Asmar Fine Art

“Atum Flow”

AFA — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 18:49:56 +0000

“Atum Flow”

Curator, Ludlow Bailey and Arc Gallery

present

“Atum Flow”

In conjunction with “Much Strings Attached”

Exhibition: Jul 4-10, 2010

Featuring the work of American-based global artists Kerry Coppin, Shelia Elias and Derrick Grant
www.asmarfineart.com

“The word Atum originates from the ancient Egyptian notion of God.
The power of Atum flow derives from the process of being creating itself.”
– Curator, Ludlow Bailey

Opening:	July 4, 2010 2pm-7pm
Location:	Arc Gallery 11 Hale Wharf Ferry Lane London N179NF www.artarc-collective.com
RSVP:	ludlowebailey@gmail.com or gallery tel. 44(0) 8808 7741

“Much Strings Attached, featuring the work of Uchay Joel Chima, will run through July 13, 2010

Sheila Elias

AFA — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 01:05:19 +0000

Statement

My work is about the layers of life and art history, seeking in it a connection between art aesthetics and social consciousness.

I like to portray a perception of urban tension, raw emotions and harsh realities tempered with gentle optimism and beauty, countering an American dream that has gone a bit astray.

American sensibilities have influenced my life, the hues of my country found in the colors of my canvas. I like to bring an awareness of new directions and individual inventiveness.

Derrick S.Grant

AFA — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 00:57:47 +0000

Derrick S.Grant

Artist’s Statement
As an artist I bring both my scientific background (anatomy and cell biology) as well as education in art and fuse these concepts in a novel and innovative way. My art borrows elements from renaissance art and surrealism and these essential concepts are then combined using computers and traditional painting to give birth to a revolutionary approach to visual interaction with the canvas. I consider myself a digital painter that uses the computer as a tool to enhance the standard paint medium to include intense colors and reflective surfaces so that the viewer of the art piece enters the story illustrated on canvas. My approach to art is to illustrate with passion, this renaissance/surrealistic visions and cerebral dreams and apply scientific principals to traditional painting in order to revolutionize the interaction one (the viewer) has with each allegoric piece.

When creating this original art, my intention is to involve the observer, as much as possible, in the story being portrayed by the art piece. Therefore, every piece is thought of, and created by imagining the final canvas as a three-dimensional creation (as if one were to peek into a room) that draws the observer into the story. This is why a reflecting sphere is always present within view of the person looking at the piece. Additionally, I want the observer to feel the emotion of the characters illustrated in each piece, thus, the figures do not wear clothes and their bodies are composed of a network that reflects their nature (result of life’s effect on the body) and emotional condition. For example, a figure with a disorganized mesh indicates an unstable person, if the character’s color is red then the figure is passionate, if blue then the figure is withdrawn and cold.

Based on this prologue, this is why I use 3D computer programs that employ forms created within the potential 3D space of the computer monitor. After arranging the structures within this space, I paint the contents digitally (called mapping), determine the lighting and atmospheric conditions, then direct the computer to render (create from a 3D mathematical function to 2d pictorial realization) the image. This rendered image is then taken to a photo manipulation program where lighting, shadows, and colors are modified to satisfy my creative needs.

Finally the image is then taken to a painting program that allows me to use a pen-like mouse to draw structures on the image; i.e., hair, water, sand, leaves, and skin textures. The final image is then printed on canvas or on paper with Epson Chromium long-live inks. In the case of the canvas further painting is done (after several coatings of polyurethane) with either acrylics or oil to intensify the colors, make corrections or to bring out the nuances (skin, hair, water foam, trees) in the piece and to increase the interaction of the reflected light with the surface of the canvas. This approach results in an art piece that feels similar to the Renaissance artwork yet has a mixture of the Surrealist approach with a modern feel of highly reflective lights and potential images (seen in the spheres) in that reflect information to the viewer.

It is my goal to impact the emotion of everyone who sees my work so that the initial viewing affects their mind and heart before they can perceive the visual aspect with their eyes. I believe that art can touch us this way and be a messenger directly to the subconscious. Currently I am exploring the nature of African Caribbean people and their search for an identity beyond the diverse cultural/ethnic mélange that comprises our many islands and force us to lose who we really are. Please see the attached examples of my work.

Kerry Coppin

AFA — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 00:52:18 +0000

Kerry Stuart Coppin
Interpretive Photography: Urban Africa and the Diaspora

Kerry Coppin (www.kerrycoppin.com)

Artist Statement

“The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny, and it is useless for the innocent to try by reasoning to get justice . . .”

- Aesop: The Wolf and the Lamb, 1479

It is my ambition to produce provocative photographic interpretations that elaborate and celebrate positive aspects of the Black community experience. I am particularly interested to pursue visual examination of the Black urban African experience. I am convinced (in the words of bell hooks) that “the lives of black people are complex, and are therefore worthy of sophisticated critical analysis and reflection . . .” I am trying to use photography as a tool, an instrument, to “change the way we as Black people look at ourselves and the world . . .” I hope through my work to contribute to our sense of world community; to help “create a world where Blackness, and Black people, can be looked upon with open eyes . . .” I recognize that “there is no naked, honest, simple way for it to be done (for a white man to look at a Black man),” but perhaps, as Black people, we can look at each other.

