1
europe yanked one thigh
africa held the other
red es el agua
Visual Artist: Mollye Michelle Chudacoff
Poet: Mursalata Muhammad
Composer: TBA
Friday, June 29, 2007
Monday, June 11, 2007
Greetings:
It has been awhile since I've updated you on the progress of the Exhibit. Well all artwork is in and we're anxiously awaiting opening day. I hope to get all the arttists' bios and statements posted before the month zooms by. Wish I could show ya a piece but we've got to save that treat for the patrons who come out in Sept/Oct. to see them in person.
It has been awhile since I've updated you on the progress of the Exhibit. Well all artwork is in and we're anxiously awaiting opening day. I hope to get all the arttists' bios and statements posted before the month zooms by. Wish I could show ya a piece but we've got to save that treat for the patrons who come out in Sept/Oct. to see them in person.
Friday, March 02, 2007
Stephen Marc's Artistic Statement:
I selected Haiku #5, because I was immediately drawn to the relationship of water and people, in regards to freedom. The Atlantic was the body that connected the Old and New Worlds, and the spirit that witnessed the transportation of the enslaved to an unimaginable place and destiny. The words of the spiritual, "God's gonna trouble the water", was evoked in Haiku #5, playing on the emotional / physical response of the water as the reflection of the ethical and political battle that surrounded the 1807 treaty.
The montage that I created was a response to this reading, but it also shows that the kidnapping didn't cease. The 1807 law that went into effect in 1808, in both England and the United States, still had to be aggressively defended and upheld 50 years later: suggesting that in addition to legal measures and military force, the moral value of human life must be understood and respected. But, even today, we continue to make waves.
I selected Haiku #5, because I was immediately drawn to the relationship of water and people, in regards to freedom. The Atlantic was the body that connected the Old and New Worlds, and the spirit that witnessed the transportation of the enslaved to an unimaginable place and destiny. The words of the spiritual, "God's gonna trouble the water", was evoked in Haiku #5, playing on the emotional / physical response of the water as the reflection of the ethical and political battle that surrounded the 1807 treaty.
The montage that I created was a response to this reading, but it also shows that the kidnapping didn't cease. The 1807 law that went into effect in 1808, in both England and the United States, still had to be aggressively defended and upheld 50 years later: suggesting that in addition to legal measures and military force, the moral value of human life must be understood and respected. But, even today, we continue to make waves.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Bio: Stephen Marc
Marc is a Professor of Art in the Herberger College of Fine Arts at Arizona State University, and is an Olympus Visionary. Before arriving at ASU, he taught at Columbia College Chicago for twenty years. Since 2000, he has documented over 80 Underground Railroad (UGRR) sites in 24 states and Canada, where several photographs are combined to describe individual UGRR sites inside and out.
He also creates montages that weave together: plantation quarters and crops, letters, legal documents, period news text and illustrations, etc. as a way to provide additional background information about the larger scope of the institution of slavery. His book titled “Passage on the Underground Railroad" will be published by University Press of Mississippi, scheduled for release in 2008, with a companion traveling exhibition being planned. Marc has published two books of his photography: “Urban Notions" (1983) and "The Black Trans-Atlantic Experience: Street Life and Culture in Ghana, Jamaica, England, and the United States" (1992). Recently he has created digital montages for several community specific residencies and public art projects.
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