20/20: An exhibition at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, PA, July 22nd through December 31st 2017 REkOGNIZE: An installation by Bradford Young at the Carnegie … Continue reading 20/20 at the Carnegie Museum of Art by James Carraghan
Tables turn Moving around and around Seesaw goes up while the other one is down Just so you can push your friend back up again To take the turn The Swing goes Backward to move Forward Then Back & Forth You go up the Slide just to drop back down, again Upward & Downward Your hands in the air while waiting for your feet to touch the ground To become grounded, again Laughing uncontrollably on the Merry-Go-Round as you start to lose grip Grasping onto the bars with all your might Spinning fast Counter-Clockwise Off you go Flying and head … Continue reading PLAYGROUND RULES & PHYSICS by Moriah M. Mylod
Do you believe in a love that informs, enriches, and encourages creativity? What is the purpose of love, if not to uplift us, becalm us, and embalm our broken spirits? We do not want to be crippled and asphyxiated in love, we must be able to soar; our spirits must be free. Two women, two artists, and two lovers from two disparate corners of the world decided to redefine love. Their love for their respective partners was so great that they were ready to efface themselves. What is so uncanny is that they lived, loved, and worked in two very … Continue reading Auxochrome-Chromophore by Anindita Bhattacharya
In African American and/or Black American culture, the African and or ancestral presence is both visible and invisible. The ways to name what is Black American is in music and the infamous cuisine that has come to be called “soul food.” The production of highly consumed products of Black labor and the descendants is more American than apple pie. For example, no one realizes the blue that appears in the denim that Americans wear so regularly, the corn they consume, the peanuts, soy, rice, the domestic tools, or the music that is deemed “American” owes to Black labor. Those things … Continue reading The Ring Shout and the African Presence in America by Anwar Uhuru
In part one, I wrote about a theme that has emerged in this column of the mercurial nature of artistic quality. i.e. one day this is good art; the next day that is good art. Even the eye of the beholder is fickle. I continued by identifying some trends among the professional artist community. In general, the traits listed were those of non-conformists because conformity is antithetical to individualistic creation. If one is expressing oneself, then one is not marching in formation. Expression of truth is inevitable because the human animal is not strong enough to suppress it indefinitely. Even a … Continue reading The Performance of Contemporary Art [Part 2] by Adam MacHose
I will not work for Physicality I will work for Experience not Things Things are nice, but useless Because they all end up disappearing In the Wrong Hands The Light that disowns the Evil Places Inside each Vessel Is your obsession based on Love? Who is your Authority? And to acknowledge the Dark is to bring to Light To face Yourself in bareness That was absent of The World before Naked thy enter Naked thy depart Naked thy return Mixed media by MMM Continue reading DARK MATTERS: NAKED by Moriah M. Mylod
What is a professional artist? That sort of word game can sometimes be trivial semantics. Or at best, a predictable Socratic inquiry that ends in “who can say?” But this question informs the way teachers advise students to enter the world as artists, so it’s important to form a basic answer, even if it is incomplete. The commonsense answer in American capitalist culture is something like ‘someone who earns an income from the sale of their art.’ In other words, an artist is a person running a small business who produces art objects marketed as such. By this definition, anyone … Continue reading The Performance of Contemporary Art [Part 1] by Adam MacHose
I like to think of my worries as such: A decaying tree that lays in the entrance of a walking path Where it vanishes at the edge and stings like a thorn bush stab From the Sycamore that rests here on the brim Between the feminine Ted Bundy and the reincarnated Hitler If it weren’t that fucked up now… Wait… See… Where the wars of Evil vs. Evil Drop into its own pits of Tyranny Mixed Media by MMM Continue reading DARK MATTERS: DECAY by Moriah M. Mylod
Satan’s in the sole of my left shoe We are having a confetti conversation now The words from your lips are bursting in colors of blue, yellow and red Floating pieces that never hit the ground Zenu is my mother Her ship will be here any minute To drop off money just in time for the birth of my baby Jesus The CIA is onto me, they hear and see everything I do and say Are you listening? WE ARE NOT CONNECTED, WE ARE NOT CONNECTED There is a funeral every evening at the head of my bed… But no … Continue reading DARK MATTERS: SCHIZOPHRENIA by Moriah M. Mylod
I was making my way through Ways of Seeing when I stopped at the end of the third essay and sent a text message to my friend. Within a few minutes he had responded, telling me that he was reading the same essay, at the same time, for a class; he had the same thoughts and was going to get in touch with me. This was not to be the last time this would happen. I worked my way through the rest of the book, finding germs of the theoretical lenses I would be studying in theory-heavy courses outlined with concrete … Continue reading The Looker: John Berger by James Carraghan
