M. Saffell & Ibn (Collaborative Partners)






M. Saffell’s Artist Statement:

My departure from representational painting toward abstract works began with my creations of icons loaded with history - from pharaohs to ancient rulers to vessels of enslavement. I have submerged myself in the primal. My work often transports me to my spiritual homeland, the African continent, the cradle of man.

Painting makes me part of the free world in a primal manner. I work from small to large scale, modify my focus, and constantly investigate my surroundings. My smaller pieces become relics that inform my larger works. My larger pieces offer more of a challenge – their ancestral aspects speak to my soul.

I create my works by painting, printmaking, drawing, digital, carving and sculpting. Having worked as a cartographer, my vision is that normal forms are artistic shapes. I use any and everything; from smashed cans to found grids and architectural objects.

The focus of my work is to push the envelope of my subconscious. My current visual vocabulary merges cartography and drafting and is paired with both brilliant and muted hues mixed from dry pigment and balanced with soft and hard edge imagery.

Bio: M. Saffell

M. Saffell Gardner holds BFA and MFA degrees in painting from Wayne State University & currently teaches Black Art history & Computer Graphics at Marygrove College. A master painter and mixed media artist, Mr. Gardner is the recipient of a Regional Artists Project Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and has participated in arts mentoring programs in local public schools. In 2000, Mr. Gardner was selected as the Chivas Regal Artist in Residence at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, during which time he developed a solo art exhibit entitled “Recent Memory”. A commissioned painting “Door of No Return” is in the museum’s permanent collection. Recent commissions include the painting of a trash receptacle for Detroit’s “Pretty City” project as well as major commissions for the City of Detroit and the Detroit Public Schools.

Mr. Gardner’s work is in the permanent collection of Cobo Center in Detroit; Cass, Renaissance and Southeastern High Schools as well as the School for Fine and Performing Arts of Detroit, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Detroit Medical Center. He has exhibited throughout Mid-West, New York, Jamaica, Brazil and parts of Africa.

Chen Wang's Statement of participation:

One of my research aspect is culture and social related design. I often use poster as the outcome form for my visual idea. After reviewing all the topic related documents provided by Mursalata Muhammad, I wrote down few keywords that I wanted to interpret my idea: Historical, memorial, horrible, inhumane…that basically determined the tone and color for the poster and gave me an idea what kind of font to chose. The visual idea for this poster is based on Haiku #8:

everything hangs out of her
little black body
torn by big white men

What inspired me first was the internal tension and high contrast of this poem. Words like Little–big, black–white inspired me to use a transition between figure and background. I used two color silkscreen to print it out on a brown paper.

Bio: Chen Wang

Chen Wang obtained a Master of Fine Arts degree from University of Iowa in 2003. He has taught at Texas Tech University as an Assistant Professor in the Graphic Design Area. Currently he is an Assistant Professor at California State University, Fullerton.

Since coming to the United States, Chen has been included in numerous national and international contests and exhibitions. In 2006, his work has been selected into The ninth International Biennial of the Poster in Mexico (Mexico) and 4 Block: VI International Triennial of Eco Poster (Ukraine). In 2004, his work was selected into 19th New American Talent Competition (TX, USA). In 2003 his work was part of The 46th Annual International Award Exhibition (San Diego, USA). In 2002, he was included in The 2nd International Chinese Graphic Design Competition (China) and Click- Midwest Print Invitation: Digital Focus (WI, USA). He also received a cougar student design award (USA) and a Honorable Mention from Twenty-seventh Annual Rock Island Fine Arts Exhibition (IL, USA).

From: Mursalata Muhammad
To: HaikuArtist
Date: 1/3/2007 10:26:46 PM
Subject: Artwork Deadline

Greetings and Good New Year!

Just a reminder that the original deadline for getting your pieces to Grand Rapids is January 19, 2007! ...

