i have but One Intention for this New Year, not to waste the energy the Ancestors and Elders placed in me. Selah
My First Album Cover, ‘KTW Dub’ – Junior Dan aka Sidney Gussine aka Lefto Posted on
Although I’ve been quite fortunate over the course of this Average Life like maybe a bunch of other artists I’ve lost (and sacrificed) a lot during this ‘Walkabout’. My first pause was in MadWiz, and during one of their coldest winters on record, that’s where I met multi-instrumentalist/composer, Junior Dan.
I’d been introduced into the Madison Rastafarian Community by Rasta Jim aka Dr. Jim Rutke, a brilliant man with multiple advanced degrees, a Rastafarian scholar highly respected in the community who could read any number of ancient languages, e.g. Amharic, Hebrew, Latin, Greek, etc.. As a NeKiT (New in Kid in Town). He knew the people to meet, and not meet. It just so happened that around this time the University had scheduled a big Reggae concert with Third World, Black Uhuru, Steel Pulse, Peter Tosh and Jimmy Cliff. It was to be the last concert performed by The Steppin’ Razor. Because of Rasta Jim’s deep connections to the community and UW he’d gotten me backstage access. This was actually my first major shoot ….. Reggae Legends, up until then all I’d shot was airplanes with sand and Arizona sunsets.
Post the concert hang I sent some of the images to Blackstar Photo Agency and the thought them good enough to suggest I go to Jamaica and shoot. So I decided to traipse off to Xamayca to photograph the Rastafarians. When I mentioned this to Rasta Jim he said to talk to Junior if I was heading ‘down Home’. We sat and vibed ending up with me agreeing to pick up Junior’s master tapes from Tough Gong Studios in Kingston. The trip to Guntown was me hanging off the back of a truck with goods of someone’s relative in the bed. When I arrived iMan was blessed to ‘sing Chalice’ with Sticky, Bob’s former drummer and body guard. For me the whole trip was magical beginning from the first day in Montego when I met the Rasta priest who said, “No man have to lock ‘im ‘air to be a Rasta. Rasta is in your Heart.” I was supposed to be there for 2 weeks it was 2 months before I returned, but that’s a tale for another time. And the negatives and positives from that era like a photo of Seaga and Manley (two of the Prime Ministers) shaking hands (absolutely RARE) are lost, but the Isitives remain.
Enter Dr. Bjond aka Dr. Bruce Lipton and Laser Group Posted on
It was either Fall or Winter in Wisconsin (like there’s a real difference ….. oh yeah one, snow instead of colored leaves on the trees), I’d pulled into a WalMart (Target) parking lot because I saw the sweetest, vintage, 1967 (I believe) Midnight Blue (for sure)Pontiac GTO. As I was pulling up a short guy with a goatee gets out with this coolass music following him. I rolled the window down greeting him and asked the appropriate questions. The sound was sort of helicoptery incorporating heavy duty, Classical organ ….. the keyboardist was ‘Yanni ‘Chryssomallis, it was 1979, and it was his demo tape. in a New York accent the guy said, “Take a seat and a listen.”, for the next fifteen minutes or so I was ‘transported’. Bruce returned and introduced himself as ‘Dr. Bjond’ inviting me to his home. I responded with a ‘Well I’m Dr. Stranj, and I’d love to.”. Thus was the beginning of a unique relationship and my introduction to Laser Group.
’tis the season Posted on
As we come upon Christmas one of my strong memories as a member of St. John the Divine’s choir is the sounds of voices, our voices, caroling, Norman Syme with his perfect pitch, Jan Opalach with his bass (as a ‘Tweener) creating foundation, the sound of the Cathedral, the smell of the hospital wards, lights of the Rainbow Room and Carnegie Hall. How I came to be a visual artist when everything pointed to Music is another tale, I did pass my audition to be admitted to NYC’s High School of Music and Art aka known as ‘FAME’, just living ‘An Average Life’ #AAL.
