Louis Vuitton celebrates Muhammad Ali

My son-in-law turned me onto these series of commercials. They are a stunning tribute to what may have been the most hated and now loved man of the 20th century. I feel sorry for youth of today who have no real reference for who he was in his prime. These are just a couple - go to YouTube to see more:

Book Review

I was recently asked by Adam Parker to read and review a book for the Post & Courier. This is the first time I have ever reviewed a book for a publication. It was a fascinating read and a book that I highly recommend. I guess I'll have to come up with my own rating system now!

Book reviewed by Colin Quashie:

The oft maligned, misunderstood and/or misinterpreted history of minstrelsy is explored in Darkest America: Black Minstrelsy from Slavery to Hip-Hop by Yuval Taylor and Jake Austen. This superbly researched text is presented in scholarly detail and offers surprising anecdotes and insights into the birthright of the dark art, the rise and fall of blackface and the subsequent fallout of both art forms with contemporary audiences. It presents a thesis of the practical means, and speculates on the debatable motives of practitioners of what many consider to be ‘the only completely original contribution America has made to the theater.’

The book covers a huge swath of territory. It theorizes how early survival-based acts of coonish buffoonery by plantation slaves to ‘feign stupidity and sloth to trick and lower overseers expectations’, provided the comic framework on which highly structured and staged performances would be fashioned. Barnstorming troupes of innovative actors and transcendent personalities ignited a popular explosion of minstrelsy that reached its zenith (some shows were on the enormous scale of modern day traveling fairs), shortly after the reconstruction era. The contentious transfer of blackface from nineteenth century stagecraft to twentieth century tool of ridicule and racial divisiveness eventually lead to the demise of minstrelsy and sped its absorption into vaudeville.

The combination of a renaissance of black cultural expression and the development of radio and television converged to not only challenge and redefine the historic relevancy of black minstrel sensibilities, but fuel public clashes amongst detractors and aficionados. Black literati, the likes of W.E.B. DuBois, Richard Wright and Zora Neale Hurston, publicly weighed in on both sides of the cultural divide and forecast future conflict (Bill Cosby vs. Stepin Fetchit, Stanley Crouch vs. Tupac and more recently, Spike Lee vs. Tyler Perry). The controversial broadcast of Amos ‘n’ Andy, which capitalized on the best while projecting the worst, would ultimately become the epicenter of discussion for generations to come. However, it would be the rise of the black power and civil rights movements along with the cinematic projection of dignified ‘super negroes’ that would forever denounce and stigmatize the minstrel legacy.

The book comes full circle with the alleged adaptation and reintegration of minstrel motifs by black musical acts and contemporary comics. The curious case of Dave Chappelle’s ‘awakening’ is eye opening and emblematic of the emotional toll exacted by past and current handlers of race based material. Sitcoms, from Good Times to Sanford and Son and Tyler Perry’s Meet the Browns, which were and are heavily dependent upon actual characters and characterizations rebooted from the minstrel era, are exposed and questioned, while hip-hop’s and rap’s minstrel tag is rebuffed. An entire chapter is dedicated to the effectiveness of Bamboozled, Spike Lee’s magnum opus, which satirized the minstrel movement on every level from producer to performer to viewer.

Darkest America provides a comprehensive narrative into the factual aspects of minstrelsy’s improvisational genius and beguiling legacy while offering commentary on the myriad complexities of racial antics. It will not end the debate, but rather provide both critic and advocate a well-researched platform to support their argument.

Undefined Magazine

It's amazing that I have to find out about press about me from other people. You would think that I would get a heads up from the editor(s) that they are publishing an article on my art. Either way - thanks! Mary Bentz Gilkerson is a wonderful artist and terrific critic and arts writer. Thanks for the article Mary!

If you're expecting a subtle, tasteful discussion of social justice issues in contemporary American culture, then Colin Quashie is not the artist for you. But if you are moved by engaged visual criticism and see its potential to have an immediate impact on viewers then you'll love Quashie's unflinching examination of the lingering effects of racism in contemporary American culture.

The artist uses humor and satire, mixing wit and irony, to convey a message that needs to be seen. The recent events in Florida make it painfully obvious that the conversation about race needs to continue.

Quashie doesn't exhibit his work that often, but over the last eighteen months there have been several opportunities for viewers to participate in that dialog, two in Columbia and one in Charleston. Subjective Perceptions, the first solo exhibition of Quashie's work in Columbia was on view at Benedict's Ponder Fine Arts Gallery in the fall of 2010, and the artist was selected for 701 Center for Contemporary Art's first Biennial this past fall.

