CROCHET DIVA DENIZE ROBIN

Happy Valentines Day... Bright sunny day today, but don’t let it fool you, it's as cold as... ice is standing up on the ground, cold. But I'm not complaining, it could be worst.

I got a call from Diane Smith this morning, she said she had a extra ticket to the Black Fine Arts Show at the Puck Building Downtown, she asked me if I wanted to go, even though I have tons of work, especially getting ready for my exhibit that opens next month at the Jersey City Museum, I said yes, I need to go, there will be a lot of local and out of town dealers that I need to network with.

I got a e-mail from Michelle Bishop last night, the founder of Harlem Needle Arts, she sent me this wonderful myspace link,

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=163311847

that belongs to this exceptionally talented and stylish, Crochet Designer from Riverdale Georgia, I think her name is DENIZE ROBIN, I tried to send her a contact e-mail or a response in her myspace, but I'm still learning this cyberspace jungle.

I just love DENIZE ROBIN style, She looks like she is really having a good time, creating these wonderful garments and adorning herself by her own creative hands, I am not sure if she designs her own patterns, but even if she does not, the execution of the garments, The way she drapes her body with the crochet, the choice of yarn colors that accent her golden complexion is masterful. The weight of the yarn, I think it is 4 ply, really works great with the eye catching large lacy double crochet stitch. Oh yeah, and I must say again, the lady knows and expresses her own original style that makes me want to speak in a unknown lanquage, and she really, truly knows how to "work-out" with her crochet hook, “I’m scared of you!!!…”,

“Aaaaah Sookie Sookie Now!!!”

THE YOUNG DREAM CATCHER

"PLEASE BE MINDFUL OF THE 7th GENERATION WHEN WE VOTE, GIVE THE FUTURE A CHANCE.!!!"

Dianne Smith: Art, Commerce & Job Force

The Giants won the Super bowl and it snowed in New York this morning (but it stopped by noon), one day before the presidential primary and I want to go out and get a collection of the historical presidential button, no matter who I am voting for, these buttons are a good historical keep sakes.

Culture & Commerce in the Communities. The need and the purpose of the artist in the community, I have to keep repeating this to myself, It really takes many mature, creative minds to resurrect any communities on the cultural & economic down slide. One of the area’s I get a great deal of inspiration from and pride myself on is my circle of family, family-of-friends & friends. I could go on forever about each and everyone of them, and I am sure I will during the development of the notes of this Journal blog.

Dianne Smith gets the award from me this week for The Enhancement of Culture, Commerce and the Community,

(TO BE CONTINUED), (STAY POSTED, THIS IS A REALLY BRILLIANT PROJECT THAT DIANNE SMITH CREATED FOLKS)

EXHIBIT: "RE-POSSESSED" (NOTES)

Strang weather today, it started out heavy grey clouds, windy, cold and rainy. Now it bright sun, windy and cold,... that said, my skin is so very dry… real “Ashville”

As the sun is setting, I am racing trying to tear myself away from this computer so that I can get to the Whitney Museum and see Kara Walkers exhibit tonight. This exhibit is going to close in a few days, so I really have to make a effort to see it.

It's a month and a few weeks before the opening of my exhibit titled RE-POSSESSED at the Jersey City Museum March 20 2008 – Aug 15, 2008, it looks like it is going to be a exciting installation. This is going to be a interactive, 7 year traveling installation, with a very small but brilliant group of artist and designers,

I was working on the press release draft today, I already submitted it to the museum public relations, but, I will post the content of the release to save the time of explaining the project.

This project is the next stage of the project that I started in 1999, when I was a artist-in-residence at The Studio Museum of Harlem, Titled “PARADISE UNDER RECONSTRUCTION IN THE AESTHETIC OF FUNK”. That was a 7 year crochet meditation on the aesthetic of Funk, From that project is when the crochet artifacts from RE-POSSESSED came from.

So here’s the press release, I will update it later with the time, date and direction to the museum. This release is going to be edited.