On Gordon Parks Posted on
For some reason this time of year brings to mind a number of individuals some I’d like to call peers, several friends, and a very few mentors and even fewer muses. Among them is photographer/cinematographer/composer/poet/et al, Gordon Parks. My memory is having been introduced to him by Daniel Dawson (but it could have been MacArthur Fellow, sculptor and DWC grad Reggie Bradford, who gave me my first exhibition on the East Coast at Choate Rosemary Hall, or … come on was the ’80s), and over the course of about 2 decades I’d come to think of him as my grandfather. He was too cool with his cigarette holder and silk dressing gown. I was blessed to be able to call him up at a semi-reasonable (NY) hour and whine about the latest event in my life or visit if schedules permitted. In the ‘90s I was fortunate to orchestrate an exhibition of Gordon’s work sponsored by the Dallas ASMP at the Dallas Museum of Art and introduce him. One of the highlights in my life was sitting with him in his bedroom projecting transparencies and talking about the sequencing of images for ‘Arias in Silence’. When he graciously positioned himself for his i’Trait i placed him, arms crossed sans cigarette, under the chandelier in his living room, for me it was the $ shot.
On the passing of Roy Hargrove Posted on
In the course of this ‘walkabout’ I’ve been fortunate to have met a myriad of people (and even a few ‘uman bein’s) among them was Jazz trumpeter Roy Hargrove in the ’80s in Dallas. He’d just received the trumpet from ‘Doc’ Severinsen, former band leader of Johnny Carson’s ‘Tonight Show’ and I was a member of the ACT-SO panel awarding scholarships to high school students. It was obvious even then that he was an outstanding talent. Other than his playing one of things that still stands out in my mind from our brief interaction was that he wanted to be “‘just like Miles'”.
Welcome Posted on
Aloha e
I’ve been told, ‘Oh, let people see the work, it speaks for itself.’ My concern with that is, what if they’re color blind, myopic, or just like the Blind Yogis who can’t see it’s an elephant; what if they only speak Yoruba? Over 20MM people can communicate in it, but I’m not one of them. So I see this Blog as a potential alternative drawing you in … {I kinda feel like Rod Serling … you know the guy with the Twilight Zone?} … /said in a montonal voice/
… though there exists virtual reality where one can believe themselves to be in a physical space, my images can be viewed here, but I don‘t think they can be experienced any other way but in person.
A component of the imagery, as a finished piece, is its play on textures, and the internet doesn’t allow for the viewer to discern perceived texture from actual.
Walking into a rug shop, touching and sitting on them, allowing the rugs to ‘speak’ to you is not the same as seeing them on the computer no matter how intriguingly beautiful the pattern, or historical the reference. My works are similar to tribal rugs, I just weave with line, shape, pattern, form, texture, color, words, light and motion.
Please don’t hesitate to contact our Reps they know the stories behind the images.
Oh yeah, and keep your eyes and ears open ’cause we’re going to be animating the ‘MusIkons’ and showcasing ‘Heroes of Hemp: Outlaws of the New Millennium
The Splash Page shows the tips of various icebergs, a gentleman I considered one of my mentors, Gordon Parks; the cover of the book Deb Willis selected me for and the letter from the NMAAHC at the Smithsonian; co-Founder of the Crown Family Unity Programs, Ghanaian Master Weaver, Kofi Owosu Bempah; a couple of articles from Dallas; postcards from photographer Carlotta Corpron and curator Barbara McCandless, my Cubist self-iTrait matchstick painting, and of course my altered ego, Qyot’I and SU, my stereo udu.
Some have commented on my Ikon/avatar as being ‘scary’. I guess I can see that; my ‘toothy smile’ could be construed many ways, just as SU (which is a Nigerian water vessel turned into a percussive instrument) could be seen as twin mini-cannons. Not to mention the other me at the 3rd chakra exhaling. I could go on with the comparisons, but if i’m very lucky through my imagery, these words and a sum of Road some seeds can be spread to defeat The Enemy. There are only 2 Real Enemies, Fear and Ignorance.