FYI:
I've been asked a few (un)interesting questions about our little group. Usually the question comes out something like "After looking at the artists involved in the project, I don't see a connection between their work and the subject of your theme. Is there supposed to be a connection, will there be a connection, and how will a connection be accomplished?"

Here is my response to questions like this (yeah, it's a little long sorry):

Your question of connection is one I’ve gotten before and I’m always surprised when it’s asked. Many of the artists who showed an interest in this project expressed that, though the collaboration was intriguing, they didn’t see how their work connected to interpreting a set of Haiku about the TransAtlantic Slave Trade. My surprise by that sort of response is because I’ve always thought of artist as people whose life work was about connection, experience, empathy and stretching beyond narrow interpretations of individual and collective human experience.

This collaboration doesn’t ask artists to connect their work to the Haiku it asks them to interpret the Haiku. The unrestricted demand of interpretation makes up the core of what an artist is, in my humble opinion anyway. Our fearlessness to reach for interpretation and not rely on what we’ve already done makes the work of an artist a vocation that transcends a resume, curriculum vita, set of images on a website, in a magazine, or hanging in a gallery.

Each artist participating in this project is not expected to dust off a piece of previous work. Each artist has read and been moved by one of the 15 Haiku. Each artist is using their selected poem as a prompt to move toward an interpretation they have not considered before reading the Haiku. Each artist will create a work of art exclusively for what they’ve understood from their chosen Haiku. In creating their artwork each artist’s goal is moving beyond merely making a connection to the human experience embedded in the TransAtlantic Slave trade (and the theme of the 15 Haiku).

When this collaboration is done the various artistic genres that make the exhibit will look much like the present day fruits of the TransAtlantic Slave Trade a sight to behold in wonder with no clear way of distinguishing its once individual parts. So yes, there is supposed to be a connection once artists are moved by one of the Haiku, there will be a connection as each artist interprets the haiku in his/her work, and that connection will be accomplished through each artists’ personal vision of their vocation as artists. So keep this in mind all I say, I say for me and the artists working on this project have some strong feeling(s) calling them to participate. I think it will all be all right.

"summum bonum"

Hello,

I wanted to make an additinal comment on the Haiku project.
My first thoughts on Haiku#11 is that in a way it relates to my spiritual visual vocabulary as a visionary artist. I have collaborated with Ibn Pori Pitt for many years in printmaking, murals and installations.

Haiku #11
a celebrated
jailbreak from the whale's insides
Cinques come pouring

Historically I've studied artist such as Hale Woodruff and Romare Bearden who have used Cinque as an icon for their murals and prints. Over the years i have created middle passage iconography for my work. I have also visited Goree Island and made my connection with the middle passage.
The piece Ibn and I are working on will speak to that wondering spirit of Cinque and the middle passage.

Saffell peace

Lynn's Statement of participation:

When I read Haiku #13, the words “hope lives in their DNA” kept looping in my head. The words wouldn’t go away so I knew I had to choose #13.

Haiku 13
vomiting out life they are
cargo whose hope lives
in their DNA

Initially I played around with sketches of ship cargo holds lined with bodies layered with current photographs of descendants of slaves, but I wasn’t satisfied. What really interested me about this haiku was the idea of hope and resilience. As a mother, I was taken with the idea that what we begin, what we believe in, what we fight for, is carried on by our children and their children. So in the end I threw out the sketches and started adding DNA symbols as background, hair ornaments and toys to a collage of photographs of my daughter’s Washington, DC public school students.

Bio: Mollye Chudacoff

Mollye is an Art major at the University of California Santa Cruz. Her medium of artistic expression is photography, particularly black and white. Mollye’s major interest in photography is working with issues that deal with social change/documentation. Traveling plays a vital role in her recent work. Studying one semester in Ghana, West Africa this year has been the inspiration for her Haiku piece as well other projects that deal with globalization and neocolonialism.

