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Performance-Lecture has been an element of my artistic and educational practice for a while - before I learned the language to describe what I was doing. I recently began to experiment more with the form in order to make teaching and learning more dynamic, thus effective, for myself and audience-participants.
Photo #1 - Professor L. and Students, Performing the Class “Baldwin & The Creative Process” 2019, University of North Texas, Denton, TX
This moment was captured during the concluding lecture in which we invited community members to “witness a day in the class”. *Photo by Colby Schlensker, audience-participant.
Photo #2 - The Living Portrait, PV III, 2019, Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta, GA
Lecture-Performance on personal and community narratives. *Photo by unnamed staff.
Photo #3 - (Untitled) A Talk to Teachers, Study 1, 2016, Maryland Institute, College of Art, Baltimore, MD
Photo #4 - (Untitled) A Talk to Teachers, Study 1, 2016, Maryland Institute, College of Art, Baltimore, MD
Lecture-Performance on “teaching” in Black communities for graduate students at MICA. *Photo by Miranda Hontz, audience-participant.
Photo #5 - You had to be there.
He’s Alive, 2017 is a series of graphite drawings on frosted mylar. The seven line-drawings in the series are studies of a living model. Four are featured here.
Untitled (Junie), 2015. Watercolor on paper. The image is based on a black and white portrait of a little girl made by James VanDerZee. During this time, I had been privileged to work with the VanDerZee archives and was, thus, heavily influenced/inspired by his work. I created this painting on 8 x 10 cotton paper - an homage or re-creation - really, as practice with a watercolor technique.
Untitled (le Elefant), 2017. Collage on frosted mylar. It is based on an existing painting, and inspired by Saint Sans Carnival of the Animals - and the notion of “the elephant in the room”. Both collages were projected in concert with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.
The Transportation of Frank Embree and Bettie Page into Benny Andrews Heaven, 2015
This digital collage is a narrative featuring an image of the painting, “Heaven”, by Benny Andrews, the backside of Frank Embree and a photograph of a seated Bettie Page. What I was considering while composing the collage include: How media impacts our memories of celebrities/people in the news; The afterlife; and the irony of serendipity.
*I do not own the rights to the painting “Heaven” by Benny Andrews. This was an experiment in photo shop and I was fascinated by how well the colors in all the images match and the narrative that could be told.
Also, I am truly inspired by Andrews’ work.
The Folding in of the Corners, The Crumbling of the White Cube, 2017/18. Collages. These three are excerpts from a series of collages (studies, in a sense) on contemporary art in a “crumbling” or “disconnected” society.
What is fine art/what is not? Art is…
What should be public/what should be private?
Access? Access.
To me, the collages are considerations of the tension between traditional and contemporary norms & ideas - in the “art world”. They all reference the conflict between physical and digital, high art and, I guess, “low art”. In the 2nd collage, I textured the background (white) paper to look and feel like canvas. I used construction paper, because it’s what I had…and for arts sake…
…Go make some art!
The images here make up Pt. II of the “Folding in of the Corners…” series. The first image (figure 1.) is a photograph of the deconstructed set of row houses adjacent to my apartment in East Baltimore - this was my direct view.
I watched the entire process from deconstruction through to the finished product - a new construction. The resulting images are essentially my photographic interpretation of the process.
Materials: Photograph, transparency, construction paper, sketchbook.
Note: It is true, I am considering issues of mass displacement as well as the connections between material, mathematics, and culture…as I watched the engineers, scientists, business people, construction team, etc. plow, plot, ploy…
Collaging is quite fun!
Post Art, from The Unrest Series, 2019. Photograph and mixed-media collage.
The Kitchen, from “The Unrest Series” 2020. Mixed-material.
Anxiety, from “The Unrest Series” 2019. Mixed-media collage.
Stockpilin’, from “The Unrest Series” 2020. Mixed-media collage.
Summoned (Greenmount West), 2016. Photograph
Untitled, from the Wanderer Series. Photographs 2, 3, 4
Dallas, TX. Lit! 2036, 2016. Photograph.
“Everyone who wanders is not lost.” - Unknown
…or something like that.
Aviary Day, 2017
Aviary Night, 2017
Aviary Flight, 2017
Collages: Fabric, transparency, oil paint, watercolor, acrylic paint, an original photograph and paper cut-outs.
The Aviary series is a set of narrative collages inspired by Saint Sans “Carnival of the Animals - The Aviary”. Aviary Flight, 2017 was a featured projection with The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra during the concert, “Carnival of the Animals” in 2018.
Tweezy, Process I, 2017
Figure in the Window, II, 2018
Figure in the Window, III, 2018
This ink drawing series is based on a photograph, which I took (of a ghost) in New Orleans, 2013. In 2017, I began experimenting with an ink-drawing technique - using the photograph as my inspiration - and couldn’t stop making this portrait! Although the image is of someone else (Tweezy), “The Figure in the Window” is a self-portrait of sorts.
The arts-based classes and workshops that I facilitate often incorporate whole-class collaborative activities.
Drawing #1 - Untitled Student Collab (Prometheus…), 2019, mixed-media.
Drawing #2 - Untitled Student Collab (Prometheus…), 2019, mixed-media.
These are two samples of drawings developed with my class at UNT where a student and I alternated reading Prometheus and Other Greek Stories by James Baldwin. We used a replica of Discobolus of Myron (Discus Thrower) - a sculpture by the Greek artist Myron - as our physical model. Students were instructed to “draw” what they see and hear during the “endurance/assembly-line performance”.
Drawing #3 - Untitled (Fore), 2013, colored pencil on paper.
This drawing was created by student artists in the Expanding the Walls program, 2013, at The Studio Museum in Harlem. They used two artworks as their subjects from an exhibition of emerging artists that was on view at the time. #NoFilter
As an artist and educator committed to supporting film and the visual arts as tools for education, public engagement, and community building, I have developed a practice of presenting what I call, “Film Happenings.” Thematic in nature, I find discreet or unique locations to screen rare, independent, classic, and experimental films.
There’s usually a performative element - involving myself with the film, the audience with the screening…or I let the film itself do the performing in the space.