This is the house that Adia built. This is the lamp that sits in the house that Adia built. This is the space that surrounds the lamp that lay in the house that Adia built. This is the memory inside the space that surrounds the lamp that lay in the house that Adia built. And these are the memories that the space evokes from the lamp in the house that Adia built. Although Adia Millett’s models are far from cumulative poetry or Mother Goose, her sculptures and accompanying photos build upon and speak to the space-between in “Blind Premonition” at the Mixed Greens Gallery in New York.
Millett’s miniature ochre-inspired structures employ space as a vehicle for memory and familiarity through the use of light, curious elements (an ax, chair and potato sack) and domesticity that welcomes viewers to the world of magic realism and reflection. Using the concept of home, Millett’s dollhouses of premonition challenges “the weight of our assumptions”. Models influenced draw from her stepfather’s architectural, Millett uses models with photography to create a theatrical set, positioning the audience as actors within the work, as well as spectators peering into a window. The UC-Berkley graduate’s exhibit highlights her demonstrated ability to create conceptual, subtle pieces with social undercurrents, encouraging personal reflection and dialogue. Drawing on the sentiments of Kerry James Marshall, Millett’ speaks about what she knows and is comfortable with-home, in all its comfort, fear, nostalgia and desire.
As a Studio Museum of Harlem artist-in-residence recipient 2001-2002 and Whitney Museum Independent Study Program participant, Millett’s installations continue to widen the scope of the space between and invite viewers to enter their happy, hidden place.
“Blind Premonition” continues at the Mixed Greens Gallery through October 6.
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Big up Brooklyn for doing what you do since day one! Big up women worldwide for claiming your minds, bodies, and souls when it seems the whole world wants to take those very things from you! And big up good independent cinema for showing us what we want to see even when we don't know what it is! Put all the big ups together and you get mad love for the Reel Sisters of the Diaspora Film Festival & Lecture Series that has been holding it all down for the past ten years. Sponsored by BAM ,Target, and a plethora of local supporters, the ashe of women in film will be summoned to Long Island University's Brooklyn campus for some dissection and discussion September 27 to 30.
Be sure not to sleep on "Silent Choices", a film by Faith Pennick. A strong black woman without a hint of B.S. compromises, Faith puts image to video dealing with the rough, double-binds some black women have to endure when thinking about abortion. Faith's previous short documentary about a company that paid drug addicts to give up their reproductive rights was wrenching so we here at Code Z have no doubt "Silent Choices" is golden. We are truly rooting for Tokumbo Bodunde's short "Black Girls Face: R. Kelly" to make plain the confusion that is the black popular response to R. Kelly. But no matter what your cinematic yin, if you like good film, women, or Brooklyn, you need to get over to the Reel Sisters come this Thursday.
For more information and film schedule, visit Reel Sisters or BAM.
If you ask Renee Stout about her work she might first tell you that she is a "healer" or a "medicine woman" and in the same breath she might say she is a big-picture woman seeking music and metaphor to voice the communal energy and exchange that she witnesses on a daily basis. And in her next breath, she will probably neglect to mention that her current exhibit,” Journal: Book One” is a visual testimonial to her soundtrack.
Since Stout is mildly tight-lipped about her solo exhibit at the Hemphill Fine Arts Gallery in Washington, DC. It leaves some to ponder, “Will her work be synonymous to ‘The Book as Art’ at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in 2006? Or will Stout’s alter ego, Fatima Mayfield, show us more "Fragments of a Secret Life" from Hemphill and the Hammonds House Gallery in 2005?"
Either way Stout's new work is sure to conjure something in us that will inspire. “Journal: Book One” offers 26 examples of dialogue and experience through acrylic, collage, mixed media, murky glass bottles, metal objects of “Spiritual Supplies” (2007) interlaced with Stout’s words. Some collages evoke a Wangechi Mutu-like sentiment of present-past versus human-ethereal while noting Stout’s unique process and experience.
Originally from Pittsburgh, Stout has been in Washington, DC since 1985. Although she is quick to say what she has gained from living in the area, her modesty will not allow her to talk about the many seeds that she has sown in the same community she draws from. As the first American to exhibit at the National Museum of African Art accompanied by, “Astonishment & Power: The Eyes of Understanding”, a catalog published by the Smithsonian (1993) http://www.si.edu/, Stout’s work establishes precedent and possesses a keen understanding of her community.
Stout’s work not only evokes community, but also engages other mediums. “This is the Place” (1997) and “Hoodoo You Love: Prose, Poetry, and Art from the Black Rooster Workshop” (1998) feature Stout’s art and poetry, along with prose from members of the Black Rooster Collective. These two seminal books have influenced the next generation of visual artists and poets in the DC metro area. And with gravity of Stout’s past works and current exhibit, we are happy she shares, and hopes she continues to do so.
“Journal: Book One” is at the Hemphill in Washington, DC through October 27.
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CALL FOR APPLICATIONS: CIRCA PUERTO RICO '08
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April 11 - April 14, 2008
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Regarding “Percussion Discussion”, dialogue is unnecessary when giving the drummer, Max Roach some. Activist, architect of percussive sound and sentiment, jazz composer and educator, Roach, created a place for the drum in jazz; he passed away on Thursday, August 16, 2007 in New York. He was 83.