I’ve been queried regarding some of the language and words on the site, yes a bunch of them are my personal ‘pidgin’. Where and when I grew up survival for me was knowing who was talking ‘nice’ about me and who wasn’t. I was lucky that I grew up speaking Patois from the Islands with my Grandma, and learned Latin and German in school. The Latin assisted in my getting along in whatever neighborhoods I frequented playing basketball.
‘Djinn’ evolved from the Arabic word for spirit, Jinn, and my addition of a letter that tends to mean ‘of’ in most languages. In the ’80s it helped to separate me from the guy who won all the Olympic gold medals, and provide a retort to “‘Do you run fast?'” /spoken with a heavy drawl/[” … yeah, I’m from the South Bronx, notice no holes, no scars.”]. So I am ‘of the Spirit’ as these images are ‘the Open Spirit’, l’Oeuvre Jinn. Oh yeah and I realllllly liked the ‘zhhhhhh’ sound.
When I started out writing poetry in some of my readings I had been seeing a number of references to ‘celestial’ beings being qualified as good or evil. {Which led to a poem about Motive and Motivation, but that’s another … whaddaya whant, it was the ’60s?!?!!} So I figured a ‘good spirit’ could guide my writing.
I’ll never forget the first conversation I had with artist/designer/inventor, Charles Mingus III aka CM3, son of the legendary Jazz bassist, in 1983 … 2 meals, 8 hours, on a land line, with the most remembered comment being his salient statement on ‘Art’, “Sex sells!”. So then I’m trying to figure out where the sex was in my (at the time) concrete, steel and glass subjects.
It’s actually Dorian Mingus’ face on ‘Mingus-inspired’, {although some think I assisted the Creator in naming ‘dirt’, I’m not old enough to have photographed his father}, both CM3 and Dorian are the spitting image of their Dad. It was quite {you put in the adjective once you read about five more of these incidents} to meet his rock ‘n’ roll brother, Dorian Mingus, in 2006 at his neighbor, and our mutual friend, musician/audio engineer Baron Chase’s house.
I’d just arrived in Marin and was traveling with Marcia Miget who was going to record. We pulled up a dirt road off 101 in Novato, parked and had just started the introduction when out of the shack next door came what looked like an non-facial haired CM3 only to be introduced as ….. .
Yeah they say Life is full of these coincidences, I’m just living my movie, An Average Life.
So … for me ‘Composition’, like content in other disciplines, is King, it’s how you lead your viewer through the frame. It utilizes the elements of line, form, shape, pattern, texture, tonality/color in various proportions to tell ‘your’ story. So the objective/intent is to use the frame to tell the story in a cogent and coherent manner {emphasis on ………}.
Positioning the subject/objects/negative space create the path for the viewer to go somewhere. The ‘formula’ for all this encompasses color, weight and mass; look at the work of Josef Albers.
Does a pound of feathers equal a pound of lead?
I’ve referenced the works of Rudolf Arnheim innumerably as a point of departure for the book, Lumiere Capturee and my imagery; here’s Art and Visual Perception by Rudolph Arnheim with notes by Frederic F. Leymarie for your creative parts to absorb.
Building on the above an exercise I use to show asymmetry as balance uses the largest and smallest people in the room (excepting infants and Shaquille). I position the two individuals toe-to-toe (or as close as that can get within reason), have them shake hands at the wrist … then start to lean them back. At a specific point off of the vertical axis there will be a position of balance between the two masses, lb/feathers=lb/lead.
I love the way Miles phrased it, “‘ … it’s the space between the notes, Baby.'”
Because there is an intuitive recognition and use of scientific principles does that make the Arts (and Sports) ‘soft sciences’? I think maybe so. I even think that the core of education should be teaching from what is so innate to all … their creativity.
It would require a bit of a re-think on educational goals, but what IF Math could be taught through music or sports?
