Then the life of black film character became obsessed with 'keeping it real' and the street life. For years, middle class struggling black artists were either afraid or simply not interested in putting their stories on the screen. And for a near full decade the gangsta flick (and its derivatives, See Soul Plane) reigned supreme.

Enter, I'm Through With White Girls. Not the movie, just yet. It starts with a song by the Dirt Bombs a sort of R&B meets garage band with a black lead singer named Mick Collins. About six and a half years ago they played in LA and performed a song called 'I'm through with white girls". Courtney Lilly, who had just come from a fellowship at Nickelodeon , heard the song and thought "Now that sounds like a cool premise for a film." Later, Courtney would go on to write for such hit shows as "Everybody hates Chris" and Arrested Development." But “I’m Through With White Girls (The Inevitable Undoing of Jay Brooks)” was his glancing blow on the cinematic cheek. While not intended to be a message film, Lilly was writing in reaction.

"In 2000, 2001 you had these movies like Love Jones and Brown Sugar where you're basically seeing the same dude. It's going to be Morris Chesnut and he's going to be a lawyer, he's going to be super handsome, and gifted in certain ways…It's not a fair representation of the people that I knew…" Jay, the lead character of "I'm Through With White Girls" was designed to be the polar opposite of those talented tenth poster children. And while he may lack the grace and social style of the Morris Chesnuts of the world, he, or rather his situation, vindicates his folly by being remarkable funny.

"It's weird to me that black comedies aren't as reflective of black humor, like stand-up, as they could be." Lilly laments "They lack the real unique point of view black comics are known for." Lilly combated this problem beautifully in the script. It's not a complex plot; boy finds girl, boy loses girl, boy does whatever the hell he can to get girl back. But through it all there's an authentic black dialogue about race, sex, and the meaning of relationships that's not bogged down in politically correct conventions or the excessively gender stereotyped caucus of the gangster genre. This is a barely established genre, a black urban romantic comedy that can discuss race without being obsessed by it. The script lends itself to the serious question of a black urban middle class aesthetic: Does it have more in common with the "Mo Money Mo problems" thug nation proliferation of chains and rims or the indie rocker who is singing sad true stories about getting his heart broken?

If there's a bad guy in the story of the film "I'm Through With White Girls" then let's tell the villains' original tale. There once was a town called Hollywood that only saw film as a way to make money and not as a way to further important national dialogues. The villain passed on the film. It wouldn't be surprising to me if the title alone relegated the script to the mulch beds of many assistant producers' flower beds. But if there's a hero in the tale of "I'm Through With White Girls", then let's name her Lia Johnson. She's the romantic lead, Catherine Williamson by name in the film, the half white Canadian, half black American Valley Girl-sounding author with multicolored dreads that the main character, Jay, falls for. But then there's Lia Johnson, mix raced actress in Hollywood who's been on everything from Angel to Star Trek New Voyages, who went to Columbia with Lilly and knew what to do with a script as layered and funny as White Girls. You'd think there would be some crossover between the character and the producer. But aside from the clip of their speech, it's apples and oranges. A producer is someone who can get stuff done, either by hook, crook, or a gang of money. Ms. Johnson seems to always be utilizing one of that triad.

Take her procurement of a director for example. Johnson met Jen Sharp at a silent auction the producer threw to raise money for the film. Conversation led to being editing buddies which led to Johnson trusting Sharp's eye enough to take her reel in consideration of the film. Sharp's previous work was an off beat comedy about a woman whose interpersonal baggage manifests in the form of a physical giant box, entitled "Boxed". The short is about her navigating her day from dawn to bed with a giant box. It's the type of conceptual comedy that once you see you can't help but giggle at.

"That's what I like: Comedies that make people laugh but there has to be a theme under it. Like senseless comedies that say nothing do not appeal to me at all." Sharp smiles as she speaks.
Her short assumes the audience has a brain, a rarity for comedies "I think its because people are fed things. And so the assumption is that people don't want to think. But you can think and laugh. It is possible. So really it's just lazy film making."

Johnson is the type of person who thinks of worst case scenarios. Worst case scenario, she thought, she'd get a film with the same comic sensibility as Boxed. But both Sharp and Johnson knew the director had some growing to do; Sharp was willing to over prepare to make sure she did it right and Johnson was willing to take the chance. She had faith in Sharp's abilities. "Jen has this awesome sensibility. She does the awkward in the funny and the funny in the awkward really well. Jen really draws that out. She got what Courtney was doing. Plus I really wanted a woman, plus she's black, plus she's mixed, I couldn't have chosen a better person."

