Lady Pink, an icon to female street artists, graf writers and creative ingenues with an ear to the street, once again claims her queendom with the brush via her latest series, BRICK LADIES. She first dropped a taste of this series, The She Temple, in a YOUNITY exhibition (fall ’07), and revealed more of the series in her latest 2-woman exhibition at Ad-Hoc Art in Brooklyn, NY (Spr ’08), alongside fellow artist, AIKO.

(Images left to right: Lady Pink, Queen Matilda, 6′x4′, acrylic on canvas. Lady Pink, A Lovely Entrapment, 40″x72″, acrylic on canvas.)

With a strong nod to the omnipresence of feminine energy, Lady Pink’s BRICK LADIES series brings to the forefront, in concrete terms, the reality that the divine feminine is at the root of existence in all its material forms. The integration of core strength and fluid sensuality, in image and brush stroke, permeates dichotomous mind states positioned in critique and effortlessly invokes understanding from a position of union. The work brings to mind the Native American maxim, “Nothing is so strong as gentleness, nothing so gentle as real strength.”

(Image left to right: John Grigley, Lady Pink. Lady Pink, PINK-C Train, New York 1983)

Lady Pink began her painterly excursions in graffiti in 1979, and starred in one of the first cult film nods to a burgeoning hip hop movement, Wild Style – a film that just celebrated its 25th anniversary this past year with events all over New York City. Her work has also been canonized in the collections of several museums including: The Whitney, The MET and The Brooklyn Museum, all in New York City, and the Groningen Museum in Holland. So telling is Pink’s work as a representation of organic creative process, that the Museum of Modern Art in NYC recently jumped on the bandwagon and screened the world premiere of SprayMasters, a documentary featuring Lady Pink alongside legendary graf artists Lee Quinones and Zephyr. Pink’s pioneering efforts in art, from trains in the 80′s to murals in the 21st century, are undoubtedly an inspiration to all. Look for the Pink essence to be re-incarnated in a vinyl figure for Kid Robot in May 2008.

Artist Tracy Snelling‘s recent sculpture-video-mixed media- building-neighborhood corner- miniature replicas, last on view at PULSE NYC, are powerhouses in their own right.  Immediately captivating, the work brings out the nosy busy-body in all of us. Tracey’s mash-up of miniature replicas of actual buildings, infused with clues that suggest an imagined storyline surrounding the buildings inhabitants, encourages the fantastical in viewers who happen upon her work.  Most compelling are the mini video pieces launched in the windows of the buildings.  The viewer gets to become the voyeur of both Tracey’s mind and building occupants, living out lives full of romance, partying, conversation, or sheer mystery.  

(Paris Bayan Kuaforu, Istanbul, 2008, 21″ high x 27″ wide x 23″ deep, wood, paint, lights, digital images, lcd screens, media players, speakers, transformer)

To view more of this refreshingly original and organic new media work click here.

“I was in Cuba in 2004, rented a car and drove around the island for three weeks. As you can easily imagine, I saw thousands of political images constantly, all of them trying to convey the message that the Cuban Revolution was more than a political fight. By using the universal values of igualdad, libertad, fraternidad, esperanza, justicia, educación, respeto y la idea de la posibilidad de construir un mundo mejor, the leader of the revolution is made to appear like the new Messiah. The way the leader and the message are represented sounds quite familiar to me. I am a Spanish artist who grew up in Franco’s time. Spain is deeply Catholic, and religion and politics are extremely united. I am very familiar with the manipulation that has constantly surrounded religion and politics for centuries.  We now have new examples that try to replace a spiritual fight with a political revolution. However, show us political leaders like the spiritual ones? Ghandi, Jesús Cristo, Confucio, etc. are now el Che, Fidel, Mao, Stalin, etc…..We can not forget that the first leaders created a non-violent revolution with their ideas and the second created change through war and society. This painting represents in fact, how WE HAVE BEEN LOOKING FOR THE SAME VALUES with different tactics and different leaders and hence, different results….A universal hope for a better society, bienestar, libertad, igualdad, justicia, educación, and respeto, are what we have been fighting for since the beginning of our culture more than two thousand years…and still we are doing, como diria el Che, HASTA LA VICTORIA SIEMPRE.” – Vicente Lopez as told to Cultureserve.net.  

Contact Vicente.