Bio: Lynn Estomin

Lynn Estomin A videographer, photographer and computer artist who has been producing art that speaks to social issues for over twenty years. Her award-winning video documentaries have been exhibited at film festivals internationally and broadcast nationally on PBS. Her still photography and digital images have been exhibited nationally in a dozen solo exhibitions and over 50 group exhibitions. Her work is part of numerous public and private collections. Estomin has received grants and fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Art Matters Inc., Cincinnati Commission on the Arts, Kodak Corporation, Ilford Corporation, Sony Corporation, SIGGRAPH, the Luce Foundation and Women's Film Project. Lynn Estomin is an Associate Professor and chair of the Art Department at Lycoming College in PA, where she teaches photography, and digital art.

Chris Garcia's Statement of Participation:

In 2005, I began a series of sculptures, collages, and pottery based on the written works of other people. The ongoing project has led to pieces based on such diverse texts as The Kalevala, The Book of Mormon, R. Brautigan’s In Watermelon Sugar, and James Branch Cabell’s Jurgen. All of these pieces took on a playful, strange and whimsical character and were a lot of fun to create.

When I was approached for this project, I thought it was “right up my alley”. After all, I had spent the last two years working as a 3-D illustrator to other people’s text. What I had not counted on, however, was the difficulty I would have matching my style and ideas to Mursalata Muhammad’s Haiku poetry. My “whimsical” approach obviously would not fly, so I could get rid of that, but how about my artistic style? I tend to render figures that are primitive and grotesque. Could this work do visual justice to such a deadly serious and sad subject?

After several failed attempts, I came up with the conclusion that honesty, in art as in life, is always the best policy. From there, I re-read the Haikus and picked out the one that grabbed me personally, not visually. From there, I thought through my choice and decided that my reaction was not only led by my anger at injustice and cruelty, but also my own fears and phobias. What was it like to lie cramped in the dark, sailing to an unknown and dreaded end, shoulder to shoulder with the sick, dying and frightened? You could call out for solace, but you don’t speak the language of your fellow captives. The experience was, and is, the thing of nightmares and something I personally could never have endured. With this in mind, I molded a sculpture in reaction to Muhammad’s Haiku.

I am a mixed media artist. My studio and residence are in New Jersey.
I received my MFA from New Jersey City University. My work revolves around social issues. I am a pacifist. I believe in world harmony. I believe in justice.
This project is important, the stain on our nation’s history needs to be seen, acknowledged, and wept over.
Wrong was wrong, wrong is wrong. Enslaving another human being was wrong. Enslaving another human being is wrong. It is wrong today and it was wrong yesterday. The notion of relativism as an excuse for our forefathers and foremothers is not appropriate.
This is a moment for reflection.
My work for this project asks one to consider the pain, to consider the loss.
Pamela Flynn

Bio: Howard Tran

Howard Tran's artwork ranges from figurative sculpture to abstract, two-dimensional pieces. Utilizing traditional and non-traditional materials, he creates pieces that emphasize texture and symbols and reflect his Vietnamese/Chinese background.

Howard Tran received his BFA in sculpture from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco in 1998. He received his MFA in sculpture from Boston University in 2000. His work has been exhibited nationally in solo and group exhibitions. Howard Tran is an Assistant Professor of Art at Lycoming College.

Click to See: Chris At Work


Bio: Christopher Garcia

Christopher (Chris) Arthur Garcia (b. 1968). American ceramist making expressive figurative sculpture. After spending his childhood in Puerto Rico, G. studied Writing and Art at Bennington College, Vermont, graduating with a BFA in 1990. He also studied at the University of Arizona earning an MFA in 1992.

He taught at the Enabled Arts Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico, at Mississippi Valley State University, a historically African American college in Itta Bena, MS from 1995-96, at Big Bend Community College in Moses Lake, Washington from 1996-98 and at Antioch College, Ohio since 1999. His artist-in-residencies include Altos de Chavon in the Dominican Republic, The Art Farm in Nebraska In 1999 and 2003, Burren College of Art in Ballyvaughan, Ireland in 2002 and Pro Artibus in EkenŠs, Finland in 2005.

