Lisa Kokin

Marriage a Vacillating State of the Libido, Mixed Media

2001

This depicts civil rights icon MLK, the Statue of Liberty, Iwo Jima, an assemblage of mixed media photographic images and painted collaged elements. A powerful, moving work, an ode to the black civil rights movement. John M. Mitchell is originally from North Carolina, and as an art student at North Carolina Central University, he was involved with the Civil Rights movement including participating and getting arrested at a sit-in protest in Durham in 1963. After graduating, he was one of the first art teachers to take a position at the newly integrated schools in his home state. Mitchell continued his education in the 1990s and earned an MFA in painting from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 1993. He later served as a professor there from 1998-2006. Of his inspiration to create, Mitchell says: "A lot of my work is based on my experiences during the Civil Rights movement," he says. "I see art making as a 'record' of experiences. My bittersweet past, growing up in the segregated South, inspires the content, focus and narrative of my work." Savannah-based artist John Mitchell believes that a home is more than a simple edifice. Rather, he argues that the sociological, psychological, architectural, and historical associations embedded in the structure “tell us about our culture, our lives. It tells us about where we come from.” Mitchell's signature shotgun house constructions, crafted from found materials and scraps of newspaper headlines, reference his childhood in North Carolina, where such modest architectural structures were once commonplace. In "ALA 1963," he uses the shotgun shape to create a heartfelt memorial to a group of African-American girls killed in a racially motivated church bombing in Alabama nearly 50 years ago. He also incorporates the shotgun symbol in "Victims," a powerful reflection upon crime in Savannah in the early 1990s, which reveals how little has changed over the past two decades. Mitchell's mixed media constructions operate, in many ways, like memory itself. Scraps, fragments and pieces loosely cohere around a central idea, making symbolic and metaphorical connections. In these richly narrative and boldly stream-of-conscious assemblages, the whole truly is greater than the sum of its parts. Mitchell's jazz collages - carefully crafted from scraps of newspaper, sheet music, magazines and tissue paper - celebrate key players in Savannah's jazz scene, from sultry female vocalists to wiry male saxophone players. A tribute to the late jazz bassist Ben Tucker, a true Savannah legend, is especially moving, incorporating a pencil sketch of the standing bass player as well as newspaper clippings of other Savannah jazz musicians. Mitchell grew up in a shotgun house in North Carolina, a style of vernacular architecture that is particularly prevalent in the South. Mitchell fills his sculptural homes with objects of metaphorical and symbolic, iconic, importance. In Home Sweet Home he includes the American flag, a photograph of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, and a china plate depicting The Last Supper, among other items that convey a personal and historical narrative. He notes that making art acts “as a ‘record’ of experiences. My bittersweet past, growing up in the segregated South, inspires the content, focus, and narrative of my work.” While this contains elements reminiscent of folk art and outsider art this is a quite sophisticated tour de force. He was included in the show Complex Uncertainties, Telfair Museum: Modern and contemporary art comprise painting, prints, drawing, photograph, sculpture, and works in new media, representing American artistic achievement from 1945 to the present day. The exhibition includes works by artists such as Bruce Davidson, Elaine de Kooning, Carrie Mae Weems, Sam Gilliam, Ethel Schwabacher, Radcliffe Bailey...

American painter and author Alex Beard is best known for his elaborate wildlife compositions created in his signature style of gesturalpainting, which he has coined “Abstract Naturalism.” Raised in a family that fostered philanthropy, creativity and exploration, Alex has traveled extensively around the world. The diverse cultures, colors, and climates of Africa, India, China, the Americas, and Australia have profoundly influenced both his professional and artistic practice. While earning his BA from Tufts University, he studied painting and drawing at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. In his early twenties Alex moved to New Orleans to continue his formal training at the New Orleans Academy of Fine Arts. Fueled by curiosity about the cultures and wildlife he had been exposed to in his early years, Alex has spent much of his life traveling to the some of the world’s most remote wildlife outposts - paintbrush in hand. His time in nature enables him to continually hone his style – creating complex compositions in which abstraction and figuration collide, while exploring themes of cultural and environmental interconnectivity. Alex’s work figures prominently in several private and public collections and he has exhibited extensively throughout the United States, including solo exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles, New Orleans, and abroad in Hong Kong. An impassioned conservationist and philanthropist, in 2012 Alex established The Watering Hole Foundation – a public charity engaged in saving endangered wildlife and preserving their environments. His documentary, Drawing the Line, fused his artistic talent with his dedication to preservation, chronicling the plight of the endangered Wild African Elephant, as seen through the eyes of a conservationist artist. In addition to producing a series of short films, Alex has authored and illustrated a critically acclaimed trilogy of storybooks published by Abrams. The series, Tales from the Watering Hole, includes The Jungle Grapevine (2008), Monkey See Monkey Draw (2009), and Crocodile Tears (2010). Along with other New Orleans artists Raine Bedsole, Dr. Bob, George Dunbar, Mitchell Gaudet, Alan Gerson, Thomas Mann, Steve Martin, James Michalopoulos...

Elfi Schuselka (Austrian, b. 1940), Abstract Composition, Mixed Media on Paper with three-dimensional collage elements, signed in pencil lower right, unframed. 23" H x 30" W. Provena...

Natasha Zupan beautifully unites the old and new, combining the innovation of her highly crafted technique with her wonder for tradition and the great Masters. This body of work expl...