium called “A Bad Question: An Exhibition and Forum on Race + Feminism.”
The devil came wearing white today. And for the next few minutes, I want you to explore what you really think it means to be a feminist. I don’t burn bras. Men are not my enemy. I don’t have Sex and the City moments with my homegirls and I definitely don’t give a fuck about Susan B. Anthony and the suffragette movement. That’s somebody else’s history.
I am the villain who came to make you reconsider sexuality and sensuality using feminism and post-structuralism as my foundation.
Years ago, I wasn’t very moved by those I met that called themselves feminists. Either they were too contradictory, too hypocritical or too radical for my preferences.
Therefore, let me begin this conversation with the year 2012, when it fully clicked that I was going to be a mother to a son. When that realization finally hit home, I knew that everything I had been told, taught and programmed to believe was a beautiful yet hideously disgusting lie.
I truly believe that we live so far removed from truth that I began seeking a new story to tell, a new lie to believe. After my search, I was left with nothing fulfilling and I went into a sort of psychological hiding.
Hiding my thoughts, my fears, hiding who I really wanted to be.
I wanted to walk away from everyone and everything. I began wishing that stereotypes weren’t real because I was planning my great escape from this perceived reality. It was time for me to find a new hero. One that I could relate to in my dark, twisted and morbid little universe. But even that request didn’t hit on what I truly needed.
Ever since I was a little girl, the story of the damsel in distress has been shared again and again. The princess was always so sweet, so soft and so vulnerable that she constantly needed to be saved by a young prince. Growing up black, I also got sold that I needed Jesus to save me from myself and from the sins of the world. Yet another white man who needed to come save my ass.
As I became a young adult, magazines, music and movies told me that I needed to be saved still but in different and daunting ways. If I wear these clothes, he will be attracted to me. If I were this make-up, I will be cute for spring and winter. If I’m like this or that in bed, then I will drive him crazy.
To be honest, I’m still wading through the mess of my life but I’m here now. And to be even more honest, the power of motherhood and exploring the erotic has changed how I see and interact with everything around me. Our collective journey begins with that statement.
I began looking at myself differently from that point. I realized that nothing I learned was going to help the new journey that was unfolding before me. There was no man or woman who would be able to help me in the way that I needed. I could follow a classic framework knowing that I would be more broken on the inside than ever before. Some women aren’t meant to settle down but instead are meant to pierce the taut fabrics that make up your individual perception.
You will not find me in a church. You will not find me in a book club. You will not even find me at a Beyonce concert.
When the feeling came, that moment of clarity, I was standing in my room. The beginnings of my downfall from reality started right there.
And it was glorious.
It wasn’t late into the night but it was winter and it was definitely dark outside. I like the dark. I found myself in my favorite place at that moment. Sinking deep into my thoughts which is similar to navigating through a large warmed vat of thick, luscious, viscous Vaseline. It’s just as comforting as sunny Southern skies with lingering humidity in the air.
I knew this feeling very well and I automatically felt what it wanted to do with me. It started deep down low and seductively moved its way up to my brain sparking a quiet chaos throughout the rest of my body.
The feeling began to inform what I should do next with my life. At that moment, I could either be self-destructive, self-pleasuring or take that energy by its curly rolls and push it into another direction.
One text conversation with a friend later in the night brought back me to the mind of Audre Lorde and introduced me to her views on eroticism. My friend sent me audio of Lorde sharing her essay, “The Power of the Erotic” (a recording can be found at the end of the essay). I pressed play but I wasn’t listening. Her voice was mesmerizing because I had never heard a woman speak with such confidence and comfort. I wanted to be like that. I wanted to inhabit that energy and share it with the people.
I needed to find the thing itself and print it out. The next day, I found her essay because I needed to hold her words and take them in while draped in silence. I needed to touch the papers and strike it with my pen jotting notes all over its margins. I needed a moment with those words and hear them with my inner voice for it to become one with my personal dialogue.
My reason for being so obsessive is because I needed for someone to put into words what I had been feeling naturally and solidify my reasons for working with such hypersexualized imagery. She flipped over and turned out everything that I knew about erotic and I, in turn, reconsidered how I defined the term. The exact same thing that I do with my personal work whether visual or written.