Haiku Middle Passage Commemorative Exhibit

Hello everyone,
I am collaborating on haiku #11 with Ibn Pori Pitts. We hope to make it an interactive piece of work.Ibn and I have been collaborating on projects for years(priintmaking , installationz muralz. This one in particular is exponentially fascinating.

blessings
Saffell

Creating Haiku #2
This particular piece (El Sol) was done with firm
pastel sticks on colored paper. To give it a rugged
feel, he rotated from right to left hand.

Upon artwork completion, I asked Daniel Miller
So you liked this project eh?!

His e-mail response:
From: daniel miller
To: Mursalata Muhammad
Date: 10/21/2006 3:40:38 AM
Subject: Bio, pics, process

Yes, this was actually a nice departure from the norm for me. Let me know if you have any more shows in mind, too. Wherever people enjoy art, I'd like to be seen.

Bio: Daniel Miller

Daniel Miller is a Character Animation graduate of
California Institute of the Arts. He came into the
school with the help of the Community Arts Partnership
(CAP) program and Watts Towers Art Center.

During his residence at California Institute of the
Arts, he produced, animated and did voice over for
over 7 animated films, one a computer generated piece.

His professional credits include Assistant Animator
and Tweener for the Adult Swim series, MINORITEAM, and
Art Director for California Institute of the Arts'
2006 Producer's Show. He also interned for Dreamworks
SKG in the Summer of 2001 under Frank Gladstone.

Currently, he is doing freelance art as well as
greeting card design for Paraiso Publishers in Vernon,
California.

Bit of Haiku Writing History:

The Haiku Middle Passage collection of poems came from a self-challenge. The 15 Haiku in the collection took over two years to complete. I did lots of research and was extremely exhausted by the time the first 13 were completed. The idea to try and create haiku around the Middle Passage experience came when I was a teaching assistant at Pennsylvania State University. I had the opportunity (not the experience or patience) to teach a creative writing course. My students belly-ached so much over how easy writing Haiku’s were that I lost all sense at being able to communicate to them the essence of this form. I now know that was because of my lack of personal experience with the form itself.

So I challenged myself to try and embody the elements of nature the form establishes – that’s why all the Haiku have settings on ships making their way through water (except number #1). Originally, I planned on writing 13 Haiku, one for each of my siblings including myself. Haiku’s 14 and 15 were added this year (2006) as an attempt to get crew member perspectives.

I made an important and conscious form change from the traditional syllable per line order of 5, 7, 5. With the exception of the first Haiku, all the others are 7, 5, 5. My decision to begin all subsequent Haiku with the middle represents the disruption caused by the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in the world. In short, the Haiku form can not mesh with the experience of the Middle Passage (like the people involved) without being some how changed.

The number associated with each poem only represents the sequence in which they were written. The poems are not meant to be listed in numerical order. I hope that seeing the numbers out of order helps to see the disruption of the experience.

These Haiku were an obsessive passion for me and when I was done part of me asked “Ok now what?” This collaborative project put a big dent in answering the “now what” question.

Well that’s the poet’s spill on this collection! They are my children and I’ve love them dearly, but I look forward to them leaving home.

My overall spill on poetry: Poems are visual art with the power to be exhibited like other forms of visual art.

Greetings:

Our collaborative project is off to an exciting beginning. Several artists have selected their Haiku for interpretation. One has already completed his Water Color interpretation of Haiku poem #2! I'm looking way past forward to see it.

I remember how long I labored over creating the 15 Haiku (about 2 years) and I'm glad I'm done! It was a challenging event; however, now it's beautiful to see the next phase of this collection. Hopefully, you'll soon see postings from the other artists involved detailing their experiences working on this collaborative project.

Better yet... maybe there will be a showing near you!