Xenobia Bailey - "funky" crochet

Greetings,

I am pleased to bring you this post about an extraordinary artist by the name of Xenobia Bailey.  When most people think of crocheting, they think of blankets, hats and scarves just to name a few items.  Take a look at her work and you will see that there is much more to crocheting.  I am going to post some pics of her work and also the link to her blog.

Originally from Seattle, Washington, and now living in Harlem, New York, Xenobia Bailey brings African American roots music into visual terms with vibrant room-sized installations of crocheted mandalas, tents, and costumes. Helping her parents with their cleaning business as a girl, Bailey realized from early on that the aesthetics of a given environment made all the difference in how she felt. Cleaning the restaurants that were nicely decorated felt rewarding while cleaning the "dumps" was just depressing. Her discovery of African aesthetics and culture, of jazz, blues, and fusion music in college contributed to her idea that the psyche was profoundly impacted by one's physical surroundings. She began to crochet her impression of these uplifting and empowering sounds, and soon began making enveloping installations that seek to uplift and inspire while establishing an African American aesthetic in everyday American culture.

Just wanted to give you a little Saturday funk!!!

Stay creative,

Charmel


Blog: http://xenba.blogspot.com/
Short bio info: http://www.answers.com/topic/xenobia-bailey

Now to the fun part...........pieces!!!

Romare Bearden

Jammin at the Savoy

Greetings,

Enjoy this informative work about the legendary Romare Bearden.


Romare Howard Bearden was born on September 2, 1911, to (Richard) Howard and Bessye Bearden in Charlotte, North Carolina, and died in New York City on March 12, 1988, at the age of 76. His life and art are marked by exceptional talent, encompassing a broad range of intellectual and scholarly interests, including music, performing arts, history, literature and world art. Bearden was also a celebrated humanist, as demonstrated by his lifelong support of young, emerging artists.

Romare Bearden began college at Lincoln University, transferred to Boston University and completed his studies at New York University (NYU), graduating with a degree in education. While at NYU, Bearden took extensive courses in art and was a lead cartoonist and then art editor for the monthly journal The Medley. He had also been art director of Beanpot, the student humor magazine of Boston University. Bearden published many journal covers during his university years and the first of numerous texts he would write on social and artistic issues. He also attended the Art Students League in New York and later, the Sorbonne in Paris. In 1935, Bearden became a weekly editorial cartoonist for the Baltimore Afro-American, which he continued doing until 1937.

After joining the Harlem Artists Guild, Bearden embarked on his lifelong study of art, gathering inspiration from Western masters ranging from Duccio, Giotto and de Hooch to Cezanne, Picasso and Matisse, as well as from African art (particularly sculpture, masks and textiles), Byzantine mosaics, Japanese prints and Chinese landscape paintings.

From the mid-1930s through 1960s, Bearden was a social worker with the New York City Department of Social Services, working on his art at night and on weekends. His success as an artist was recognized with his first solo exhibition in Harlem in 1940 and his first solo show in Washington, DC, in 1944. Bearden was a prolific artist whose works were exhibited during his lifetime throughout the United States and Europe. His collages, watercolors, oils, photomontages and prints are imbued with visual metaphors from his past in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, Pittsburgh and Harlem and from a variety of historical, literary and musical sources.
In 1954, Bearden married Nanette Rohan, with whom he spent the rest of his life. In the early 1970s, he and Nanette established a second residence on the Caribbean island of St. Martin, his wife's ancestral home, and some of his later work reflected the island's lush landscapes. Among his many friends, Bearden had close associations with such distinguished artists, intellectuals and musicians as James Baldwin, Stuart Davis, Duke Ellington, Langston Hughes, Ralph Ellison, Joan Miró, George Grosz , Alvin Ailey and Jacob Lawrence.

Bearden was also a respected writer and an eloquent spokesman on artistic and social issues of the day. Active in many arts organizations, in 1964 Bearden was appointed the first art director of the newly established Harlem Cultural Council, a prominent African-American advocacy group. He was involved in founding several important art venues, such as The Studio Museum in Harlem and the Cinque Gallery. Initially funded by the Ford Foundation, Bearden and the artists Norman Lewis and Ernest Crichlow established Cinque to support younger minority artists. Bearden was also one of the founding members of the Black Academy of Arts and Letters in 1970 and was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1972.