(PRESS RELEASE STARTS HERE)


“Like water, be gentle and strong. Be gentle enough to follow the natural paths of the earth, and strong enough to rise up and reshape the world.” –

Brenda Peterson


RE-POSSESSED

The Jersey City Museum is hosting the eve of the dawning of “THE RE-POSSESSED TEA SANCTUM”. A Ceremonial Mystical Environment in the Aesthetic of Cosmic Funk,

This Enchanting installation is reclaiming the valuable cosmic properties of the aesthetic of Urban Funk, through the formal practice of a reinvented Tea Ceremony.

RE-POSSESSED is a Cultural Rehabilitation Project conceived and created by Fiber Artist Xenobia Bailey,
With invited artist & designers
1. Chandelier Designer: Dorian Webb,
2. Tea Set designed by Lifestyle Creator: Barbara Garnes,
3. African Tea Collection by Caranda Fine Foods,
4. Soundscape by Jazz Musician Rene Mclean.

RE-POSSESSED is an “aesthetic-remix” works-in-progress, an assemblage of reconstituted artifacts, reflecting the dynamics of a Neo African aesthetic and the cultural impact of the European & Early American colonial experience of African-Americans, This aesthetic was unconsciously continued to some degree, into the aesthetic of the southern rural lifestyle of the newly emancipated African-Americans in the mid 1800’s. Which evolved into a Pop Culture of the Urban African-American lifestyle near the end of the 20th Century and into the present 21st Century.

RE-POSSESSING the culturally stripped is a ceremony that maintains a responsible relationship with Culture, Community, Commerce and the Cosmos.

This installation includes hand crocheted wall Mandala’s, A Crochet Revival Tent and The Tea Masters Crochet Ceremonial Garments. This is a body of invigorating, hand crochet & embroidered Cosmic Tapestries, created for meditative practices:

The space is graced by a stunning collection of custom designed crystal chandelier and sconce lightings. These masterful works of art are beautifully composed assemblages of multilayered dazzling crystal prisms, colorful semiprecious stones and splendid miniature Venetian Glass sculptures of nature.

A classic porcelain Tea Set of indigo and white decoratively patterned toiles of pre-colonial, African village pastoral life.

A luxurious Tea Collection of fines blends of Black, Green, White and Herbal Organic Teas from the continent of Africa.

With a beautifully haunting soundscape created by jazz musician Rene Mclean incorporating sound tracks from performances of him and his Father the Late Great Jackie Mclean.

This is an inspirational environment created for the ceremonious tea, prepared to aesthetically strengthen, enhance, and enlighten. So that one can reap the benefits of a journey into long periods of Deep Fulfilling Meditation in the Cosmic aesthetic of Funk for the Culturally RE-POSSESSED and for those who can relate.

(END OF PRESS RELEASE)

There is going to be a website built for the exhibit that will contain more information a contacts with the artists.

REMEMBER A KING, REHAB A KING

What a way to start this memorable "DAY FOR A KING"!!!.... I just had an amazing telephone conversation with a New York Performance artist named Rha Goddess, who has created a powerful performance piece (that I just missed) at the Public Theatre, The project she is working on really hits right on the “HEALING ELEMENT”. She is working with Mental Health Issues of Communities of Color.

This touring project was just launched Jan. 15, 2008 at The Public Theater in New York. Artist-as-Cultural-Activist, working for the community…. That’s what I’m talking about.

Check out the details of the project in the Link below.

http://www.rhaworld.com/LOW-SpecialEvents/index.html

Try and get on the mailing list to stay connected to this vital project.


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TAXPAYERS MORE WILLING TO PAY FOR REHABILITATION THAN FOR INCARCERATION, REPORTS FIND.

Posted on January 21, 2008

Taxpayers More Willing to Pay for Rehabilitation Than for Incarceration, Reports Find

The American public supports the rehabilitation of youth offenders and is more willing to pay for rehabilitation than incarceration, two new reports funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation find.

Based on data from a poll performed by the Center for Children's Law and Policy, Potential for Change: Public Attitudes and Policy Preferences for Juvenile Justice Systems Reform (executive summary, 12 pages, PDF) found that more than 70 percent of Americans believe that incarcerating youthful offenders without rehabilitation is the same as giving up on them. Ninety percent of those surveyed believe that "almost all youth who commit crimes have the potential to change."

