My solo show Head First opens today at
Flomenhaft Gallery
547 West 27th Street, Suite 308
New York, NY 10001
212.268.4952
Hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 10am–5pm
Exhibition dates: 1/24–3/1/08
(Friends please note that the opening reception is not today.)
The show is a mixture of old and new work. My introduction is as follows:
This exhibition includes several new paintings: Head First and the box canvases—Blue Sky, Dark Sky, Red Sky, Dinner, and Yellow Raft. All depict little falling disasters, while Carnivale celebrates a fine lady dancing with a young guy. Way Away and Bill T. Jones are two paintings to honor this great dancer and choreographer. The small oil portrait of Angela Davis was made after I heard her speak about the plight of women in prison. The hauntingly sad ballad “Miss Otis Regrets” inspired the painting shown here. Sporting Beasley (a diptych) is a large painting depicting a country girl and a city slicker. They pass on a road with lots of greenery, which has a sly ’gator emerging from a pond—an image conjured up by me from the poem “Sportin’ Beasley” by Sterling Brown.
The 1983 My Mothers, My Sisters is a lithograph with handmade paper chine colle that brings together my mother (India Amos, in an oval portrait) and her 1930s heroes, Zora Neale Hurston; Paul Robeson; Jack Johnson, Jim Thorpe, a Fisk University “letter” classmate; and my Grandma Emma. When making the drawing for this print, I added the artists Mae Stevens and Kaye Walkingstick, as I think of them all as “our” mothers and “our” sisters. Kicks is a twenty-part “quilt” of framed prints, each printed in an edition of ten, which was made and shown in 1983 at the Henry St. Settlement show curated by Romare Bearden, and which hasn’t been shown since. The athletes and animals included are baseball players, tigers, football players, lions, dancers, and runners.
These works show my love for New York’s music, dancers, and racial and social shenanigans, while their color and action suggest chaos. These are memories of the South, music (particularly jazz, Latin, and Brazilian), sports, and a tinge of our anxieties.
These and all my works reflect my love for Atlanta, New York, and this country. Even though most cities during my youth were segregated, the arts, schools, and all smart creative people were my beacons. Atlanta was a good place for black people and big dreams, as it continues to be, as a major site for black colleges, businesses, artists, and smart political figures. Both of my college-educated parents had fathers who were born slaves. This made a good reason for my brother, Larry, and me to believe that we had a great chance to excel, as our family has continuously moved up and on.