Fish and Chips Pt. 1

peace all, been a long time since blogging about things going on, but felt this one had to land on my blog. This year's been very interesting for me and my art. What looked like a great first half of the year came to a halt, beginning with being laid off from a contract because of complaints. What were the complaints? Wasn't told to me nor the agency, but one look at me and my beard and what I represent, and there is no need for more questions. Discrimination is rearing it's ugly head, or should I say becoming more obvious is this colorblind, multicultural society of different beliefs, ethnicities, and other walks of life...I can't believe I actually said such a thing without getting sick.

 I took a long hiatus from a lot of things, especially art, until I decided to come back stronger than before, I created a couple of pieces and submitted them to a juried art exhibit that I felt was liberal and open to ideas and subjects, especially since they feigned interest in showing my last work, Portrait of My Hood, which depicted the marginalization of inner city residents, neglecting their needs for a decent quaility of life, and setting them up for gentrification, among other heinous crimes of humanity, but I guess being Black or people of color in general is still not a real concern for America, huh? This gallery, which moved to another location in North Dallas, held another exhibit in which they entitled CONTAINED, and claimed that they didn't mind loose interpretations of containment. Well, seeing that they seemed to love my work, I hit 'em with two blows to the head, entitled Complex I and Ghetto Ingredients, the latter can be seen on my website as a featured piece by clicking HERE.

Complex I deals with inferiority complexes among African Americans, and it's manifestations of self-hatred , which is a by product of institutionalized racism from all aspects of American society, and to cap it off, in the background is the symbol from the controversial bestseller The Bell Curve, which I won't go into it's own critique at this momemt. Recently I have discovered that some people have attempted to give it the name Colorism, because it deals within the African American race. However when one fully researches the issue, it appears to be a misnomer, placing the blame solely on African Americans, omitting the root cause of the problem, which is racism, supplying misleading information by mentioning slavery as the root cause, and giving a false impression that slavery is over, and therefore the lingering "colorism" that is displayed in African Americans is another form of proof of Blacks' supposed "intellectual inferiority" and lack of reasoning. I wanna take this time out to thank Oprah Winfrey and others who propogate this nonsense in an effort to stay away from truly holding those person/s/entities responsible for the pathological brainwashing of people of color.

Well any, back to the subject at hand...I received a letter of rejection from the gallery, which put it so lovely that while they enjoyed my work, it just didn't make the cut...oh ducky... I kinda figured that since this gallery was moving to another area inside of a mall which renovated it's second floor and rented many floors to artists as "studios" the subject matter would be mainly escapism, which is the word of the day in the art world. Unfortunately this would be the same word for African American artists too, as I have also discovered in my travails this year into the art world. But I take it all in stride...God(Allah) is still in control....Part 2 later...