I enjoy looking at classic power structures and dismantling them in a way that I think is an improvement. I choose erotic imagery only because of the amount of negativity that surrounds being a sexual woman.
What if I flipped the perception and turned the eroticization of women into gods and titans? Who would they be to you then? Would they become something else? Would they influence a docile woman to become more than what she is? I don’t know but we’ll see as time passes us all.
I’ve learned that the erotic is a feminine energy and any person can come into the folds of that energy if they are seeking to re-establish his/her individual identity. For many years, I’ve gone on rants and lamented in many essays about the hypersexualization of women of color. Black and Latino women are often seen as aggressive enforcers of sexuality while white and Asian women are docile and submissive. Altogether, people will take advantage of a woman’s appearance, love and experiences. What I’ve learned is that if you just ask a woman what she likes, she might tell you. However, I’ve also learned that many of these same women don’t even know what to do with their sexuality because they are scared of it.
I don’t know why but I think I know a point of relativity. Most women refuse to examine the power within themselves because society says a woman should do and be whatever has been previously established of them from a patriarchal perspective.
For a long time that scared me to the point that I didn’t want to be anything like any woman and I refused to be seen as feminine. I preferred to be dressed in masculine energy and keep rappers as my alter ego to protect myself from critical world views on femininity. If you wanted a woman, don’t come to me because you were going to get a nigga in a dress. This is destructive thinking as a result of a sensitive soul reacting to mainstream images around me.
Ads tell me that I need to use certain products or else I will not be beautiful. I have never really been comfortable with agreeing to such a notion. They also tell me that I need to buy certain products or else my vagina will not be clean and it will smell. That’s scientifically dumb as fuck.
If advertisements aren’t telling me what I should do as a woman, then there’s entertainment showing me how I should act as a woman.
According to what we currently watch in movies, television and the internet, I should be a whore whose feelings are always abused because I’ve opened my legs to the wrong man throughout my adult life.
I should be taken advantage of due to the incredibly high amount of moving images that contain rape scenes and its various circumstances.
Or I should live my life docile and continue to wait for my fictitious white or light skinned knight in a well tailored suit because I am a good girl.
Fuck being a good girl. I don’t care about that anymore unless you want to re-enact a role play scene with me because you love me.
When women are denied the unlimited power and pleasure of being a woman, we create severe deficiencies within our quality of living and when she begins to accept denying herself as a result of our classic gender structures, she becomes the bitter bitch.
We all die a little bit when that bitch comes around.
Life without embracing the erotic is a life that is unfulfilled and obligatory, kind of like the bitter woman. To embrace the erotic is to examine a very wide spectrum of feelings emotionally, mentally and physically. We don’t even know all the words that we could use to describe these experiences.
From sharing joy with a loved one in complete silence to how we interact with the world around us. Have you revisited walking barefoot on wet grass after a fresh rainfall? Have you ever taken a deep breath of crisp air on the Blue Ridge Parkway in the fall? Closed your mouth and stared into the eyes of your lover? If not, I suggest that you do.
Free your mind and your ass will follow. Famous words by some very famous non-binary black people.
We need not confuse erotic any longer with female hypersexuality but give in to ourselves in order to enrich our human experience as a whole. I am a mother and there’s a woman halfway across the world whose language I cannot speak who is a mother, too. We can share in the joys of that experience. We can definitely laugh at its frustrations.
Embracing the erotic can bring life to our senses if we understand it as an extension feminine energy. It isn’t a sexual energy but a chaotic one that deserves our attention. From being constantly surrounded by sexual imagery, we confuse what that feeling is deep within us. Confusion leads to erratic thinking, poor decision-making and psychotic actions all blamed on the power of erotic.
If someone chooses to break the structure of what they have been taught as normal for their entire lives for the sake of their sanity and happiness then that is a person choosing power over oppression.
Politically speaking, right now, we, as global citizens, are in a stage of redefining and restructuring how we see and approach gender identity. Those lines have always been bent and crossed for a long time with no one voice as representation until now. Questions are being asked from all corners in regards to what defines male, female, man and woman. Of course, there is opposition and hatred to individuals that are creating new social binaries to define their sense of belonging.