A while back I heard a quote, “No one chooses to be an artist. You just are.”  So, in a sense, it’s a spiritual calling and the work produced a reflection of the inner evolution, excavation and unveiling of a human being – for better or for worse.  In the case of Barkley L. Hendricks, it appears he’s had a pretty groovy journey and one that is 30+ years later, entirely of the moment.  Hendricks’ achievement of a certain liberation through the sensuality of the body in his work is timeless.  A lived existence emerges that is not born primarily of rationality, but of swagger and spirit.  An aura permeates the physical presence of his subjects that precludes and overpowers the projection of a storyline.

(Images from left to right: Barkley L. Hendricks, Misc. Tyrone (Tyrone Smith), 1976. Oil and magna on linen canvas, 72″x50 1/4″. Courtesy of the artist. Barkley L. Hendricks, Bahsir (Robert Gowens), 1975. Oil and acrylic on linen canvas, 83 1/2″ x 66″. Collection of the Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University.)

Just as Hendricks’ work reverberates in the African American contemporary art scene through artists like Mickalene Thomas, Kehinde Wiley and Jeff Sonhouse, he reflects the liberated spirit of Harlem Renaissance painter, William H. Johnson. A description of Johnson’s work by Art Historian David Driskell in Harlem Renaissance: Art of Black America, is quite apropos to Hendricks’ own oeuvre, “His self-imposed aesthetic rules and restrictions, relating to what he called ‘primitive painting,’ freed him from academic traditions and permitted a lyrical artistry to flow from his brush.”  Although Hendricks’ work is not exactly primitive it is most definitely lyrical, and has often lived outside the confines of the academic and art establishments.  Hendricks’ painting of portraits that show three views of the same subject (i.e. Bahsir (Robert Gowens), above, and Sir Charles, Alias Willie Harris) suggest a lineage to Johnson’s own, Self Portrait (triple), housed at the Hampton University Museum, and  taken together, reinforce the notion of a gaze that allows for the multidimensional nature of man. 

(Images left to right: Barkley L. Hendricks, Icon for Fifi, 1982. Oil and combination leaf on lined canvas, 60 1/4″ x 50 1/4″. Courtesy of the artist. Barkley L. Hendricks, Tequila, 1978. Oil and acrylic on linen canvas, 60 3/4″ x 50 1/4″. Collection of Butler Institute for American Art, Youngstown, OH.)

This multidimensional nature alongside, the vibrant auras captured in many of Hendricks’ portraits, finds it lyrical metaphor in soul music.  Without even hearing a sound, his work leaps of the wall (or page) and into a smooth groove that is oh so divinely and sweetly, Black American.

Hendricks’ work is currently on view at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University until July 13, 2008.  The show is accompanied by a highly recommended catalog with essays from multidimensional art world cognoscenti: Franklin Sirmans, Trevor Schoonmaker and Thelma Golden.

For those of us on the east coast, we may know about Boricuas and salsa legends from Tito Puente and Celia Cruz to Willie Colon and Hector Lavoe.  Or we may even know that a large portion of east coast Mexican immigrants come from Puebla, Mexico and Cubans hold it down in Miami.  But, one thing is for sure, most of us don’t know a damn thing about the Chicano Movement of the west coast, and its cultural hub in East Los Angeles.  Enter, Self Help Graphics and Art, a legendary community arts organization in the heart of East Los that has nurtured, cultivated and provided a platform for a myriad of Chicano and Mexican artists across generations.  Self Help Graphics and Art and THE VEX club, formally housed on its premises, offers a point of departure for The Claremont Museum’s upcoming exhibition, VEXING: Female Voice and East L.A. Punk, that explores the East L.A. scene in the late 70′s and early 80′s, and its subsequent influence on a younger generation of artists.

(Images left to right: Shizu Saldamando, Cindi and Asma in the Ladies Room, 2007, Colored pencil, collage on paper Collection of Sam Lee and Karen Rapp.  Dawn Wirth, Alice Bag, Jensen Rec Center/Silver Lake Film Festival, 2007, Silver-halide/C print. Courtesy of the artist)

The exhibition was designed to document, “a vital moment of artistic and musical interchange in Los Angeles, with women staking out a position between and within punk rock, East LA and the downtown art scene.” Vexing: Female Voices from East LA Punk is on view from May 18 to August 31, 2008 at The Claremont Museum of Art in Claremont, California.  Stay tuned for a forthcoming catalog on the exhibition and a documentary on The Vex by Pete Galindo, Willie Herón and Lysa Flores.