Based on research conducted by the MacArthur Research Network on Adolescent Development and Juvenile Justice, the second report, Rehabilitation Versus Incarceration of Juvenile Offenders: Public Preferences in Four Models for Change States (executive summary, 17 pages, PDF), found that the public is willing to pay an average of nearly 20 percent more in taxes for juvenile rehabilitation than incarceration.

During the 1990s, state legislatures across the country enacted statutes under which growing numbers of youths could be prosecuted in criminal courts and sentenced to prison, often because policy makers assumed popular demand for such action. But youths in the adult criminal system are at greater risk for assault and death, receive less in the way of rehabilitation and treatment services, and are 34 percent more likely to commit crimes than youths retained in the juvenile justice system. The MacArthur Foundation is working to address these issues through its Models for Change initiative and by supporting action networks designed to develop systemwide changes in Illinois, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, and Washington that can serve as national models for reform.

"Momentum is gathering across the nation to replace harsh, ineffective measures with programs that address the welfare of young people while preserving safe communities," said MacArthur Foundation president Jonathan Fanton. "The public understands that youth in trouble with the law are not lost, and that working with them to solve problems is a better approach to public safety than just locking them up."

“Rehabilitating Juvenile Offenders.” John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation 1/15/08.

REHABILITATION PROGRAMS LINKS BELOW

http://www.macfound.org/site/c.lkLXJ8MQKrH/b.1074781/k.D7EC/In_Focus.htm

http://www.modelsforchange.net/

FREEMAN OF COLOR, PORTRAIT ARTIST: JOSHUA JOHNSON 1763-1832, BALTIMORE MD.

JOSHUA JOHNSON was a FREE AFRICAN AMERICAN ARTIST — THE FIRST "KNOWN AND DOCUMENTED" AFRICAN-AMERICAN ARTIST IN AMERICA TO EARN HIS LIVING AS A PROFESSIONAL PORTRAIT PAINTER. He worked in Baltimore for over 30 years, from 1795 – 1825. Painting during decades of dramatic growth in Baltimore, Johnson produced more than 80 portraits of sea captains, shopkeepers, and merchants. By accepting commissions from Baltimore’s newly affluent families, Johnson produced portraits in oil in the years before the camera was invented. No other artist except Johnson painted so many portraits of parents with their children during this period in Maryland.

Although we know a great deal about the people who posed for Johnson’s paintings, we do not know much about Joshua Johnson himself. Few clues survive to help us piece together the puzzle of his life and career. Like most members of Baltimore’s free black community, he remains an elusive figure. Joshua Johnson’s BALTIMORE MD. HAD A LARGE POPULATION OF FREE AFRICAN-AMERICANS. By 1810, Free African-Americans outnumbered enslaved African Americans by more than two to one.

The Maryland Historical Society now owns a 1782 court record regarding 19-year-old Joshua Johnson, a slave in Baltimore County who was apprenticed to a blacksmith. Previously purchased by his own father, the record orders that Joshua be freed as soon as the term of his apprenticeship ended or when he arrived at his 20th birthday, whichever came first. No further records appear about Joshua Johnson the blacksmith, but in 1796 the Baltimore City Directory has an entry for Joshua Johnson the portrait painter. Are these two men one in the same? We are not sure, but it is possible. With each new clue or intriguing suggestion regarding Joshua Johnson’s life, the mystery only deepens. But in the best traditions of historical scholarship, the quest will continue. Perhaps you will someday be a part of it! If you would like to see some of Joshua Johnson’s paintings, come to the Maryland Historical Society. We have several of his paintings in our permanent collection.

NEWSPAPER ADS

Competition among artists during the late 1700s and early 1800s was not unusual in a city the size of Baltimore. In 1798, Johnson placed a newspaper advertisement in the Baltimore Daily Intelligencer. In it he describes himself as a "self-taught genius," and offers to provide "the most precise and natural likenesses" of his subjects.

THE WORD FROM MY DAILY PLANET

THE TEXT FOR TODAY, will be entered real real soon Folks,... I promise,... Sorry for the delay.