[Waaaaaaaaallllllll /sung in my best pseudo-Gospelly voice/]
What is ‘Discipline’? {No, no and uhhhhh NO! Uhhh and maybe yeah …} BUT Discipline, in my Artisticese, is ‘practicing aspects of one’s craft when you don’t really want to’. Whether it’s running scales, stairs or scenes, I steadily practice composition, visual dynamics and light study. Why?????
There could be a whole bunch of answers depending on … , but my answer would be ….. i try my best to listen and watch rather than see and hear … if Life is frequencies, if we can still our own, then we are open to others. i seek to ‘translate’ what i’ve heard using the various tools at my disposal, pen, brush, camera, word, image, sound, and you.
The late John J. Jasinski, former curator of Southland’s art collection, in a recommendation for an NEA grant once wrote of my work, “‘[he] takes disparate elements and weaves them into a unified whole.'”
I[n]spiration for my work is drawn from many sources, De Stijl and Bauhaus, Egypt, the Masons, mathematics, sacred geometry, music, esoteric theologies.
A tv-cartoon-anime-comic-book-Kid’o’da’60s, yo (former collector of all things Marvel, a H-U-G-E Stan Lee fan who used to have the #1+ of EVERY THING!) Marvel is part of the ispiration behind creating MusIkons. I’ve always thought of artists as having super powers, breaking glass with your voice? Hypnotizing people with color? How coooool is that??!!!!! Oh yeah, that’s like real life.
Early on in my career I had been experimenting with a number of techniques from solarization and posterization to multiple imaging and multi-slide projection. I was using a scalpel to cut two frames together for image sandwiches. It was about the same time that I came across the work of Jerry Uelsmann and Ellen Schuster’s work.
This was about the same time that the first of the Heil scanners arrived in the US, and all I could see was somebody else’s head on Arnold Schwartzeneger’s body. [So call me ‘Panasonic’, i.e. ‘slightly ahead of its time’]
‘Awake … thought of Creat/i/on … fresh … on the tip/s … of yo/u/r … ‘
All Soul’s was thought by the Ancients to be a time when the spiritual world and the physical world were in closest proximity. i take this time to Honor the names of a few from My Average Life Who have Passed across the Veil recently; Kofi Owosu Bempah, Dr. Robert Powell Sr., Mic Gillette. We sing Praise.
It was the work of Arnold Newman that began the MugFiles. His photograph of Krupp to me was the epitome of lighting, pov and choice of lens to tell a story about the subject. I wanted to add a level of intimacy to this so I chose ‘Patience’ or the ‘Decisive Moment’ the point where people ‘breathe’. Even the most natural performer, the lens hound, has to take’ a pause’ [the Miles’ moment] that is the moment I ‘capture’.
My images of individuals like painter Robert Colescott finishing a work or Anthony Davis checking the tuning on a piano I believe have this quality.
My Grandmother was ahead of her time. She arrived in Roaring ’20s NYC at 19 speaking the King’s English as well as her Patois. I never saw her without a killer hat on with its 4″ hat pin. Like I said she was ahead of her time.
She taught me how to whistle what was a family whistle so she could hear me from either corner of the block since our house was in the middle {The South Bronx was a ‘challenging’ neighborhood when I was coming up.}. It was from her that I first heard,
“‘Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men {people} with talent. Genius will not: unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.'” – Calvin Coolidge
… and it was she who changed ‘men’ to ‘people’ in her quote. At 9 I was told, “Your great, great, great, great, great Grandmother was not a slave.”
It was crazeeeee cool to get to photograph Mary Ellen Marks and Duane Michals together as the photographer for SMU’s Artist Lecture Series {I wonder if I would have taken a selfie had selfies been around then, plus I don’t think a ‘selfie’ positions one as ‘the observer’, so on second thought … nah}. They were taking the elevator and I recognized Mary Ellen {of course I’d studied her work} and Duane {repeat of previous} stuck my arm out and jumped in. They were great; the art freight elevator at Southern Methodist University {for those who don’t know is slower than [whatever] going uphill in winter} so I got the chance to ‘tawlk’, hear a Duane Michals story, and capture them in a hug on film. Wait’ll I tell you what I said to get Robert Rauschenberg’s eyes to get that big.
