“Haiti Victorious 2” by Gloretta Baynes.
“Martin Freeman collage,” A Peculiar Freedom Series 2024, by Reginald Jackson.
“Eggs that Hatch” (Modern Maroon Wedding) by Bryan McFarlane.
“Arriving on a Nightmare” by Johnetta Tinker.
“NUBIAN SQUARE#2” by Hakim Raquib.
(From left) L’Merchie
Frazier, moderator, Jeff Chandler, Reggie Jackson, Johnetta TInker,
Percy Fortini-Wright and Gloretta Baynes at the May 30 roundtable event.
“Orange Line with Fish” by Percy Fortini-Wright.
More than 75 Black art lovers gathered last month at AAMARP, the African American Master Artists-in-Residency Program, for an artist roundtable with the theme, “Black Art in Afro-Centric Spaces,” the second in the Banner [Virtual] Art Gallery Roundtable series. This is part one of a two-part recap.
Presented by the Bay State
Banner and AAMARP, the May 30 event at 76 Atherton St. in Jamaica Plain
featured eight of New England’s leading Black visual artists who have
been spotlighted in the Banner’s [Virtual] Art Gallery series: Larry
Pierce, Lucilda Dassardo-Cooper, Reginald “Reggie” Jackson, Gloretta
Baynes, Johnetta Tinker, Hakim Raquib, Amber Torres and Percy
Fortini-Wright.
Moderated
by Ron Mitchell, the Banner’s publisher and editor, and L’Merchie
Frazier, mixed-media artist and executive director of creative/strategic
planning at SPOKE Arts, the roundtable event paid tribute to AAMARP’s
founder, Dana C. Chandler Jr. While Chandler couldn’t attend because he
was in New Mexico, he sent his regards.
Frazier asked the artists to discuss their art, their relationship to the Black arts movement and Chandler’s influence.
Cambridge native Gloretta Baynes, whose artwork was displayed in the AAMARP gallery, spoke first.
“I
work in many different mediums. I work in textiles. I work in
photography. I do mixed media, some sculptural works and some
installation works,” she said.
“If you look to the left,” she continued, “you see ‘Haiti Victorious 1 and 2.’ That is a digital collage with lots of
different types of filters and nuances. There’s the Haitian flag
represented and the hibiscus flower. The two young people who are there
represent a new generation of leaders.”
She said the piece illustrates how young people in Haiti are surviving immense adversity.
“But
this is being shown in a very dignified manner,” Baynes added. “So,
even though their lives have been shattered due to a lot of
circumstances in Haiti, I want to show the tenacity and dignity of them
surviving earthquakes and domestic terrorism in Haiti, and that they are
going to persevere.”
Next, professor and visual artist Reggie Jackson spoke.
“I’m an artist, educator and traveler,” he said. “The
philosophy that I have come to feel very deeply about as of late is that
art is the balm and the cure for much of the trauma that we’ve
experience as people of African descent. When I think about that in
terms of the trajectory that many of us have been on, it’s kind of a
self-healing journey that one goes on, and at the same time, we’re able
to help others understand some of the things that we may have gone
through.”
He continued, “And so, I’ve begun to think that this is a little more than a calling. It’s a spiritual
journey, obviously, and one which I pursued many years ago as I began to
think about our African identity, and as I looked into how our
Africanity has transferred into these spaces that we now occupy — as I
looked at African retentions or African survivals in these Americas and
the Caribbean. And so that’s taken me to a lot of different places.”
Photographer Hakim Raquib told the story of how he came to photography “in a very strange way.” “Back in 1969, after
studies at Fisk University and the Civil Rights Movement — I was a
member of SNCC — I came to Boston and worked with Mel King and the new
Urban League,” Raquib said.
“My
career started one day when I was visiting ... the Bay State Banner ...
for the Urban League. Downstairs there was a program called the Roxbury
Photographers Training Program, which was started by MIT graduate
students. A friend of mine, an artist/photographer named Wes Williams,
came out, and I said, ‘Wow! How are you doing?’ He said, ‘Hey, what are
you doing?’ I already had a camera. So I joined this program, and that
started my career,” Raquib said.
Collage artist Johnetta Tinker recalled that Chandler knew her before she knew him, because he was a friend of her older brother.
“I
learned about Dana through my African American art history course at
Texas Southern University,” Tinker said. “That’s where I also learned
about John Biggers, Allan Crite and John Wilson, all of [whom] were in
my art history course. That’s how I learned about all the Black
artists.”
Tinker credited Chandler and AAMARP for supporting her in her career.
“When
I came to Boston, my first really exciting exhibition was here at
AAMARP. There were four women in the exhibition. Dana was in charge of
it,” she said.
Tinker
continued, “Unfortunately, my father passed away during that time and I
was going to just say, ‘I’m not going to be in the exhibition. May I
tell the young people, the work has to be done, you can’t have an
exhibition without the work being done?’ So, the work was done, and Dana
came over, got my stuff and said, ‘Oh no. You’re going to be in this
exhibition.’ So did Allan Crite. It’s the back-up of the community that
helps you get where you need to be.”
Bryan McFarlane, an
abstract and semi-abstract oil painter, was in the audience. He asked,
“To what extent should we depend on the Institute of Contemporary Art
and the Museum of Fine Arts for our developmental growth?”
Boston-based graffiti artist and painter Percy Fortini-Wright responded,
“I honestly think it’s a good idea not to depend on one institution.
It’s good to petition multiple institutions. Petition all the
institutions to put their money where their mouth is and actually do
something.”