Recognized as one of the most creative and original visual artists of the twentieth century, Romare Bearden had a prolific and distinguished career. He experimented with many different mediums and artistic styles, but is best known for his richly textured collages, two of which appeared on the covers of Fortune and Time magazines, in 1968. An innovative artist with diverse interests, Bearden also designed costumes and sets for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and programs, sets and designs for Nanette Bearden's Contemporary Dance Theatre.

Among Bearden's numerous publications are: A History of African American Artists: From 1792 to the Present, which was coauthored with Harry Henderson and published posthumously in 1993; The Caribbean Poetry of Derek Walcott and the Art of Romare Bearden (1983); Six Black Masters of American Art, coauthored with Harry Henderson (1972); The Painter's Mind: A Study of the Relations of Structure and Space in Painting, coauthored with Carl Holty (1969); and Li'l Dan, the Drummer Boy: A Civil War Story, a children's book published posthumously in September 2003.

Bearden's work is included in many important public collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and The Studio Museum in Harlem, among others. He has had retrospectives at the Mint Museum of Art (1980), the Detroit Institute of the Arts (1986), as well as numerous posthumous retrospectives, including The Studio Museum in Harlem (1991) and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (2003).

Bearden was the recipient of many awards and honors throughout his lifetime. Honorary doctorates were given by Pratt Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Davidson College and Atlanta University, to name but a few. He received the Mayor's Award of Honor for Art and Culture in New York City in 1984 and the National Medal of Arts, presented by President Ronald Reagan, in 1987.

This is the link for the site: http://www.avisca.com/artists_biographies/artists_biographies.htm

Now for some of Mr. Bearden's pieces:



Pittsburgh Memories, 1984



The Piano





The Collage

 

Crochet by Numbers

Greetings,

Once again, as I was searching the web for crochet patterns I ran across this great article about an artist, Todd Paschall, that has developed a technique by crocheting with numbers.  I remember when I was little and there were books in the craft store called painting by numbers.  Read about him and take a look at some of his work.



Todd Paschall is an amazing crochet artist who has developed an equally amazing crochet technique he calls “Crochet by Numbers.” Pictured is one of his pieces, and yes, that is actually made by crocheting with yarn, simple ol’ Red Heart acrylic yarn in fact. On his web site, he has free patterns, a gallery with more fabulous work he and his students have done, and more information about how this method works.
In addition to selling finished work and teaching others his technique, he also creates custom patterns from photos. He has recently set up a group on Ravelry for those who want to learn, share, and of course, get help along the way. When you see his work, you realize how he is not only an artist but an innovator, taking crochet to a level way beyond your typical granny square to say the least!

Here is the link to his site: http://www.crochetbynumbers.com/

Here are some of his pieces....Enjoy!!!



black threads blog

Hello everyone,

I know it has been a while since I posted anything.  I ran across a blog the other day called black threads and wanted to share it with you all.  I am going to post the link and take a look at it.  The mediator is Kyra from Arlington, Va.  Take a look at it.  I am going to post the crochet part of the blog but look around at the other goodies that are on there.


http://blackthreads.blogspot.com/search/label/crochet

Stay creative,

Charmel

Mother's Day Post - Elizabeth Catlett



Sharecropper - 1952



Learning - 1948

Hello,


While studying at the library in Nashville one day, I ran across a publication about a world-renowned artist, Elizabeth Catlett.  I wanted to share her story with you all.


Elizabeth Catlett is an African-American artist that was raised in Washington D.C.  Her parents were both educators.  She received her B.A. from Howard in 1936 and was the first female to receive a Master's in Fine Arts from the University of Iowa in 1940.  While attending the University of Iowa, she was encouraged by her professor to portray what she knew best which was family and women.

In 1946 she received a fellowship to study in Mexico with some very prestigious sculptures and artists.  She became the first female professor and head of the sculpture department at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in 1959.  She married Francisco Mora in 1947 and later became a Mexican citizen.

Her pieces are heroic inspirations of African-American and Mexican working class women.  These pieces feature the endurance and strength of her subjects.  She has also been politically involved in improving the lives of women by picketing and protesting for women's rights.