It seems silly for me to live my life just for marriage and a man. Is that all my life amounts to because I am a woman? Shall I be in constant competition with another woman over the affection and attention of a man? Or shall I become the bitter woman spewing nonsense about being independent and not having a need for any man? NO. I just want to live my life. My life is not controlled by or in need of saving by any man (or woman).
I’m human and dysfunctional because everyday my heart and brain go through mini battles in the same manner that belief and reason do. All of those points lead to roads of abuse whether the abuse comes from the self or another person. There is no logic to that. There is no defending, upholding or supporting that. And because of that, I support embracing the power of erotic. I want it to drip from my skin, make a woman question her attraction to me and a man feel like I’m something to be cherished. All because I just want to be comfortable in the skin that I’m in and shine as brightly as I can until Death come to give me the sweetest, deadliest kiss I’ll ever encounter.
I find that exploring your own eroticism will lead to the identity and belonging we constantly search for as humans. To be erotic doesn’t mean that we do as want whenever we want. It also doesn’t give anyone the right to become sexually aggressive as a response to growing up in a Puritan patriarchal western society.
Being erotic is as simple as touching the skin you were born in and not having harsh criticism of its imperfections. Just touch it. Being erotic is finding joy and pleasure in things that make you peaceful mentally. And last, being erotic is taking the chaotic energy you were born with and manipulating it in order to enrich your above ground human experience.
Reading Audre Lorde’s essay has helped turn something that I thought was completely abstract into something that is concrete and tangible. She has given me a new life, new direction in defining how I can begin to comprehend my time on Earth because being erotic is in everything that I do.
From the air I inhale to the words that come out of my mouth.
From how I embrace my hair to how I enjoy a hot cup of coffee.
How I see my life’s work.
How I embrace my child.
I am no longer afraid to simply embrace my femininity. I think it looks great on me.
Created from restless remains, void-originated, Lita is an intrusive person, yes, she cares! She
prettifies her carnal residence by digestion and contemplations. Trances daily and composes,
carves, paints, and tears to shreds. Recklessly destroys order, desperately creates meanings,
and painfully broadens the track. Lives afield. Ecstatically respects alive!
Jessica is a chess teacher by trade, an observer by practice, and a hedgehog by design. She cycles, recycles, is currently reading the history of the American short story, bakes occasional challah bread, edits accidentally, tinkers on the mandolin, write poems, takes pictures of clouds, curates & liaisons between artists & community, teaches little humans how to be big ones, & mothers a thoughtful, three-year-old boy. Her chess book and details of her chess world on FB & overthechessboard.com.
1. to fasten, join, or attach (usually followed by to):
to affix stamps to a letter.
2. to put or add on; append:
to affix a signature to a contract.
3. to impress (a seal or stamp).
4. to attach (blame, reproach, ridicule, etc.).
noun
5. something that is joined or attached.
6.
Grammar. a bound inflectional or derivational element, as a prefix, infix, or suffix, added to a base or stem to form a fresh stem or a word, as -ed added to want to form wanted, or im- added to possible to form impossible.
Big World
Blue Sky
Chance Meeting
Coleus
Every Time
Hope
Maplewood Drive
Morning Coffee
Morning Light
One
Queen
Signal
Slug Bug
Touchdown
Wake Me When It’s Over
Weather
Withered
Michael S Church
The urgent connection between creation and destruction are on display within the
pieces I’ve broken apart, then reconnected.
It is in this space that I speak of the world around me, and to the voice within
myself simultaneously.
“I have no desire to understand art. I do however have a strong desire to confront
Artist: Manu Duf
I am a French amateur collagist. I’ve been interested in art since my childhood. I have always been impressed with creation in all its forms: painting, drawing, collage, literature, music…. I started sharing this passion for creativity in social media by presenting artists and works that were important to me. Gradually, I invested a little more by sharing my own creations, mostly digital collages, since 2012. Portraits are for me a source of endless inspiration.
They call this the beginning of a career. Even though my resume is already a mile long, I believe it to be the start of getting to that “emerging artist” label. Somewhere in grad school, I attended a lecture from an artist who asked my class what we were going to do once we graduate. We all agreed that he was crazy and answered that we were going to get jobs and go to work. At the time, it seemed like it made sense and that’s what some of us went off to do. We graduated, got jobs and became professors at respective universities.
