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.

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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).

My Cousin's New Martha Stewart Home

OK Folks,... All that other stuff I was writing about in this blog journal... It was'nt nothing compared to this News Scoop!!,... My (ultra busy, hard working, elementary school teacher, Mother, Home maker, etc.) Cousin, Mrs Starmayn Gosa-Walker-Mackie, Got a New Husband, Mr Henry (New Cousin) Mackie, and they bought a Brand New Designer Martha Stewart Home in Atlanta Ga. in 2007.

Plus... My Cuz and her "New Honey-pinch" got their photograph on the front page of the Real Estate Section of the Wall Street Journal Newspaper.

Check out the article and read about how "Home Girl" Martha Stewart is "workin" her domestic skills to the "max". There are lessons to be learned here Folks!!!



Martha Stewart, KB Home Lure
Buyers Despite Housing Slump


By Michael Corkery
From The Wall Street Journal Online

All across the country, home builders are gasping for air as sales plunge, inventories rise and profits disappear. But in one small corner of the housing market, the sales picture is a little brighter: There is steady demand for houses designed in part by Martha Stewart and built by Los Angeles-based KB Home.

"I love all her things," says Menyon Green, a 42-year-old nurse who bought a Martha Stewart-KB Home in this Atlanta suburb earlier this year. "I just knew this was going to be a good subdivision."

The Martha homes are a rare source of good news for KB, the nation's seventh-largest builder by market value. Last year, the company's chief executive left over a stock-option backdating scandal and two weeks ago KB reported an unexpectedly large quarterly loss, amid deteriorating markets.

Right now, the Martha homes, representing less than 5% of KB's overall home-building production, aren't large enough to lift the builder's flagging earnings. But with the Martha developments outselling most of KB's other subdivisions, the company is expanding the Martha brand to as many as 36 new markets, as soon as it can obtain the necessary permits and land, a KB spokeswoman says.

Gregory Duriez, KB's Atlanta division president, says he is struggling to keep up with demand. "My problem isn't how can I sell more Martha homes. It's how can I get more lots in front of me," he says. From March through June 15, the two Martha Stewart developments alone drew 42% of the people who visited KB's 22 subdivisions in the Atlanta metro area, according to KB.

But the success of the Martha-KB venture, launched 16 months ago, could pose a potential dilemma: how to expand a successful product fast enough to boost profit, but without weakening the brand from overexposure.

"Right now it's a unique type of offering," says Rita Rodriguez, chief executive of Enterprise IG in the U.S., a brand and design agency. "You can invite someone to your home and say, 'This is a Martha Stewart home.' But if it's replicated and stamped across too many odd markets, the uniqueness can be gone. That cache and aspiration isn't there and you just become like everybody else."

The Martha-KB partnership is a closely watched experiment in brand marketing. The conventional wisdom among home builders was that home-buying decisions were based on two primary considerations: price and location. While those factors are still extremely important for home buyers, the success of the Martha homes shows that branding also matters in some cases. The Martha homes target a broad market, with prices ranging from $148,990 to about $500,000.

Here in the Atlanta area, where new-home sales dropped 20% in the first quarter of 2007, traffic at Martha-KB new-home developments has been steady. The largest Martha-KB Home development has been outselling the average Atlanta subdivision 2 to 1, according to SmartNumbers, a real-estate information and analysis firm, based in Marietta, Ga.

The Martha homes are modeled after Ms. Stewart's current and former residences in New York, Connecticut and Maine. She and her design team helped design many of the 64 floor plans from which buyers can choose. KB heavily markets the domestic diva's personal influence: open kitchens and dining rooms suited for entertaining, plentiful windows to capture natural light, and an exterior trim available on some homes that supposedly matches the color of Paul Newman's eyes. (The actor was Ms. Stewart's neighbor.)

Some buyers say they are attracted to the Martha homes because they suggest quality, functionality and class. Others say they expect the homes will have a better resale value than other homes.

"I have faith that Martha's Stewart's name is going to help market the property later on if I want to sell it," says Melanie Washburn, a 35-year-old marketing manager at a gaming technology company in Atlanta, who closed on a Martha home in Fairburn in April.