BEHOLD: THE GEE'S BEND QUILTERS

From a bend in the Alabama River, a small, rural community is taking the art world by storm with a unique style of abstract quilts. The Gee’ Bend quilters have refined a distinctive, sophisticated quilting style that is gaining critical acclaim worldwide.

The quilts reflect the geometric sensibility of modern art and the works have been compared to those of important artists like Henri Matisse and Paul Klee. The New York Times called the quilts "some of the most miraculous works of modern art America has produced." The sensational compositions, colors and innovative designs of the quilts of Gee’s Bend have an aesthetic impact that transcends the medium. Unlike the square patterns of other American quilt styles, these works reflect inventive, personal perspectives inspired by surroundings, history and the fabric’s origins.

Quilting in Gee’s Bend is an art that spans at least four generations. The community began in the 1800s as a cotton plantation owned by Joseph Gee and Mark Pettway. After the Civil War, freed slaves continued to live in the area, working as tenant farmers and then buying pieces of the land in the 1940s. Quilting here, as in most of America, was as much a necessity as an art. The community was isolated by its river border which made self-sufficiency essential. Well into the second half of the 20th century, the community lived in unheated homes without running water or electricity. The women of Gee’s Bend pieced strips of available material together to keep their families warm and some made hundreds of quilts throughout their lifetime.

Their work is infused with imaginative design. Such creation is often presumed a luxury of leisure of patron sponsored artists or sufferers of self-inflicted torment. But the women of Gee’s Bend earned everything the hard way. Gee's Bend men and women survived slavery, grew and picked crops, lived without modern amenities, survived the Depression, and lived through the raucous environment of the South during the Civil Rights movement. In the 1960s, the lifeline ferry across to Gee’s Bend was shut down and people in Alabama who registered to vote in support of or march with Civil Rights protesters were systematically persecuted through loss of their jobs or repossession of their homes.

Despite the toll of history, the quilters of Gee’s Bend continued producing their quilts gathering inspiration from continuing struggle as well as from the love and peace they distilled in their own lives. Quilts were made from faded work clothes, textile scraps and any other usable fabric. Some were inspired by loved ones who had passed, others by backyard scenes and some by the freedom marches that brought Martin Luther King, Jr., to Gee’s Bend in 1965.

In 1998, social historian and art curator William Arnett stumbled across a photo of a “work-clothes” quilt by Annie Mae Young. The stunning original design prompted him to find the quilt and its creator. He succeeded and after buying several quilts from Young, he became known as the crazy man in town “paying good money for raggedy old quilts.” Arnett promptly began to promote the work of the Gee’s Bend quilters. The impressive artistry and originality led the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, to organize an exhibit titled The Quilts of Gee’s Bend in 2002.

The exhibit of 60 Gee’s Bend quilts then traveled nationwide to museums in twelve cities including the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. The impressive list of institutions that displayed the Gee’s Bend quilts rank among the most sought after spaces by artists.

In 2003, after the success of the first exhibit, women of Gee’s Bend formed the Gee’s Bend Quilters Collective with help from Arnett and a non-profit he formed called the Tinwood Alliance. The Collective was founded to help market the magnificent quilts. Some quilts sold through the collective have fetched more than $20,000. The funds are distributed between the quilt’s creator, the collective and its other members.

A second exhibition is currently making waves across the United States. Gee’s Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt was organized by the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and opened in June. The exhibit features work spanning fifty years of Gee’s Bend quilters and includes work from the newest generation of quilters, signifying the continuation of this long tradition. Many of the quilters of Gee’ Bend are elderly but have children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren who have taken to learning the art of quilt making.

The current exhibit will grace the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Orlando Museum of Art, The Speed Art Museum in Louisville, KY, the Denver Museum of Art and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, just to name a few, and will run through October 2008. Gee’s Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt is changing the way we think about modern art and recognizing the amazing collective talent from a small, rural community in Alabama.

The Collective has their own website which provides further details on where you can see their art or purchase your own piece. There are also two books about the women and the art: The Quilts of Gee’s Bend, and Gee’s Bend: The Women and Their Quilts (available through Tinwood Media, Tinwood Alliance or the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston).