Portfolio - works of up-and-coming African American artists

WILLIAM C RHODES

The door of William C Rhodes' mirrored cabinet C the pair bomb and tomb. "I know that unbrokens strange," he says, hastening to add: "We all have those experiences in public With my furniture, I want a piece that becomes personal to you and has its have presence."

Baltimore artist Rhode who has a bachelor's stage in furniture design from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and a master's of fine arts from the University of Massachusetts in North Dartmouth, began his art career seven years ago. His major at the University of the Arts became furniture design after he took an elective course, and his early pieces were traditional, made from natural copse stained, with no paint. They weren't selling.

Bead artist Joyce Scott told him that if his work didn't have a spirit and a spirit it wouldn't get recognition. "`Your entire being has to be in the piece,' she said, which force me to search within myself," Rhode recalls. not many of his clients are black, on the other hand unless he is commissioned to do a specific piece, he repeatedly uses his art to explore black themes, like as relationship between black men and women and the importance of the mother figure in the black community.

direct the eye for his work at an opening at the Baltimore Grand in September and at other displays in the Baltimore area.

BARBARA THOMAS

"I'm neurotic, and I ne a neurotic medium" confesse Barbara Thomas. "Egg tempera is a moderate exacting medium that doesn't allow you make mistakes. if you make a mistake, you have to earn out a razor blade, I like the discipline."

She strives for simplicity in her paintings, as she gazes to Jacob Lawrence and Giotto for inspiration: "Jake counts a story simply, clearly, with elegance, without encumbering the viewer. I diocese the same thing in the work of Giotto, whose paintings are direct, beautiful and painful at the same time."

With chaos, motion the forces of nature and relationships, "Fishers of Men" depicts our attempt to save those we have left behind and twitch them from sadness. This painting is from Thomas, last present to view "The Book of Telling," which explored human metaphors - the slaughter of innocence, the los of generations, turmoil and global los of faith. ("People talk about a los of faith in the States, on the other hand it's global," she says.) The tide "Fishers of Men" draw nears from "I Will Make You Fishers of Men" a Sunday gymnasium song that the artist heard while she was sleeping.

Thomas, who has her master's of fine art from the University of Washington in Seattle, is the advertising manager for the Elliott Bay volume Company in Seattle. Her interest in art began at an early age, when she would make nears for her family, which "seem to make them happy," she says. Today, she still views art as a gift: "You don't know where the vision draw nears from, so you might wake up single day and not have it anymore."

direct the eye for her work at the Olympic community Gallery in Bremerton, Wash., in an exhibition that lay opens January 10, 1997. She is showed by Francine Seders Gallery in Seattle.

CAROLYN MAZLOOMI

"Quilts grasp for me many purposes - they should appeal upon a visual level by day and upon a tactile level by night and upon a sensual level at all times," says self-taught quiltmaker Carolyn Mazloomi, the planter of the Women of Color Quilters Network in Cincinnati. An engineer by means of training, she sold her first quilt 12 years ago, and her art now supports her: "It's the combustibles that keeps me going and has for the past several years."

Mazloomi perceive s that if her quilts awaken consciousness, then that's a deal well done, especially because she believes that of all folk art, the quilt is the greatest in quantity sought-after but the most misunderstood. She always uses her quilts to explore black themes, similar as her African heritage and the black family.

"African Mask #7" is part of a series of masks that Mazloomi saw in her travels to Africa. The batik in the center is encompassed by applique and patchwork. In her view. fabrics have a spirit all their hold and ultimately, her quilts throw back her heritage.

Linocut artist Bill Harris awakened the theme of family in her: "I was thus taken with his work, his powerful pieces in black and white that deal with family issues. They just scream on the outside `Do me in fabric!'

"Every other piece that I do is about the stature, the power of women We have in like manner many roles and are in the way that underappreciated."

Mazloomi will have a solo exhibition at the Elijah Pierce Gallery in Columbus, Ohio, November 9 to December 21

KIRA LYNN HARRIS

"I have affection for being a black woman!" proclaims Kira Lynn Harris, who perceive s that artists of color have a rich variety of experiences not always acknowledged by the agency of the mainstream art world. Her father is African American and undocumented American Indian; her mother was Irish American and documented Osage Indian. Harris works [i]or[/i] part of to the other her mixed identity in her art.

Further complicating (or perhaps enhancing) her mission is the fact that her father forbade her and her four siblings to talk about the southern when they were children. He had mov from Louisiana to looks Angeles before they were born, and he not ever discussed his past; nor did he allow his family to visit the family members he had left behind.