For Sharp, like most of the crew, it was the script that drew her in. It's rare for a young black person in Hollywood to be able to work with a script that handles race, especially mixed race identity with care, and compassion. '"My dad's black my mom's half Chinese half white." Sharp explains. "I lived in both worlds my whole life. I think my sensibility having lived in both worlds really helped the film to be accessible to both groups. I really liked dealing with the issues of dealing with being in the middle. I play beach volleyball and I'm like the only black girl out there. And in a lot of things I do I'm the only black person there. And I get so frustrated, why are things still so segregated? I mean I know why but it's good to work on a film where you can talk about some of the issues without it being the only thing you're talking about."

Born in 1972 in New Haven, CT, Leigh Raiford grew up in Harlem, NY. After stints in Connecticut, North Carolina and Zimbabwe, she has settled in the Bay Area where she lives with her partner and their two children. She teaches African American Studies and visual culture at UC-Berkeley. Her work has appeared in Only Skin Deep: Changing Visions of the American Self, edited by Coco Fusco; NKA: The Journal of Contemporary African Art; and The Civil Rights Movement in American Memory, a volume she co-edited with Renee Romano. Currently, she is completing a manuscript on the role of photography in African American freedom movements, which includes a chapter on the Black Panther Party. She's delighted to be down with CodeZ.

For those of us born in the seventies, the post-soul generation, the artwork of Emory Douglas, Minister of Culture of the Black Panther Party (1967-1979) and Revolutionary Artist (4Life), is wedged deep in our political unconscious. Our revolutionary imaginings have been fueled by Douglas’s powerful thick-lined drawings of armed and determined black children, stern-faced black men, righteous sisters, and avaricious pigs in uniform getting what was coming to them. Not to say that iconic photographs of Minister of Defense Huey Newton in the wicker chair or of rank and file members raising their fists aren’t inspiring. For those of us who came of age after COINTELPRO had done its dirty deeds, these black and white photographs show us the past, document a history that we didn’t experience first hand but that we nevertheless reap both the benefits and the fallout. And these days the photographs are ubiquitous, found everywhere from art books to textbooks to t-shirts. But Emory Douglas’s colorful drawings, barely seen outside the pages of the Black Panther newspaper, come alive each time we’re lucky enough to lay eyes on them. His work exhibits a kind of bold clarity that one associates with both propaganda and children’s book illustration. The faces of his inked black figures drawings could be any of us, and therefore represent all of us. Emory Douglas’s art, the visual mainstay of the Black Panther Party and Third World Liberation Movements, speaks to continued possibility.

Douglas was born in Michigan and moved to San Francisco as a child. As a young man he enrolled in advertising art classes at City College of San Francisco. His time there sharpened his sense of how to deliver a message quickly and also how to evaluate strong work. Though there weren’t many black folks in his classes, Douglas also recalls that the teachers were progressive and pushed his growing political consciousness. A consciousness that was being sparked by the Civil Rights Movement, the burgeoning Black Power movement as well as the Black Arts Movement. Douglas first applied his developing design skills to building sets for plays by Amiri Baraka and others at Spirit House, the West Coast hub of the Black Arts Movement. Through his work there, Douglas was asked to draw a poster for Betty Shabazz’s visit to San Francisco State University. It was at that event that he met Huey and Bobby and immediately became part of the Black Panther Party, developing and translating political ideas into something people could see, feel, understand and act on. Renewed interest in Douglas’s artwork has been ignited by the interest to document the Movement. In the past few years, the visual images of 1960s political movements have found their way into galleries and art books with increasing regularity, though the focus has been primarily on the photography. Through the Herculean efforts of Bill Jennings, a former Panther, photographer and now Panther historian (he founded the Panther alumni association It’s About Time), there has been increased attention to the Black Panther Party in particular. Even still, Douglas has largely remained in the background, no doubt in part due to his own modesty.

And now Douglas is finally getting his due. Installation artist Sam Durant and fine art publisher Rizzoli have put out the gorgeous Black Panther: The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas. Revolutionary Art reproduces nearly 200 of Douglas’s pieces made during his time with the Black Panthers, (the majority of images though are from the most active years of the party, 1967-1973). The art is contextualized by informative and often entertaining essays from BPP comrade Kathleen Cleaver, Douglas contemporary artist/activists Greg Jung Morozami and the inimitable, if meandering, Amiri Baraka (for whom Douglas designed theater sets in his pre-Panther days). Multimedia artist Colette Gaiter’s essay, “What Revolution Looks Like: The Work of Black Panther Artist Emory Douglas,” is a standout, giving Douglas his props as artist and revolutionary, pointing to the influences of traditional African art on his work. Situating him at the vanguard of an international movement of political poster artists from Latin America, Africa and Asia, Gaiter calls Douglas “the most prolific and persistent graphic agitator in the American Black Power Movements.”