My formal sense of visual composition probably began when my eyes became glued to a microscope {before that I just had the ‘horrible’ architecture of NYC and the ‘terrible’ clothes of the ’50s and ’60s as points of reference}. A veteran of over 100 autopsies part of my job was photographing the specially stained slides of various organs for the pathologist. I would stain organs for various things like bacteria or iron. The way ‘Nature’ {or Whom/Whatever} orchestrated the various elements of the cells, to me was absolutely elegant. Different cells, different organs, different shapes, beee-u-ti-full {a la Curly of the 3 Stooges}. I have no idea how many thousands of hours I spent going through boxes of slides and pictures from the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology to recognize normal from abnormal. When I finally was introduced to the Golden Mean/Ratio etc. it was one of those ‘Ah HA!’ moments. I’ve had at least several of those to date.
It was that same ‘Ah HA!’ Moment that I loved about being in the darkroom. I really thought of it as my version of MacBeth’s witches and their “Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble …”. I’d mix the various chemicals {contingent on whether it was film or print, color or b&w, and where I was taking it}, make my notes {I made notes on everything from aperture on the enlarger lens to how and how long I agitated the film or print}, mumble to myself, “‘… take it carefully into the room, Precious …. ‘” {oh, sorry wrong movie} go under the red light {no not that kind of red light}, twist knobs and shuffle paper, and in the end {a few hours later},and YO there was a ‘Eureka, Baby!!!!!’. I’d return to the light {day or moon} with something I’d consider as beautiful as it was new born. Such was the birth of the Jinnagraphs.
When I first arrived in Hartford I lucked out and was given access to the basement of the Main Library. All of the retired and oversized books were kept there, and that’s where I took up camp. I could be found asleep with the Time and Life Series on Photography as a pillow and whomever was my particular individual(s) of interest as my blanket.
You know we all have a ‘voice’, some are mellifluous while others raucous; and although everyone has vocal chords and can ‘talk’, not everyone has ‘command of the language (or even dialect)’. I believe that everyone is creative, but not everyone is an artist. On more than one occasion I’ve likened artists to translators because in order to translate one must know a few things among them, the framework of the given languages, the nuances of those languages, and what the artist wants to convey. Did I mention the words ‘cogent’ and ‘coherent’?
I’ve expended a lot of time and materials in my study of light. Beyond just watching natural light and how it fell across an object, I actually replicated the Time and Life series texts on light and aperture with different film stocks, and then checked the math. This was the beginnings of my exploration into the Zone System. Understanding the Zone System was the springboard to my manipulating the development and printing process. It was Mirle J. Freel Jr., who at the time was the head of Photography for the Tucson Museum of Art School, that really assisted in my understanding of the How this component fit into the medium of photography.
Among the resources I’ve used to create my imagery is an esoteric tome by Manly P. Hall. In one of his books he’s got a compendium of multicultural signs, sigils and glyphs, e.g. the sigils for all of the angels. Within my imagery are a myriad of these ancient tools/devices some of which were used to design and build architectural structures. As a sensitive scientist some of this might even have been called ‘al khemia’.
Early in my career I was fortunate to be introduced to a number of the Black photographers (I think it was from Danny Dawson) and provided with their contact info, among them Roy DeCarava, Gordon Parks, Tony Barboza and Dr. James van der Zee. I remember speaking with the Grandfather of Black Photographers in the early 1980s as he was in his 90s and had just gotten married. My brief conversation centered around questions of how to be ‘great’, we were interrupted by his schedule (or his new wife, not sure which, but at 90ish what difference did it make?) and before I could reconnect he had transitioned.
Some people wonder how I’ve gotten from There to Here, well it’s ’cause whenever Opportunity knocked I went through the door.