Just this past April he had a major solo show, "Plantation (plan-ta-shun)" at Redux Contemporary Art Center in Charleston. The title of the exhibition gives a clue that while Quashie lives in Charleston, he does not in any way fit the stereotype of the "Charleston artist". In fact, turning that stereotype on its head is one of his most effective strategies.

Born in London in 1963 and raised in the West Indies, Quashie immigrated to the US with his parents at age six and grew up in Florida. He attended college for a couple of years, but left to join the Navy working on submarines. After his discharge in 1987 he began actively pursuing his art career.

Quashie's demanding content challenges cultural gatekeepers, sometimes leading to censorship. The first instance back in 1995 devastated the artist, and he stopped making art for two years. In a move that ultimately served to sharpen his commentary, he moved to the West Coast and started writing comedy for Mad-TV. His hiatus from art making was short-lived, and although he continues writing for the film and television industry, Quashie has been an active part of the state cultural scene ever since.

The artist pulls imagery from wide variety of sources that range from contemporary pop culture to 19th century historical photographs. He packages these images in familiar formats, ones that use both the visual and verbal language of the media to address issues of race, gender and social equality, or rather, inequality. Real estate advertisements, product and package designs, billboards and coloring books become the framework for his witty and satirical dissection of our lingering cultural stereotypes.

His seductive use of the familiar makes his work very accessible. The viewer is lured in by images associated with comfort, ease and even style that are then revealed to be cultural inconsistencies that create a sense of unease and discomfort.

Quashie's ability to manipulate the allure of the familiar is exactly what makes his work so challenging to both the average viewer and art insiders as well.

Quashie has used the metaphor of a children's coloring book many times and the most recent version, Plantation Coloring and Activity Book, uses the commonplace motif to present images that appear neutral and naïve until a closer examination reveals images of brutality and horror. The jarring quality of the combination only adds to the power of the images.

The cover shows a smiling Aunt Jemima, her face wreathed in a pattern of cotton bolls. But inside are "activities" like "Connect the Dots" where the tag line reads, "Help Master whip the uppity slave and show him who's boss!" The dots connect to form scar lines on the back of the simplified outline of an African-American man. The image is derived from a mid-19th century photograph - which appears in "Plantation Digest" – now in the collection of the Library of Congress.

"Plantation Digest" is a series of large acrylic and gel transfers on board, fairly dripping with bitingly dark satire. Using the format and slick presentation of the magazine and advertising world, Quashie reconfigures a series of images pulled from contemporary media with 19th century period images and text to point out the continuing systems of gateways and gatekeepers, just as powerful now as 200 years ago.

The plantation gates on the "Cover" served to mark a boundary, the outer limit beyond which the most of the inhabitants were not allowed to pass. Similar gates are still used, marking boundaries that are just as clearly defined by race as before. With the headlines, Quashie makes a clear connection between the overt racism of the 19th century and the covert racism that remains in the 21st. The goal of plantation management was to maintain a quiet, compliant workforce. His choice of contemporary images and text points to the degree to which that is still true

Colin Quashie speaks openly about the two ton elephant in the living room of American culture, pulling it from the corner and placing it squarely in front of the TV where we all have to look at it and acknowledge its presence. What happens from there is up to the rest of us.

Unexpected press

So much for flying beneath the radar. I hadn't planned on any press for my latest mural project...yet, but Erica Jackson, the eagle eyed arts writer for the Charleston City Paper, somehow stumbled across my blog post and webpage outlining my goals and decided to post the info on the paper's 'Culture Clash' section.

I initially started the webpage as a way to communicate more effectively with the few people I have decided to involve at this point. I'm still in the process of trying to secure permission to have MUSC host the mural. To that end, I emailed my MUSC boss, Dave Neff, in an appeal to point me in the correct direction. I sent him a link to the site so that he could get a better scope of my intentions. He responded favorably and  passed my request along until I received an email from Roberta Sokolitz, MUSC's Curator and Art Collections Manager (silly me - I had no idea they even had one). We had a wonderful conversation this morning and I sent her some amplifying information so that she could take and process the request.

I was shocked when I received a Google Alert informing me that my name was posted on a site and saw this in the online art blog of the City Paper:

Gotta give it to them over there at the City Paper - they don't miss much. It's a bit premature, but I appreciate the ink. The City Paper has always treated me kindly so I can't be mad at them. Thanks, Erica. I'll make sure I contact you first when this project really gets off the ground and hopefully starts gaining momentum. 