Currently, in addition to the Atlanta area, Martha-KB homes are on sale in Perris, Calif., east of Los Angeles; Katy, Texas, near Houston; and Cary, N.C., near Raleigh. Construction has begun on Martha developments in Denver, Daytona Beach, Fla. and Lancaster, Calif., outside Los Angeles. The company says it could extend the Martha Stewart brand to up to 10% of the homes it builds, which totaled 39,013 units in 2006.

"It's our version of the iPhone. It illustrates the power of something different with a brand tied to it," says KB's chief executive, Jeffrey Mezger, who has set a clear goal for the company: "Let's get these things open everywhere, as fast as we can."

KB and Martha Stewart's company have been selective about how they market their co-brand. For instance, plans to build "mock" Martha homes in Macy's stores around the country have been put on hold for now, amid the weak housing market. Neither company will disclose the financial arrangements of their partnership, but Mr. Mezger says the company still has higher profit margins from Martha homes than other homes. Michael Meltz, a Bear Stearns analyst who covers Ms. Stewart's company, says it receives a fee of up to $10,000 per house.

Even if buyers pass on buying a home, they come away with a full dose of Martha. For Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Inc., which is seeing declining viewers, but strong advertising on the "Martha" television show amid shrinking audiences for daytime TV, the KB venture is a marketing opportunity. The homes are a showcase for her bedding, paint colors and magazine, "Martha Stewart Living," which is displayed ever so subtly in the model homes. A large picture of Ms. Stewart hangs in the sales office and adorns marketing brochures. One couple visiting a Martha community near Atlanta told a saleswoman they weren't interested in buying a home. They came only to look for decorating ideas.

That explains, perhaps, why Ms. Stewart's design team is so meticulous about outfitting the model homes in the subdivision. The team tries to pay close attention to domestic details, including the color of the lentils stored on the kitchen counter, and the matching colors of the book bindings on the shelves. Buyers can pick from hundreds of different options for their own homes.

The KB Home staff says when the sink in one model wasn't large enough to clean a Thanksgiving turkey, Ms. Stewart had them rip it out and install a larger one. She also ordered up a new kitchen counter top. She wanted a surface large enough to roll pie dough on.

Even though certain elements of the houses are meant to resemble Ms. Stewart's own homes in the chilly Northeast, buyers in the balmier climes of Atlanta, Raleigh, N.C., and Riverside County, in southern Calif., feel a connection, too.

"This is southern living," said Beverly Clermont, while passing through a massive kitchen in a model of a Martha home in Fairburn. Her sister, Anges Young, corrected her: "I think Martha is from Connecticut."

"Yeah, but she lives like she's from the South," said Ms. Clermont, who says she would buy the house, if she could sell her current home, which has sat on the market for six months.

Ruth Green, whose daughter, Menyon, bought them a home in the Martha subdivision in Fairburn, called "Hampton Oaks," said it "reminds me of the glamour of the Hamptons" in Long Island, N.Y.

Menyon Green watches Ms. Stewart's TV show during breaks at work, buys Ms. Stewart's linens, and recently bought a glass bowl to display seasonal fruit, as Ms. Stewart suggested on her show. "If I could afford to do it, I would do the whole thing Martha Stewart style," she says. "Matter of fact, I would like her to come to my house and show me how to do it."

While some buyers might not be able to achieve a place that is appointed as smartly as Martha's model homes, they are trying to get close. KB Home's Mr. Mezger says buyers of Martha Stewart homes in Atlanta spent, on average, 15% above the base price of the home on option upgrades, compared to 7.5% for non-Martha homes. Nationally, buyers of Martha Stewart homes spend on average 50% more on options than buyers of non-Martha homes.

Mr. Mezger also boasts that in the hot, arid climate of California's inland empire, 85% of Martha home buyers installed a fireplace that was featured in Martha's model home. Among the buyers of KB's non-Martha homes in the Inland Empire, 25% installed fireplaces.