Gaiter, of course, isn’t the only one to praise Douglas. Big-ups from the likes of Mumia Abu-Jamal, Danny Glover, Boots Riley of the Coup, and Ishmael Reed among others, open the book. Rounding the collection out is a fine interview with Douglas by inexhaustible documentarian St. Clair Bourne. Overall, Revolutionary Art renders a beautiful picture of what Black Power looked like through the pen and heart of one of its key visionaries.

Praise for Douglas has been a long time coming and Revolutionary Art is the first full-length book devoted to his important contribution to the Movement and to political art. The collection was the brainchild of artist Sam Durant—born in the 1960s—whose installation of a wicker chair mounted atop a diagonally-placed mirror, stood at the entrance to the sprawling 2006 exhibit “Black Panther: Rank and File” at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in Winston-Salem, NC through September 28). Durant and Douglas met in 2002 when Durant invited Douglas to speak during the run of Durant’s show at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles. The meeting sparked the collaboration for the book. Durant and Douglas are currently teaming up on a solo exhibit of Douglas’ work set to open at MOCA’s Pacific Design Center October 21.

Some artists are smarter than their work. Others let the work do all the smart talk. Not many give you the sense that their work has passed through their bodies after leaking out of their brains. Whatever you think of the work--I've seen one set of folk bow down in awe while other folk stroll through unmoved and indifferent--you can't deny its spongy, bio-morphicbiomorphic roots.

There's something kind of Blade Runner-ish about Mutu's relationship to what she creates. Like she's more maternal genetic designer than obsessive-compulsive artiste (though that's in there, too). But in conversation, Mutu can make you feel like the figures in her drawings, collages and watercolors--as alive, or maybe even more alive, than you think you are. 'More posthuman than your posthuman' would be the motto if she was running the Tyrell Corporation.

The figures in Mutu's paintings and collages are survivors. "They're the survivor of all these moments in history that we've been through as a race," she says. "All of their history is written upon their bodies and in their hair. It's very clear where they've been. Some of them are missing parts, or have gained a new a part, be it an animal part or a machine part, as they've gone along. These are images of triumph and transgression. They're very contemporary even though they have archaic artifacts attached to them too and a vision of what can happen if we survive."

Mutu sees the figures in her pieces not as overripe superheroes but as goddess figures who are capable of giving you both regality and depravity.

"They're very much about seeing yourself as being part of the problem while existing within it. I'm not interested in the whole finger-pointing process, where you say 'This dynamic is wrong, and this is who created this wrong or injustice.' I think we're all responsible. This is where an autobiographical part comes in. I see these goddesses as critiques that are very much embedded in the problematic itself. So some of them have issues that we haven't broken through, but they're also sincere about that and still strong."

Her conflations of beauty and bestiality take their cue from substance providers Condé Nast, the porn industry, and National Geographic. She doesn't see any of these sources as mutually exclusive. "Sometimes I use the fashion industry as a fossil ground. I find limbs and extremities--parts of specific women. All these faces we see in magazines! Some woman out there has been reimaged in this media. I often feel like an archeologist, and what I think I'm doing is giving them a new role, reincarnating them into something else. The shifting of their roles, the re-amalgamating of them into one diva, is about making sure they don't become these throwaway, one-month-long moments of interest. So they become these immortalized beings. In fashion, in porn, in National Geographic, in all these places where women are recycled constantly, they're still underground. This a way to keep them above ground."

In the first weeks of January 2007, the innovative hip-hop group Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five became the first rappers to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Many soul and R&B artists, such as Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin, are long-standing members. Rock and roll has expanded its boundaries again.

Late twentieth century music and current popular music have constantly evolved into new forms, styles, and categories. Distinct categories of music--rock, R&B, hip-hop, country, easy listening, Christian, metal, gospel, and numerous others--define the recording industry. Though the rise of independent electronic music distribution is bound to change the music business as we know it, for now, the categories persist. There will always be artists who cross over from one category to another or experiment with a different style, but the industry organizes itself around labels, literally and figuratively.

