The Carbonist School...

The Opening Reception isn't until July 15th, 7-11pm as part of the National Black Arts Festival (July 14-23, 2006), but here are some images from the show. (Please forgive some of my cropping; I was a little preoccupied while taking some of the shots.) A variety of mediums are represented, painting, sculpture, sound, mixed media, and video, although the greater number of artists have included some aspect of digital media within their work if not employed it as the primary medium. For the most part I wasn't able to get good images of the digital video inclusive works (Greg Tate, Jabari Hall-Smith, Cauleen Smith) so you won't see them represented below with the exception of Torkwase Dyson and Ogechi Chieke. This is a pity because one of my favorite works, Cauleen Smith's The Green Dress, was shot on 35mm and edited into four subtly distinct versions and is displayed simultaneously on four video monitors, Smith's background in set design, and her her acuity with color as well as Cinqué Hick's skills in this area (he is credited as production designer) are given florid expression here (in lesser hands the schema could have been gaudy, but here it's truly distinct and joyous). Also, Charles Nelson's work from his Invisible Man 2.0 series had to be rehung because of a roof leak at Eyedrum after last week's rain storm (fortunately the work did not suffer any damage); I didn't want to capture an image until the work appeared as the artist intended. Nevertheless, Nelson's watercolor works approach the oft-referenced trope of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man in a nuanced thought-provoking manner, and are expressively detailed, textured and layered. His work is simultaneously being exhibited at ROMO Gallery in Atlanta, with an animated digital video utilizing images from the series.

All told the images below are hardly fully representative of the show. For that experience you need to be there--if not this time then in the next Study Hall at a location closer to you:

The (soon to be) Collector's Item Exhibition Postcard (with still from Jabari Hall-Smith)








The Carbonist School Founders Welcome You to Study Hall.... (below right, from top to bottom: Cauleen Smith, Cinqué Hicks, Lanneau White, and Beatrice L. Thomas)













Kojo Griffin's He Got Toe Jam Football, oil on panel, 2006 (left)



Kevin Sipps' Untitled, multimedia installation, 2006 (right)





Detail of turntable from Untitled, 2006


Image from Ogechi Chieke's three creation theory, video, 2005 (below, right)






Torkwase Dyson's The Spook Who Sat By the Door, Drove the Truck, Wrote the Rhyme, Broke the Code, and Walked on Water, multimedia installation, 2006 (below)
(The video in Dyson's work appears as two small monitors on the right side of the work and as an intermittent floor projection, all three of which display the code of the work's title. You can see a little of the floor projection between the baseboard and the floor. Oh yes, that's Charles Nelson working on his rehanging in the lower left of the photo.)