She is still recognized today as a brilliant artist and sculptor.  Take a look at a few of her pieces below. 




Family



Mother and Child - 1983



Mother and Child - 2009



Quilts of Gee's Bend

Lucy Witherspoon
Housetop, 1985

An astonishing look at the Quilts of Gee's Bend and the producers of these beautiful pieces.  I found out about these artist when I was working in Nashville and one of my co-workers told me about them.  I absolutely love their work and would love to go visit the area and preferably meet some of the quilters.  Here is a history about the quilting from the website.

History of Gee's Bend and Quilt making
Gee’s Bend is a small rural community nestled into a curve in the Alabama River southwest of Selma, Alabama. Founded in antebellum times, it was the site of cotton plantations, primarily the lands of Joseph Gee and his relative Mark Pettway, who bought the Gee estate in 1850. After the Civil War, the freed slaves took the name Pettway, became tenant farmers for the Pettway family, and founded an all-black community nearly isolated from the surrounding world. During the Great Depression, the federal government stepped in to purchase land and homes for the community, bringing strange renown — as an "Alabama Africa" — to this sleepy hamlet.
The town’s women developed a distinctive, bold, and sophisticated quilting style based on traditional American (and African American) quilts, but with a geometric simplicity reminiscent of Amish quilts and modern art. The women of Gee’s Bend passed their skills and aesthetic down through at least six generations to the present. In 2002, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in partnership with the nonprofit Tinwood Alliance, of Atlanta, presented an exhibition of seventy quilt masterpieces from the Bend. The exhibition, entitled "The Quilts of Gee’s Bend," is accompanied by two companion books, The Quilts of Gee’s Bend, and the larger Gee’s Bend: The Women and Their Quilts, both published by Tinwood Media, as well as a documentary video on the Gee’s Bend quilters and a double-CD of Gee’s Bend gospel music from 1941 and 2002.
The "Quilts of Gee’s Bend" exhibition has received tremendous international acclaim, beginning at its showing in Houston, then at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and the other museums on its twelve-city American tour. Newsweek, National Public Radio’s Talk of the Nation, Art in America, CBS News Sunday Morning, PBS’s NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, the Martha Stewart Living television show, House and Garden, Oprah’s O magazine, and Country Home magazine are among the hundreds of print and broadcast media organizations that have celebrated the quilts and the history of this unique town. Art critics worldwide have compared the quilts to the works of important artists such as 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 Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, is currently preparing a second major museum exhibition and tour of Gee’s Bend quilts, to premiere in 2006.
In 2003, with assistance from the Tinwood organizations, all the living quilters of Gee’s Bend — more than fifty women — founded the Gee’s Bend Quilters Collective to serve as the exclusive means of selling and marketing the quilts being produced by the women of the Bend. The Collective is owned and operated by the women of Gee’s Bend. Every quilt sold by the Gee’s Bend Quilt Collective is unique, individually produced, and authentic — each quilt is signed by the quilter and labeled with a serial number. Rennie Young Miller of Gee’s Bend is the Collective’s president.

Just go to www.quiltsofgeesbend.com for more info about the quilts and a picture of the artists.
Here are some of their pieces.



Allie Pettway
Housetop 1970-1975



Lola Pettway
Housetop Variation, 2002

Robin Sullivan photography

  



Willow

Good evening,

Today I have the privilege of highlighting one of my childhood friends Robin Sullivan.  She is a wife, mother and also an educator.  In her spare time she enjoys interior design, scrapbooking and photography.  She loves to capture her family in natural settings and I always enjoy receiving the most beautiful Christmas cards from her every year. She has 2 daughters, Willow Grace who is 3 and Laurel Bailey who just turned 1, and these photos capture them at their best.  Her photos also include her husband Derrick and her mother as well.  She has been doing photography for a number of years and has provided services for special events such as weddings and family reunions. 

Although we don't get a chance to hang out a lot, I can truly say that Robin is one of my closest friends and also an inspiration for this blog.

Enjoy the photos of Robin's family!!!!  Also, check out her blog at www.willowtreephotography07.blogspot.com. 

Stay creative,

Charmel



Willow Grace relaxing



 



Oh my Laurel!!!





Birthday girl, Laurel







Derrick and his baby girl, Laurel