Norm Lynde, a chief financial officer at a visiting nurses association, broke his home buying budget to buy one of those fireplaces in his Martha home in Perris, Calif. He said the fireplace made the "home more personal." He likes other features, such as the electrical outlet outside, on the second floor, for hanging Christmas lights. "I never could have imagined buying a home this beautiful." But Mr. Lynde, 49, added, "I was afraid to tell my friends. I am a single guy, and I am buying a Martha Stewart home."

SONYA CLARK'S: ARTIST TALK

(ABOVE IMAGES)

1. Close detailed image of fine (missing) tooth combs from CJ. Walker portrait.

2. Detail image of graphics of fine (missing) tooth combs from CJ. Walker portrait.

3. Full image of Madame C. J. Walkers fine (missing) Tooth Comb Portrait.


Sunday, Jan 13, I went to the opening of the exhibit titled TRANSFORMERS.

Featuring Fiber Artist Sonya Clark and Artist David Ellis at Danny Simmon's Corridor Gallery in Brooklyn, This exhibit is the reconstitution of common objects. among the many works of Art, Artist David Ellis has composed and merged together a assemblage of album covers incased in clear acrylic that creates a wonderful graphic-cubist sculpture.

The one work of Art that stands out for me, is the piece titled Madame C.J. Walker, a very appropriate, exquisitely executed re-vision of a photograph of Madame C. J. Walker, This Neo-Portrait is reproduced, using fine tooth plastic hair combs.

What is so very "real" about this Fine Work of Art, is it's intellectual properties and historical statement it makes.

The missing teeth in the fine tooth combs (Ouch!!). These deconstructed assembled combs are true to the fact, of the missing, bent & mangled teeth in the fine tooth combs owned by healthy-headed African American Woman (Ouch!!),... back in the day (Ouch!!),... when we "Got-our-Hair-Did" (Ouch), in it's natural state, when our hair was stronger than the plastic combs (Ouch!!),... before Madame C. J. Walker created her hair straightening products, for our assimilation into the main-stream American Culture (Ouch!!!... You burnt me!!!)... "Can I get a witness here"!!!

As always... YET, ANOTHER BRILLIANT WORK OF FINE ART FROM SONYA CLARK!!!.

"I'M REALLY FEELIN THIS MASTERFUL WORK".

www.sonyaclark.com





ARTIST PANEL DISCUSSION

David Ellis and Sonya Clark will discuss their art work. moderated by Artist/Curator Danny Simmons
Saturday, February 2, 2008 4 - 5 pm.

Danny Simmons' Corridor Gallery
334 Grand Ave.
Brooklyn NY. 11238
718 230-5002

DIRECTIONS

G train to Clinton/Washington Stop.
C Train to Clinton/Washington Stop

(images cannot be reproduced without permission of the Artist)

SPIKE LEE RECEIVES WEXNER PRIZE

"YOU THE MAN SPIKE"!!!

Spike Lee
Filmmaker to receive Wexner Prize for body of work
By Frank Gabrenya
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Directed by Spike Lee

• 1983: Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads (student film)

• 1986: She's Gotta Have It

• 1988: School Daze

• 1989: Do the Right Thing

• 1990: Mo' Better Blues

• 1991: Jungle Fever

• 1992: Malcolm X

• 1994: Crooklyn

• 1995: Clockers

• 1996: Get on the Bus, Girl 6

• 1997: 4 Little Girls

• 1998: He Got Game

• 1999: Summer of Sam

• 2000: Bamboozled, The Original Kings of Comedy

• 2001: A Huey P. Newton Story (TV movie)

• 2002: 25th Hour, Jim Brown: All American (TV movie)

• 2004: She Hate Me

• 2006: Inside Man, When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts (miniseries)


The winners

• 1992: Peter Brook, theater director

• 1993: John Cage, composer and musician; Merce Cunningham, choreographer

• 1994: Bruce Nauman, visual artist

• 1995: Yvonne Ranier, choreographer and filmmaker

• 1996-97: Martin Scorsese, filmmaker

• 1998: Gerhard Richter, painter

• 1999: Louise Bourgeois, visual artist

• 2000: Robert Rauschenberg, visual artist

• 2001: Renzo Piano, architect

• 2002: William Forsythe, choreographer

• 2004: Issey Miyake, designer

• 2005: Bill T. Jones, choreographer

• 2008: Spike Lee, filmmaker

Filmmaker Spike Lee, the director of Do the Right Thing and Malcolm X, is the recipient of the 13th Wexner Prize, awarded by the Wexner Center for the Arts.