When I talked with Raymond Gayle, I told him I wanted to talk about the film and his work as a filmmaker, but not particularly about the subject of black rockers, since so many other reviews and interviews (available on the web site) seem to have covered that. I asked him what he meant by “electric purgatory.” He said, “It’s about the struggles of black rock musicians. Being black and playing rock music is not accepted by white or black audiences. Black rockers are in musical purgatory.”

I complimented the film’s thoroughness of scope: It showcases rock songs by artists such as Sly and the Family Stone, Rick James, and others who are usually associated with other music categories, like R&B or funk.

Gayle responded, “It’s an impossible job, you know, but I tried to give as many shout-outs as I could. Of course, you can’t do it in an hour and 23 minutes. There are so many people I left out. I was hoping that would be sort of like the starting point, and maybe go from there afterwards.”

When asked what inspired him to make the film, he replied, “I was always a fan of Fishbone, Living Colour, and other bands like them. I found it odd that they never reached the level of success of, say, Jane’s Addiction or the Red Hot Chili Peppers. No Doubt was influenced by garage ska bands. Bad Brains influenced punk bands, blending metal and punk, but never reaped the benefits. Why does this happen?” He went on, “Black musicians are not expected to go outside the box.”

But enough about the plight of black rockers, I said we were not going to dwell on that. I asked him what he loved most about film.

“Well, it’s a medium where anyone can express themselves and have their work viewed and interpreted by people all over the world. I’m not going to sit up here and say I’m going to turn down a million-dollar deal with HBO. The problem we have with a lot of entertainment media is that there’s no soul to it and everything is so constructed towards that--commercialism. I just felt that, hey, I just want to tell this story because in my opinion it that hasn’t been told. Forget all the other stuff. When I was growing up, I didn’t know movies made money, you know what I’m saying? I just went. … There were two incidents I can remember in childhood that that made me want to get into this industry. One was, of course, Star Wars, which I saw with my dad. He took me to see it when I was four or five. The other was a Richard Pryor film called Which Way Is Up? As a kid, I knew what was going on. I thought it was funny.

“Just the film experience at that time--standing around in the long line, the smell of popcorn and all that, having quality time with my dad--that’s kind of why I said, ‘Okay, I want to do this.’ It brings back great memories for me. With multiplexes, the experience is not the same. I think you can get popcorn in vending machines now,” he laughed. “I kind of like the buildup, the excitement of going to a movie and waiting in line, the anticipation.

“I wanted to get into film to tell stories, to be able to have people come and get lost for however long--an hour or so--and kind of have that magic. I think if you do things with passion and a good heart, all the other stuff comes later.”

Just a few short miles from downtown Austin, Texas, Epoch Coffee is populated with denizens of the city; they are as much a part of the ambiance of the scene as the track lighting, earth-toned paint, comfy sofas and circular tables: white guys with dread locks and beards, women dressed in secondhand-store clothes, tattoos, body piercings, laptops, used books and sandals. And except for five women seated in a back corner near the unisex restroom--Beatrice Thomas, designer and textile artist; Deborah Roberts, painter; Cauleen Smith, filmmaker; Senalka McDonald, painter and photographer; and Sharon Bridgforth, performance artist--everyone is white. For these five black women, all leaders in the local art scene and all with national reputations, this coffeehouse is emblematic of how they navigate Austin: They find a place in the midst of the scene to express themselves.

“As women and African American women, where do we fit in?” asks Deborah Roberts, alluding to the struggle to find galleries willing to show the work of an African American artist in Austin. Most black artists in Austin feel disenfranchised from the factors that make Austin a livable city for others. “I’d like someone with some money to fund some studio space for black artists,” says Thomas, “I don’t know how my white friends do it.” The live music scene, the night life and even the art galleries and arts funding institutions privilege work by white artists.

After Roberts asks her question, Sharon Bridgforth leans back in her seat and says, “I’ve been based here, but I’ve done most of my work out of town. I’ve received some national funding that has afforded me the opportunity to work.” Indeed, Sharon, a Lambda Award--winning writer, has forged a national following through the support of organizations across the country. “Part of the isolation of working in Austin is that my collaborators live all over the country,” she says. Fortunately for McDonald, Smith, and Bridgforth, they’ve found some support from organizations at the University of Texas at Austin. Smith teaches on the faculty in the Radio, Television and Film program, McDonald recently graduated and Bridgforth teaches in the Center for African and African American Studies (CAAAS). The university has helped to provide facilities and materials along the way, and all three women note that there are individuals within departments and fellow artists who understand their plights and, consequently, try to help.