Roach pioneered a series of firsts during his continuous quest to create and organize sounds that manipulated, pulsed and pushed the context of percussion in jazz, as well as dance, film and theatre. Respected for his full-bodied improvised solos and ability to meld instrumental sounds, Roach is considered one of the founders of modern jazz.
Born in New Land, North Carolina, Roach’s family relocated to Brooklyn where Roach began playing the snare drum at 12, to avoid spending time in the streets. Upon graduating from high school, Roach was already a part of Harlem jam sessions and frequently played with Duke Ellington’s orchestra, while honing his skill and laying the foundations for bebop.
In addition to Roach’s remarkable skills as a musician, he also triumphed in organizing, creating and recording unique facets of sound, often pushing boundaries and creating space for a new order. Roach, along with Charles Mingus, co-founded Debut Records and released “Jazz at Massey Hall” featuring Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Mingus and Roach, a paramount recording that included “Percussion Discussion”. In 1954, Roach formed a quintet with Clifford Brown, Harold Land, George Morrow, Ritchie Powell-and later Sonny Rollins. Although Roach lost two members of the quintet in a fatal car accident in 1956, he recorded and released his premier record, “Max Roach Plus Four”.
Roach continued his exploration of excellence-in-progress through the formation of seemingly motley crews of musicians, testing various sounds with chemistry-minded enthusiasm. The “Max Roach Double Quartet”, considered Roach’s most prestigious endeavor, integrated his standard quartet set with the “Uptown String Quartet”, a string quartet led by his daughter, Maxine Roach, lending a space for the string quartet’s role in improvisational expression.
As an activist, Roach’s desire for societal change was reflective in his composition “ We Insist! Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite”, a musical tribute personifying African American’s struggle for equality and the fight for independence in Africa. Due to the release of “We Insist” in 1960 and other subsequent civil rights projects, Roach’s recordings were rebuffed and silenced by the recording industry for several years.
In 1972, Roach expanded his scope of work by accepting a teaching position at the University of Massachusetts where he taught and continued to form new quartets for nearly 30 years. He continued working within diverse aspects of expression including the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, The Beijing Trio, Fab Five Freddy and NY breakers, filmmakers and others.
Roach’s quest for developing expression was pivotal in its contribution and development of purpose and posture of the drum in jazz, as well as challenging fellow and future artists to work within inter-disciplinary contexts.
Pamela Sunstrum, sometimes I answer, 2006-2007
I know that it’s politically incorrect for me to say that these ladies are hot but, well...
I should clarify that I mean hot in the sense that they’re burning down the house that history and male chauvinism and built; sisters are doin’ it for us all (hat tip to Aretha). Twenty-four of the illest artists that have walked the earth in recent memory have converged on Spelman College for a bonafide, video art blowout, and extravaganza: Cinema Remixed and Reloaded: Black Women Artists and the Moving Image Since 1970. A joint so large that it will be presented in two parts. Part One bows on September 14 and wraps on December 8, 2007; to be followed by Part Two on January 24, and closing on May 24, 2008.
Now, it comes as no surprise to Code Z that Spelman is comin’ with the heat. After all, this year alone, the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art has blessed us with this and not too long ago, this
And it goes without saying that we’re not talking about your grandpa in the backyard, at the family reunion, with that old kitchen sink-sized VHS camera, talking over shaky video. This here is the real deal. This is heavyweight art.
Cinema Remixed and Reloaded silences those nattering nabobs of negativism (“women can’t...” “Video art isn’t...”) simply by its existence. Cinema Remixed comes out of the newfound freedoms of free love, experimentation (art and otherwise) and empowerment – and coupled with the Feminist movement; the use of video as art gave space for a conceptualization of the Other - the other view, the other dimension, and the other reality. In an age when popular culture would become synonymous with videos rotated on music television, and standards of Americanism and beauty could be recorded, rewound, and transported on a whim, art had to “flash the light”.
From across generations (Howardena Pindell to Jessica Ann Peavy), emerging (Paula Wilson) to well established (Carrie Mae Weems), and spanning the African Diaspora (Wangechi Mutu to Adrian Piper), Cinema Remixed offers up a tasty-taste of feature length, animated, multimedia, and experimental works. These are works that challenge the status quo of gender and creative media. Investigating the representation of Black women via the Madison Avenue/Hollyweird moving image, as well as the role of Black women in creating/reflecting their own representation is only the beginning.
Cinema Remixed and Reloaded offers visual statements from artist’s doing their part to remind the staid world of fine arts that individuals seemingly operating on the periphery are indeed real people. These are reflections of real people, presented in real time. We are reminded that with proper manipulation, what is considered to be fantasy by the mainstream can be manifested into reality.
So, if you’re outside of Georgia, and you’re fiendin’ for a taste of the ill visuals, catch a glimpse here, . If you’re in ‘The A,’ stop on by the SCMoFA, and crank that enlightenment.
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