I hope to have the list of names finalized in about a month. If MUSC grants me permission to unveil the final painting at their site, I can them make plans to start laying out the painting and begin fundraising in earnest. You can read more about the project by clicking here on 'Charleston Memorial Mural'. Stay tuned!

New Journey Begins

I'm preparing to do something I've always wanted to do since working on the UNC mural - a mural for Charleston to celebrate the contributions of African Americans to this historic city. In It's time to get this done. I just launched a few new pages on my website that outline the project and lists the names of the individuals that will be featured in the mural (so far). The tentative location for the mural will be at the MUSC Women's Health Center - location of the first hospital for blacks in the city. They have a gorgeous lobby that is dying to have a painting placed on its walls. You can read about the project by clicking here. More to come soon.

MUSC Women's Health Center - 135 Cannon Street

 MUSC Women's Health Center lobby with example of mural

New logo's

2 more happy clients! The first logo is for a close friend who just started an event planning business on the side.It incorporates her initials and reflects a festive mood. I see a bouquet or a table piece setting, others see a burst from a champagne bottle. Either way, she's happy with it.

The next one is for my dear friend, Orlando Jones. He is increasing his presence on the web via social media and needed a mark that reflects that. I decided to use the ever popular text emoticons to push his comedic talents. What I like most of all about this is that it can be typed on any keyboard and used in actual text messages.

Fuck you, pay me.

Trailer for a great talk on getting paid for your creative endeavors. 

See the full video here: http://vimeo.com/22053820

Tyrone Geter Logo Design

Due to my graphic arts background, I often get requests to update logos for people and organizations. It's a great way to make a little extra cash, but more importantly, I love doing it. It's like a mini challenge to listen to a client and tailor a visual that incorporates everything they want their creative and professional lives to project in a simple mark.

I spoke with my old friend Tyrone Geter about his logo, which was little more than his initials in standard font. He wanted something that reflected a more global feel to his art. I began to get a feeling how living and creating art in Africa had influenced his creativity and shows up throughout his art. He also stressed simplicity - how he was trying to deconstruct his art. With all that in mind, this is what I came up. Tyrone Geter Art (TGA) with the "G" prominent and circular for the global reach bisected in relief with the "T" & "A" to create an African styled mask.

You can see a few more logo design jobs I have created here: Quashie Design

Tyrone Geter Undefined

Tyrone Geter recently had hip replacement surgery and was getting around with a stick, good for, he noted, keeping away dogs and writers. He was sitting in the den in an easy chair before the fireplace which, this August morning, was not in use, since at 10 a.m. the temperature was already above 90. His sister Liz had come from Ohio to give him a hand since the July operation and he had one of her hearty breakfasts perched on his lap, a glass of carrot juice on the table beside him. And his stick.

After eating and talking a bit, Geter gets ready for the trip upstairs to the two huge rooms that constitute his studio.

“You better not stand behind me in case I come back down,” he says. “This is only the second time I’ve been up here since   July 15.”

His daughter Hafizah recently cleaned out the downstairs and brightened up the house with gold and blue and purple paint. She didn’t quite get upstairs and things are piled up. As usual Geter has a batch of works in progress, lots of finished older works in racks, various pieces of machinery (printers, a gadget that spiral binds books), but to hang a piece of art on the wall he has to pound in the tacks with a tape measure because the hammer has disappeared.

The dominant image in the room is a drawing of Barack Obama. Like much of Geter’s art this drawing is a fairly traditional realistic drawing that’s not very traditional at all.  The drawing is in mostly white and black on black paper. It’s not on one piece of paper, but a bunch of torn sheets of paper. And the president is starting to disappear.

“I thought I was done with it,” Geter says. When he thought it was finished Obama looked strong and confident.
“Things had started to get complicated and there was like this fog rolling in.”

Now the president looks a little lost, his head in a murky gloom.

“We’ll have to wait and see what happens,” says Geter, an art professor and gallery director at Benedict College in Columbia.

Like most of his artworks this one has a mind of its own. Geter considers each work a journey and he doesn’t have a map for the trip; the art making shows him the way.

“I never start something knowing where it’s going,” Geter says. “I let it lead me.”

If the individual works are segments of a trip his overall output and various approaches have also come about organically and often by lucky turns.