I had gotten away from the Art Industry in the late ’90s because my vision for the imagery {the lasers in particular} had become waaaaay larger than two-dimensional works on paper, and their ability to fund it. This was probably a direct result of the opportunities to study design and manufacturing processes through the various mentors and friendships. It was the influences of Jim Ashmore, Cardell Oliphant and Thomes Lear Grace of Lear Grace Design and Jose Marmol that helped to expand my horizon into interior and exterior spaces. My ultimate realization was that since I had no family or friends-with-$ to invest in the breadth of products I saw I was going to have to do something about this myself. So began my segue into the World of Project Funding and Investment Banking. [… and as my cousin has said, “How’s that workin’ out for ya?”]
I believe that part of creating is the understanding some Natural Laws. To complement them is the cognitive/technical side of How Light works (I don’t know whom to attribute this link to, but ‘Thanks’). Although it IS mathematical and may seem complicated, observation combined with documentation can be employed to establish the framework. Pick an object, create an equidistant measurement system and watch the light as moves across it.
Some would say that one gets so old as to have forgotten more than they may remember, I was reminded of this after looking at a couple of books with M. C. Escher’s work in it. It may also have been one of the Mentors, nevertheless what I’m seeking to express has to do with how one utilizes the ‘frame’ making positive space mirror negative space kinda like Marcus Uzilevsky.
Any idea how to draw people into the frame, lead them through, in from one direction, out another and then back IN, all without using food? Movement without motion.
My Sensitive Scientist Self believes that another of those Natural Laws is: Thought follows Energy, with the corollary that Action follows Thought. The frequency of sound never stops it actually continues on … forever. Remember that Word Power is Sound Power. And one might ask, well isn’t the written word powerful also? Of course, the glyphic aspect of a {prototypical} word is quite powerful take a look at ‘I Am’ in its original form.
I think it good for one to have an understanding of both the machine called the human body, as well as what drives it, the Mind. The training from and career in the military allowed me the opportunity to understand the machine from the inside out. {a little morgue humor there} A lot of my time was spent with or over the shoulder of physicians and clinicians, and the Air Force does attract some brilliant people for one reason or another.
Because I work in different disciples I tend to be creatively productive throughout the day (most days, and not to say that all works are ‘good’ works), although I’ve found my most favorite time to be what’s been called the Witching Hour, between 1am and 5am. It might be a circadian clock thing, but what I’ve been told is that there exists a time when the veil between worlds/dimensions/energies is most accessible then. Just as in certain cultures specific instruments, e.g. the baliphone or bata, are used to communicate with … .
Traveling with Laser Group in the late ’70s gave me the opportunity to meet individuals like Russell Hilton, founder of Chicago’s Museum of Holography, holographer Matt Hansen, assistant to Dr. Cheung Yung and Dr. Harold Edgerton.
Facing a new year I review my stockpile of adages and the first one that comes to mind is my paraphrased Satchel Paige quote, ‘Never look over your shoulder because whatever it is that’s chasing you just might be catching up with you.’
Gong Xi Fa Cai
What people call ‘color’ is actually ‘HSI’, hue, saturation and intensity, the qualities of light and the basis for color theory. For me it breaks down to additive and subtractive, RGBW or CYMK, or the difference between color as transmission vs. reflection. One of the leading entities in the research of color is Pantone though I always go back to the seminal work of Josef Albers. I like to think I use his theories of proximity and proportion in my imagery.
It’s been a while, I’ve been up to my armpits in ….. getting the work together and installed for my 1st gallery exhibition in 19 years. It was a S-A-G-A … miscut mats, ran around Oakland looking for the right size frames at a reasonable cost, dog licked one of the prints and ‘signed’ another with a paw print ARGGGGGGHHHHHHH ….. a bunch of things that wouldn’t have happened had I some of the tools I used to have. Like my very own framer! But the work made it most of the pieces in prime condition. So one leg of the process is completed, now on to Marketing and Sales.