“Where do I have to be to hear the tom-tom drum beating?” Cauleen, who was born and raised in Los Angeles, asks in reference to finding collaborators. Though she often needs to look beyond the borders of Austin for collaboration, the identities of many are folded into her characters, and thus location is not always an obstacle. She navigates alienation by being a citizen of the world. “To anyone who sees my work what they’re seeing is me and they’re seeing the millions who roll with me right now.”

Despite the lack of local support, though, all five women continue to produce work. Roberts, an Austin native, has received the Art and Culture Award from the National Women of Achievement, Inc. in Philadelphia and the Presidential Point of Light Award from the White House. Her work has been purchased by such luminaries as Oprah Winfrey, Bill and Camille Cosby, Dr. Johnetta Cole and Marsha Warfield.

Roberts’s work plays with the tensions between ugliness and beauty, bringing to the fore what others might dismiss or completely overlook. By incorporating body parts in patterns, the eye must focus on the details within the pattern to see the human elements at play. The judgment of beauty is now redefined via the patterning of images one would normally reduce to an image of lust, grotesqueness or, as she puts it, “ugliness.” In fact, she takes the images that are not often considered beautiful by the larger culture and redefines them. “I think if I had a choice, the message I would like the world to know is that we are a thriving and beautiful people and that we walk not in a monolithic way, but in a very diverse way. I want my work to show sorrow and happiness, all at once. You don’t just look at a person from the outside.”

Beatrice Thomas’s work, in many ways, is in conversation with Deborah’s. Thomas is concerned with recollecting the discarded through artifacts that people might initially see as scraps. She primarily uses textiles, but she often incorporates other media into her work to add texture. “If we can remove that disposable mentality about stuff, there might be a little more room to engage each other in a cleaner more honest, less convoluted way. Regard your surroundings and stop privileging objects.”

Memory is woven into the work of Beatrice Thomas. Because the materials she often uses have history, the material carries that history with it and, once it’s brought together with other pieces, creates a new history. In many ways, the artifacts used in Beatrice’s work often have utilitarian histories that find new utility within the artwork. And although her work often employs African American cultural iconography, she warns that this is not a myopic lens through which to view her work or that of any other black artist: “I wish people would get over the black factor. It’s not the first thing that pops into our heads. Stop trying to read race into everything we do.”

#20 Aaron McGruder Quits The Boondocks Comic Strip

This one caught the 300-plus newspapers running McGruder's strip off guard last September. Not that the world has been deprived of Huey and Riley, thanks to the wildly popular Boondocks animated series on the Cartoon Network. In fact, we theorize that McGruder quit writing the strip because his pens got lost... under a pile of money.

#19 Daniel Alexander Jones Hits the Jackpot

Daniel received the high-profile and high-dollar Alpert Award in 2006 for his interdisciplinary work rooted in the U.S. Black avant-garde theater movement. As a young, queer artist of color, the props are all the more meaningful. Oh, and the 50 grand in award money doesn't hurt anything.

#18 Imperial War Museum Commemorates African Soldiers

Raphael Chikukwa's Afrikan Heroes at the IWM in Manchester, Great Britain had the rare quality of changing the way we see the world in an instant. Recovering submerged WWII history, Raphael showed us Nigerian soldiers fighting in the Middle East and Zimbabweans combating the Japanese in Burma. This sort of vision change gives us hope that art makes a difference.

#17 David Adjaye Redesigns inIVA

David inked the deal for the design of Rivington Place, the prospective new home for London's inIVA back in January. Not only is the construction project large and important in its own right, it's all the more remarkable given David's subtle references to the traditional mud structures of Mali in the building's highly contemporary design.

#16 Tyler Perry Tops Out... Again

We include playwright Tyler Perry on the list because the man has conquered nearly every media form available and hasn't let up yet. In April of 2006, his book Don't Make a Black Woman Take off Her Earrings debuted at Number 1 on the New York Times bestseller list. Ah Tyler, you so crazy...

#15 Barack Obama Goes High Fashion

The wunderkind of U.S. lefty politics showed up more than once on the cover of national magazines in 2006. What's remarkable is how often they were fashion rags. Black man as sex symbol has been done; politician as sex symbol has been done. But we don't remember seeing any black politician portrayed in this particularly glamorous way. Al Sharpton's hair doesn't count.

#14 Daphne A. Brooks' Bodies in Dissent Published

We're going out on a limb with this one, but we're betting this book will become a touchstone in the understanding of Black visual culture for years to come. You heard it here first.

#13 SMH Drops Frequency

The Studio Museum's Frequency, which closed in March, introduced a whole new generation of young, hip Black artists to the New York art scene. We think this show will do for this group (which included Rashawn Griffin, Zoë Charlton, and Jefferson Pinder) what Freestyle did for that group in 2001--although we do wish a term as explosively controversial as "Post Black" had emerged from this exhibition, too.