Recently he’s been concentrating on black on black drawings because someone asked him how to work with charcoal on black paper – and there are a lot of shades of black charcoal and black paper and he uses them all – and he got hooked.

The torn paper works began when he was doing a drawing and tore it. He liked the drawing so rather than tossing it he pieced it back together, adding more torn paper. It was a long learning process.
“I’d get one right and the next one wouldn’t be,” Geter says.

These torn paper pieces aren’t collages in strict sense; they’re more like relief sculptures made of paper.

Another time, frustrated with a drawing of a head he was doing, he took a walk that led him past a local nightclub where a cleaning crew was tossing out trash – including hundreds of bottle caps. He grabbed a couple pocketfuls, took them back to the studio and attached them to the drawing.

Starting to build up the images led him more toward sculpture. The big jump came when he bought a little frame that had a little shelf jutting out. He had a drawing of a baobab tree that fit into the frame perfectly. In Africa the solitary, elephant-like tree has spiritual significance. Although it can survive on little water in harsh climates, it is easily toppled by storms. That got him thinking about water and who controls water, which is always an issue in many parts of the world.

He took another walk, this one around a lake near his home in Elgin and found a rusty old water faucet handle. It fit perfectly on a hole in the shelf.

“I dropped it in and it was finished,” Geter says.

The pieces grew larger, incorporating drawings in elaborate framing devices, found objects, from rocks and sticks and bottles to small pieces of furniture. They become true sculptures and at times installation art pieces.
“If you trace where I come from every next thing I do is completely logical,” Geter says.

(Some of these works are on display in a solo exhibition at the Sumter Gallery of Art through Oct. 29. He also has a show scheduled for Gallery 80808 in Columbia for October.)

Along with making his art and teaching, Geter also had a parallel career illustrating children’s books, among them “Sunday Week,” “White Socks Only” and “The Little Tree Growing in the Shade.”

“I never painted like an illustrator – I did the book the same way I would have painted anything,” he says. “They let me do whatever I wanted.”

Nearly all the books he did were put out by major publishers and sold well. But the books were taking him away from his art and he was only asked to do works with an African-American subject matter.

“I was just drawing and painting the same little girl over and over again,” Geter says. “I wanted to branch out.”

During the past few years, Geter has also done several large murals. The first was for the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati. Tom Feelings, a Columbia artist who taught at USC, started the mural, but became too ill to finish it and asked Geter to complete the work.

Geter was also commissioned by the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center to do a mural celebrating the dance craze “The Big Apple” that was created at a Columbia nightclub in the 1930s. He recently did another large piece, “Look Beneath the Surface” for the Underground Railroad Freedom Center.

A native of Alabama, Geter’s family moved to Ohio when he was 15.  He studied art at Ohio University and taught at the University of Akron. In 1979 he and his wife Hauwa moved to Nigeria, her home country.

“We’d been married for seven years before we got a chance,” he says. “We packed up the house and went.”
They stayed for eight years which surprised Hauwa.

“She didn’t think I could handle it,” says Geter, who taught at Ahmadu Bello University while they lived there.

They returned to the U.S. in 1987 because their children, daughers Hafizah and Jamila, were getting to be school age and it became almost impossible to get hard currency in Nigeria. The family moved to Columbia in 1999.

His first few years in Columbia went well. He took an active part in the arts community and provided the Benedict College art gallery with a much higher profile. Then came 2003. Feelings, who had befriended Geter when he came to Columbia, died. His wife Hauwa died suddenly of a stroke in 2003. A few weeks after her death, Geter had emergency open heart surgery.

As he slowly worked his way back from all these things, his hips began troubling him. He had the first replaced about two years ago, but the other has nagged him incessantly since.

“This last year or so I’ve really slacked off,” he says. “That’s not like me. “But this leg was causing so much pain.”

He had been considering retiring next year. Now that he has two good hips, he probably won’t.

“I feel better than I have in a long time,” he says. “I’m looking forward to getting back into the classroom. I like teaching foundation – drawing, painting. I think that’s where I’m supposed to be. And I’ll stay until I think it’s time to go.”

Out of the Shadows with Winston Kennedy

I attended a wonderful lecture at Redux Studios given by the esteemed professor Winston Kennedy. I wish that more people would have attended, but for those of us that did, we were treated to a well researched and authoritatively presented thesis on the negative history of African Americans in print. I was glad that I was able to attend and honestly, learned quite a bit.