However, for some of us, those cards didn’t stack that way. In my case, I was an adjunct at a historically black university for three years until I was cut. I still don’t know why. My unemployment says I was cut because of low enrollment and since then I haven’t been able to pick up another job. I had no choice but to do what I had been trained to do which is be an artist and when I look at the art world in motion I see less of me and more of those that taught me.
Lots of old white men and women. Ain’t nothing wrong with that but it forces me to wonder if I should do this at all. My ego is too big to let appearances cause me to quit. Therefore, I can’t help but to ask and investigate what it takes to be an artist of color in the 21st century. It’s 2014 and I find I still have to play cute little games to get accepted into this centuries old world. I come from a different place. I call it the dirty South, others just call it Atlanta. I’m not much into creating works that examine the place of black women in America or the African diaspora. I’m also not interested in making works that dog the sh*t out of men. I prefer making works that reflect my Southern background just like the ignorant rap music I love listening to while I create works. If you want a postcolonial discussion from me, I’ll direct you to my homie, Christopher Hutchinson, because he has the words you can’t run from.
In the meantime, this post is being created to help you (and me) explore what it takes to be an artist. And here’s the first step. Explore your influences. It doesn’t have to solely be artists. It can be writers, thinkers, dancers and/or rappers. As much as I love rappers is as much as I love Jean Baudrillard and Michel Foucault. It could even be television characters like the great Doctor Who. Examine why you are drawn to these influences. Is it the confidence you’re attracted to? Is it theories that you’ve read and you want to create something that reflects what you’ve learned? Is it history of a person, place or thing? I don’t know. It’s your world coming to life as an artist. We all have a world we live in that separates us from the next person. I believe that’s how we all keep our sanity. Don’t believe me? Check my next paragraph.
When I graduated with a MFA in photography in 2009, I ended up with a crappy job at TSS Photography transferring children in sports photos to products like keychains, dog tags and mugs to name a few. I hated it. I also didn’t have a camera and I was driving myself crazy. One day, I came across Romare Bearden again and remembered how my favorite black artists could only work using few materials because they had regular crappy jobs and families to feed. I looked around my apartment and saw that I had scissors, glue and plenty of collected magazines. If I couldn’t shoot the photograph then I figured I could make a new image using ones I found in magazines. It was at that moment I realized that I was more than the photographer that some cute little sheet of paper declared. I realized that I needed to investigate image making. In 2011, I started a new body of work that has taken me in a direction that I never anticipated. I dropped a baby from the womb in 2012 which led me to think about the nature of creation. OF COURSE, I knew NOTHING of what it meant to be pregnant. Let alone a mother of color in a world that believes itself to be post-racial. No. I began to think about what images and influences I will be bringing around my son based upon the things I had grown to like. None of them were very pretty, soft or becoming of a woman. They were quite hypersexualized, crude and rude. Just how I like my life.
That woman you see in strip clubs laughing with the dancers? Yeah. That’s me. I love being your family’s worst nightmare walking through your house for dinner. A dirty intellectual. The work I created ended up being bodies that were imbued with power because they appear to be powerless. What happens when you flip a world upside down and inside out?
You get the beginnings of an emerging artist. Take a look and tell me what you think. If the work makes you feel uncomfortable then my job as an artist is complete because those are the images I have to deal with on a daily basis.
Claudio Parentela is an illustrator, painter, photographer, mail artist, cartoonist, collagist, and freelance journalist who’s been active many years in the international underground scene. During 1999 he was a guest of the BREAK 21 FESTIVAL in Ljubliana (Slovenja). His obscure & crazy artworks are featured and shown in many art galleries, endlessly on the web, & in the real world too…. Selected galleries and publications: Furtherfield, Mysupadupa, Saatchi Online, Graphola, Virtual Shoes Museum, One Five4 Gallery, Art Setter, Aoa Collective, Rise Art, Wallery, Blue Canvas, Rojo Magazine, Nakedbutsafe, Hollow Magazine, THVUNDERMAG,Revista Metal, Lasso Magazine, Nasty Magazine.
CT explores the creative potential of borders, boundaries, difference, and limitation. It's a playground for multiple genres and diverse points of view. And like any good playground, it provides space for more than one person to have a good time. So I have friends here as well, contributing quirky, serious, playful, innovative, eclectic, and imaginative work.
Enjoy!
Melissa
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Creative Thresholds 