Lee will receive the award -- $50,000 and a commemorative sculpture -- during a private ceremony early in February.

He will discuss his work at public and student events Feb. 11 and 12, and inspire a retrospective in the center's film/video theater.

Lee, 50, talked about the award by e-mail.

"It's a blessing," he said. "I'm doing what I love, first and foremost, and to be recognized for that is a bonus."

"Spike Lee is one of the foremost independent voices in filmmaking today," said Sherri Geldin, executive director of the center. "He has been a fierce pioneer at every stage of his career, flaunting all the taboos and having the audacity

to take on subject matter that few, if any, filmmakers are willing to tackle."

The Wexner Prize was created in 1992 to honor contemporary artists who are "consistently original, influential and challenging to convention."

The winner is chosen by the trustees of the Wexner Center Foundation from nominations by the center's International Arts Advisory Council. The prize is funded through the foundation by Chairman Leslie H. Wexner.

In a statement, Wexner hailed Lee as "a bold, creative spirit who is unafraid to provoke and challenge us."

The award, Geldin said, is the first to Lee from a multidisciplinary arts center.

Lee was born in Atlanta and grew up in New York. His first commercial feature, She's Gotta Have It, was made in 1986 for about $175,000 and grossed $7 million.

He drew national fame for his acclaimed third feature, Do the Right Thing (1989), an angry drama about racial tensions in his home neighborhood on the hottest day of the summer. It provoked a national debate and earned Oscar nominations, including one for his screenplay.

In the years since, his films have examined interracial affairs (Jungle Fever, 1991), religion and leadership (Malcolm X, 1992), drugs (Clockers, 1995), the Million Man March (Get on the Bus, 1996) and the exploitation of black stereotypes (Bamboozled, 2000) .

Not all of his features have dealt directly with racial themes. The 2006 thriller Inside Man -- a heist drama co-starring Denzel Washington, Clive Owen and Jodie Foster -- has been his most commercially successful, earning $88 million in the United States.

Lee has been prolific in other areas, including TV commercials, music videos and documentaries. His 4 1/2-hour TV documentary about the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts (2006), won three Emmy Awards, including one for exceptional merit in nonfiction filmmaking.

David Filipi, the Wexner Center's media-arts curator, said that referring to Lee as primarily a black filmmaker doesn't give him the credit he deserves.

"People mostly think of him as a controversial filmmaker, but he really is a great stylist. He puts a lot of thought and care into the look of his pictures, the art direction, the cinematography. He also has a very keen awareness of film history."

Lee commented on his status as a prominent black filmmaker and how it has influenced those who have followed him.

"There have been great improvements in many areas. To me, the final hurdle is to get into and stay in the gatekeeper's position."

The only other filmmakers to have won the Wexner Prize are Yvonne Ranier, better- known as a choreographer, and Martin Scorsese, director of the Oscar-winning The Departed and a close friend of Lee's.

"Marty took a genuine interest in me and my work while I was in New York University grad film school," Lee said. "There is no one on this planet -- alive, at least -- who knows and loves cinema like Martin Scorsese."

The award to Lee will be the center's first since 2005, when the prize went to choreographer Bill T. Jones.

The gap since then, Geldin said, was a matter of timing.

"We prefer to award it in the spring, but the last one was awarded in the fall of 2005 to coincide with the reopening (of the center).

"Ideally we would have awarded . . . (the prize to Lee) in the spring of this year. The selection was made very early in this calendar year, but it was a matter of clearing dates on Spike's calendar.

"We could have done it earlier, but we didn't want to go to a runner-up. We wanted Spike."