#12 Poland Gets Black Art

Maria Brewinska, curator of Black Alphabet in Warsaw, Poland, has claimed that her group show last fall constituted Europe's first exhibition of "the most powerful elements" of Black visual art from the U.S. Our... ahem... research department suspects that this is not true, strictly speaking, since France fell in love with Black America in the 1920s and 30s, but it is certainly the first in a long, long while.

#11 DC Comics Get Colorful

In what we've been told is the "unchecked racism" of the comic book industry, we think it's remarkable that DC undertook to recast many of its heroes in a new, ethnically diverse light, including creating a black Firestorm. Black comics have been active for decades, but we see something notable in the convergence of worlds represented here.

#10 Okwui Enwezor Flexes Muscle in Seville

In what is quickly becoming a crowded marketplace of international biennials, Spain's Seville show is a new kid on the block. That Nigerian-born über-curator Okwui Enwezor has been the one to help add muscle to the fledgling event as its artistic director is a major nod to Enwezor's already high profile. In the 2nd International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Seville; The Unhomely: Phantom Scenes in Global Society, Enwezor brought 91 creative entities together pushing Seville to a new level. Of special note is the adept unification of place, space, transience, and personage under one banner. Second, we applaud Enwezor for weaving the stories of the Black Diaspora into the issues surrounding the friction of globalization and dispersal. Representing the home team are Kojo Griffin, Lyle Ashton Harris, Julie Mehretu, Suzan-Lori Parks, and Wangechi Mutu, to name a few.

#9 Gordon Parks Joins the Ancestors

A picture is worth a thousand words, but more are required to adequately explain the void left by the passing of the multi-talented photographer Gordon Parks in March (1912-2006). In our age of digital magic, Mr. Parks made magic with his eye, heart, and soul. From his photograph American Gothic, and his work for Life Magazine, to The Learning Tree and the Blaxploitation masterpiece Shaft, Gordon was a pioneer and innovator in a cultural and social landscape that didn't see him coming. And while many are willing and able to carry his torch, we're surely sad to see him go.

#8 Zambia Mounts its First Film Festival

After achieving independence in the late 1960's, Zambia appeared poised to inherit the wind. However, civil war, and the diminished value of natural resources made Zambia one of the most debt-ridden nations in the world. Nevertheless, this year we saw a birth in Zambia; and birthday's are always cause for celebration. The 1st Annual International Film Festival of Zambia, which wrapped in mid-November 2006, had one purpose: to present "(f)ilms that celebrate our day-to-day experience, the past and culture." Simple and straight to the point--just like the truth. This surely was not the biggest or most prestigious film festival in the world, but the fact that it was the first means that we've seen a major change occur right in front of us.

#7 New Media Blips on the Radar

If the revolution will not be televised, then maybe it will spark within those digital villages. We note that discussion about new media and art continued to be held in panels and conferences around the world in 2006. Torkwase Dyson's "Algorithmeticblackbase10" last August at The High Museum in Atlanta and the "New Media and African American Poetics" panel at the 10th Anniversary Cave Canem celebration last October in New York City are two of the more notable instances. We also note the presence of new media artists Mendi + Keith Obadike in both of the aforementioned events, as wells as DJ Spooky's continued buck wild ramblings around the globe, which this year included Venice and Luanda, Angola among other locales. Had we seen another AfroGEEKS conference this year, this surely would have garnered a higher spot, but we think #7 is not too shabby.

In addition to aspiring to be complete human beings, the principals at WSDIA see their work as essentially interdisciplinary and believe that a designer or artist should not limit himself or herself to one area. When I specifically asked Jonathan what WDSIA meant, he said, "It came from being in school and studying architecture and being exposed to so much. You take art history classes, I took sculpture classes . . . I just think architecture is the highest form of art, but we took so many kinds of classes. I just liked being into everything possible. [The company name] kind of extends from me being into everything possible, and not being limited to one thing."

I discovered Jonathan Jackson and his company when I was looking at the Print Magazine 2006 Interactive Design Annual and glanced at photos of the contest judges and noticed that one of them was an African American man. I did a double take because African American faces are rarely seen in U.S. graphic design publications, and it was an additional surprise that the context was interactive media. I wanted to know more about his design firm, WSDIA (We Should Do It All), and contacted him.

Jonathan is a laid-back young man with an easy laugh who took the interview request in stride. We had to reschedule it once because of a deadline they were finishing. That is a sign of a healthy business--not too much time for interviews.

I caught up with him on the telephone and we started with the basics. He is in partnership with Jared Seavers, who is his cousin, and Sarah Nelson. Like many New Yorkers working in the real estate-challenged city, they operate WSDIA out of the apartment Jonathan and Jared share in Brooklyn.

The cousins started working together when they were both students at Kent State University. Jonathan studied architecture and Jared studied fashion. Sarah is the only one with a graphic design degree, from Boston University. No doubt the combination of discipline backgrounds extends their creative range as a company.

With a laugh, Jonathan said, "Basically a full year out of school. I got kind of fed up. I was hardheaded and went out on my own after working at architecture firms for a year." He continued, "Yeah, I was only a year out of school."

I asked him if he thought we are currently in a design renaissance. He definitely could see the possibility of that. "I can see how computers and the Internet are changing everything. I think if there is a design renaissance, computers would be the thing that is leading the way. In 1995 you could not have started an office one year out of school. The Internet helps so much. We would not have most of our work without our web site. It helps with networking and getting the word out."

I was curious about what the phrase "Knowledge sharing registration point" on the WSDIA web site meant. "It just came from thinking about how to get more people to look at our work, Jonathan explained. "Although they would not admit it, people like to see themselves in different medium forms, like the Internet, and point out their photo to people. That's a potential client right there."

He continued, "The people [on the site] are all friends, family and acquaintances." But these friends, family and acquaintances are anything but average. They are mostly young people, engaged in occupations ranging from epidemiologists to greeting card creators. "We did a call for entries and asked if people wanted to be on our splash page," Jonathan said. "There was no pressure--if people wanted to be on it, great." None of the people featured are directly associated with WSDIA, and their picture can include the web site for their business or work, so everyone benefits.

When I last saw Dash, in the spring, she was being fêted in New York. Daughters of the Dust was shown during the Reel Sisters of the Diaspora Film Festival, and the director received their Pioneer Award, as well as a proclamation from the New York City mayor's office. When that film opened, in 1992, Dash became the first African American woman to have a work in full-length general theatrical release. It has since been dubbed one of the 50 most important independent films ever made by Filmmaker's Magazine, among many other accolades, and in 2004 the Library of Congress placed Daughters in the National Film Registry, along with 400 other films preserved as National Treasures.

Usually Dash is in Los Angeles, where she lives, and where, she says, the nearest thing we could call her "scene" is hanging out with her filmmaker friends Charles Burnett, Neema Barnett, and Joyce Lewis, among others. "Most of the time I'm working on my own stuff." Then, laughing, she adds, "I work too. I sell the shadow to support the substance," she jokes, quoting Sojourner Truth. "I sell the shadow to get the money to do what I want."

Dash is at work on a project as yet unannounced with choreographer Joanna Haigood. It will be her fourth work involving dance. One of her earliest pieces was a collaboration with Linda Martina Young, setting Nina Simone's "Four Women" to dance. Dash has also worked with Urban Bush Women (on the wonderful Praise House), and Ishmael Houston-Jones (on Relatives, also fabulous). Clips are available on Dash's website--as are samples from her other films and videos, including The Rosa Parks Story, Illusions, Subway Stories, and Incognito. Most recently, she created a short HD film for the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center Museum in Cincinnati.--In the last few years, Dash has also worked for Disney, designing an African American pavilion (which was never built).

Clearly, though, Dash prefers to stay in the present. "When I finish something [I feel like it's never really complete] but then you don't want to go back and tamper with it because that was how you were then. When I look at the old films I've made, they're familiar, but I don't feel any ownership. They're like old friends, someone you knew before. Even when I see glaring mistakes, I think, 'That's terrible and I could fix that,' but it was my personal journey of going through that at the time."

Dash grew up in New York City but says she often goes to Charleston, "to decompress and to eat crabs. I come from a family who ate for fish for breakfast." In Charleston the family engages in the eastern seaboard tradition of "cracking crabs"--gathering round a table covered with newspapers and piled high with steamed hard-shell crabs, which have to be cracked open and taken apart to be eaten.

"It's a ritual. We steam the crabs in beer, hot peppers and Old Bay [seasoning], and everybody sits there and cracks crabs and tells stories. The stories are, like, what we call 'barbecue lies.' I realized I must be officially getting older 'cause now I'm telling my nephew those same barbecue lies. You crack crabs and then you eat. It's like an appetizer because you don't get much crabmeat from each one. You get piles and piles of crab. It's wonderful and we do that with oysters too--steam them on the grill under a croaker sack [a burlap bag] and they pop right open." The term "croaker sack" took me back to my own childhood. I, too, come from a town where people crack crabs and steam oysters and catch fish called croakers.

"When I got here to Charleston," Dash went on, "my uncle pulled out all these old photos from the Civil War that I had never seen before. I never knew they existed. My grandma was born in 1895 and she lived to be 103, so her mother and father and people were way back, all in Charleston. I scanned the pictures. I told my uncle, 'Do you know how important it is to look at the eyes of these people?'

Go back ten years and you'll see just how much shit has changed in Atlanta. The Olympics have come and gone, Outkast is no longer known as "two dope boys in a Cadillac," and when Southern contemporary Black artists are discussed, Radcliffe Bailey isn't the only name mentioned. In recent years, Atlanta has emerged as not solely a city synonymous with peaches and 101 ways to prepare the "yard bird" (read: chicken), but an edgy metropolis in matters of business, music, fashion, education, and, more than ever, the visual arts.

Racially, economically, geographically, however you square it, Atlanta is no easy read. It presents neither an open book for outside interpretation nor a complex algorithm shrouded in indecipherable code. Despite its obvious attraction to brown folks in flux--traveling, working, exploring, and looking to settle down--Atlanta can come across as impenetrable to the uninitiated. It keeps its secrets close to its vest and stores those interests in a well-hidden chest. Where it conceptually begins and spatially ends has been and will continue to be open to interpretation.

The year is 2006, and contemporary visual artists Kojo Griffin, Eric Mack, Charles Huntley Nelson, and Fahamu Pecou find themselves in a familiar position. Meeting in a semi-neutral space as if a preverbal line has been drawn between two seemingly opposite, though parallel, genres, we meet, we commune over drinks to unpack the complex riches of Atlanta's art scene.

Reflecting on the same question that has been posed to me since returning to Atlanta, I ask, "In one word, how do you view the city's art scene?"

"Giving" --Charles Huntley Nelson

Hospitality is a thread woven in the very fabric of the city's personality. With the several-decades-long reverse migration of Blacks to the South from the North, West, and other places, individuals list myriad reasons to return, within which exists a recurring need to experience something more personal and gracious. According to Nelson, "Atlanta is a great place for emerging artists. Over the last ten years that I have been here, I have seen that Atlanta is a very giving city. People are willing to reach out to one another. I think it helps everyone succeed when that happens."

Unofficial ambassador to Atlanta's visual arts scene, Charles Huntley Nelson is definitely hip to the game. He refuses to play on any terms other than his own--allowing for several points of entry as a writer, teacher, and curator, but consistently from the perspective of a practicing artist dedicated to other artists. This type of giving nature is southern hospitality personified--leading by example and creating bridges to continue the legacy.

Granted, it is easy to get caught up in the delusion of grandeur that is Atlanta, given its general openness, but what happens once you're "let in"? Photographer Daniel Hoover agrees with Nelson, asserting that "Atlanta switches easily, but with this sudden and sometimes drastic change, many artists are left in the wind...." Reflecting on this all-too-common statement heard in many cities, one picks up on the universal need to have steady access and support, to get that microphone. But what happens during this pursuit in a city that is giving but not necessarily discerning?

"Problematic" --Kojo Griffin

For many Atlanta-based artists Kojo Griffin represents the explanation for living in Atlanta. Proving that you can gain a significant level of success nationally and live outside New York or Los Angeles, Griffin believes there is considerable buying power associated with living outside of these large, contemporary art markets. Presenting a quote that he is famous for, Griffin notes that "moving to New York to become an artist is like moving to LA to become an actor. You've got to wait in line," thus driving home the idea that location can play a large part in moving you to the front of that line.

Embodying the idea that "bad boys move in silence," Griffin has followed the tried-and-true formula of being committed to the work. Instead of being one of the most visible faces, this self-described "art ninja" is more about his practice and creating lasting bodies of work.

Being all about the work presents many of the pitfalls that can arise, according to our collective conversation, which include misrepresentation and shortsightedness. Re-establishing his own career to include work that is a departure from his mixed-media inter-species figures, Kojo Griffin has, on many different fronts, developed strategies for not only sustaining a career but also "creating a place in art history," which he mentions as most important. By living outside of dominant artistic epicenters, Griffin, Nelson, Mack, and Pecou highlight the importance of hustle. However, along with the economic necessity of selling one's work outside city limits comes the sometimes rude awakening regarding how that work is being judged on the home front.