From ArtNews.com: Painter Amy Sherald Signs with Talent Agency CAA

Amy Sherald, a painter renowned for her tender portraits of Black American life, has signed with talent agency Creative Artists Agency (CAA), marking the latest high-profile crossover between the art world and Hollywood. 

Sherald, who has been represented worldwide by Hauser + Wirth gallery since 2018, rose to national fame that year after being commissioned by former First Lady Michelle Obama to paint her official portrait for the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) in Washington, D.C. The work depicts Obama in grayscale, posed against a pale blue background with her chin resting on her hand, wearing a checkered Milly dress by Michelle Smith’s label that references the quilts of Gee’s Bend. Full article: https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/painter-amy-sherald-signs-with-talent-agency-caa-1234770444/

Artists, activists rush to save Black Lives Matter murals

This year activists, artists, and allies took to the streets throughout the country during the summer of reckoning with race. Their messages of protest and pathways to change are captured on Black Lives Matter murals painted on buildings, boarded up sites, streets, and make-shift holding areas across rural towns, cities, and communities in America and around the world.

Those murals capture the collective pains, passions, and protests against police brutality, structural racism, and injustices. The drawings and messages tell visual stories of the hurts, spell out the names of those lost to police brutality, and reflect the mass anguish and distress embraced by both young and old activists and artists. Those murals are visual histories of the times. Now some are beginning to disappear. But there are some trying to save them. Read about those mural savers here.

Culture Shock

The upcoming exhibition at Target Gallery in Alexandria, Virginia, explores socio-political issues through the lens of pop culture and street art in it's upcoming exhibition, Culture Shock.  More than 130 works were submitted and 16 artists were selected for the group exhibition.  

Culture Shock, September 9 - October 22, 2017

Opening Reception September 14, 6 - 8 pm ET

Target Gallery, 105 N. Union Street, Alexandria, Virginia

Moving Art

Murals makes art more accessible. It takes artworks from galleries and museums to the neighborhood. While the art may be more accessible, people still have to go a specific location to see it.  In Spain, not so much.  Street art moves along the streets of Madrid thanks to the Truck Art Project an idea of Jaime Colsa, a transport owner.  Mr. Colsa's project puts art on trucks and takes it to the streets.  

Read more about the Truck Art Project in Raphael Minder's New York Times article, Putting Art on Wheels and Taking It Back to the Streets. Go here.

"We The People" by Nari Ward

Last summer, while visiting Philadelphia, I took time to see Nari Ward: Sun Splashed at The Barnes Foundation.  I accomplished two firsts with my visit. It was my first time visiting The Barnes Foundation in its new location and my first time experiencing Nari Ward's phenomenal works. Both experiences left me awe-struck. The Barnes was an exemplary exhibition space for the more than 30 contemporary sculptures and found-objects works by Ward.  His cross-cultural artworks influenced by his Harlem home base, Caribbean roots, and international travel, spoke to me on many levels. The found-objects, recycled into whimsical and compelling pieces of art, examine black history, power, politics, and the diaspora.  

During my visit, a few months before the historic November 2016 election, the piece that lingered longest with me was Ward's We the People, a 96 x 324 inches work of shoelaces. The exhibition is no longer at The Barnes Foundation, but it can be seen at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston through September 4, 2017.   

With the current divisiveness and charged political climate across America, now is a good time to visit the words, "we the people," from an artistic perspective. Ward's interpretation expresses the real meaning of the words.    

Vist:  Nari Ward