My photographs are often misinterpreted as documentary photography. They are not documentary photography. My photographs are interpretations, testaments, and poems. They are indictments! Not the first, nor the last, in an ongoing debate – the means by which people of African descent will restore our histories and cultures to their rightful place in the world community. They are bricks in a wall of cultural resistance. They are Percussion: “the striking together of two bodies, especially when noise is produced / the sound, vibration, or shock caused by the striking together of two bodies . . .” I am percussionist. My photographs function as percussion, in an attempt to contribute to an ongoing dialogue, which has the potential to heal and reconstruct – to produce a tangible social and economic effect on the lives of people and community.

“By way of selective representation, deplorable images are often telecast in the western [media] to depict African predicament and the urgency for western style agency. Many representations of Africa lack a comprehensive discussion about Africa’s economy, history, culture, and more especially, urban life. The total neglect of Africa’s rich culture, urban life, social changes, extended family support systems, women’s economic organizations and involvement in supporting families often result in a truncated picture of the continent . . .”

I pursue visual interpretation of the Black urban experience in Africa, and the Diaspora, as it may be used to shape a reinterpretation of our understanding of the African continent and its rich human potential. We may choose to allow language or allow culture, national borders, and economic and political systems of government, to separate and alienate us. Or, we can choose to use all the systems of contemporary society / post-modern world, including systems of art, as tools to forge unions between the many diverse and disparate communities of African descent in the New World, and around the globe. We may choose to use the systems, of art and culture, to cultivate, annotate, and to perpetuate, the experience and expression of our communities. We may choose to use art as a catalyst for social, cultural, and economic change: for the ultimate reconstruction of the nations of Africa and her communities and countries in the New World. My visual research – humanistic photography – is an attempt to use artistic discipline to provoke and inspire meaningful dialogue aimed at change: to change the perception of Africa, her people, countries, and communities, around the globe, as a means to creating physical, spiritual, social, political and economic progress.

In the afterword to Untitled, Diane Arbus’s 1995 Aperture monograph, Doon Arbus (her daughter) provides an interpretation of her mothers photographs that is provocative and representative of our most ambitious photographic enterprise when she writes: “Created out of the courage to see things as they are, the grace to permit them to simply be, and a deceptive simplicity that permits itself neither fancy nor artifice – shows us metaphors embodied in the facts, riddles without words or answers, fragments of an unwritten fairy tale. They are revelatory rather than didactic, . . . their very existence . . . proof that nothing conjured by the imagination could be as awesome or exhilarating or magical or baffling as an encounter with reality . . .”

The interface of this “encounter with reality” – my encounter with reality – is the camera and lens . . . But what if the reality which we are encountering is the reality of African contribution to world thought, world culture, and world spiritual enterprise?

My visual research projects result in individual portfolios, and contribute to the creation of ongoing bodies of photographic work, for exhibition and publication, which deconstruct negative representations of Africa. It is percussion . . . A means to examine, interpret, and document: “to demonstrate that the camera, in concert with the written word, has the power to make judgments, give meaning, speak for the powerless and create reality. This constructed reality ultimately can shape the form and content of our knowledge of Africa . . .”

My photographs are an act of rebellion; an assault on the tyranny of an unjust world . . . Through photography I attempt “to try by reasoning to get justice . . .”

“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion . . .”

- Albert Camus, 1957

Relentless Resilience

AFA — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 04:51:52 +0000

Items available for purchase

AFA — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 04:50:18 +0000

Title of Print: Untitled: The Great Sphinx of Giza / Giza Plateau, Egypt
Media: Giclée Print (archival, pigment, inkjet print)
Dimensions: Image: 15.7 x 38 / Paper: 22 x 44 / Frame: 22 x 44
Date: 2005

Artist/Photographer: Kerry Stuart Coppin

Price: $3,000

*50 percent of sale proceeds will go to theUniversity of Miami’s
Global Institute’s Haiti Relief Fund.

Relentless Resilience | About the Show

AFA — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 04:09:29 +0000

Relentless Resilience | About the Show

The University of Miami’s Department of Art and Art history, Africana Studies and Yele Haiti present …. “ Relentless Resilience: Harnessing the energy of contemporary African Diaspora Aesthetics”, an art exhibition celebrating Black History month with a unique focus on the artistic contribution of Haiti. The show, curated by international art curator, Ludlow Bailey, will run from February 1, 2010 to February 28, 2010 at the University’s College of Arts & Sciences/Wesley Gallery, 1210 Stanford Drive, Coral Gables, FL 33146. (305) 284-2542.

The exhibition will include a series of lectures and will feature the works of African-American Artist, Ansel Butler; Jamaican Artist, Kristie Stephenson and Haitian-American Artists, Asser Saint-Val, Guy Syllien and Fred Thomas.

Ansel Butler is an Atlanta based artist who is well known for his provocative portraitures on wood. Ansel holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Southern University A&M, Baton Rouge, LA as well as a Bachelor of Sciences degree in Computer Science from Southern University A&M, Baton Rouge, LA, 1990.

Asser Saint-Val is a graduate of the New World School of The Arts and holds a BFA from the University of Florida. Mr. Saint-Val was the 2006 winner of the prestigious, “South Florida Consortium Award.”

Guy Syllien has been featured on “NBC’s Good Morning America. Mr. Syllien is also a graduate of the New World School of The Arts. He is a multimedia artist and works with found objects and prefers to use mostly acrylics in his well crafted paintings.

Fred Thomas has been painting since his elementary school in Haiti. He attended the Centre d ‘Art and the Centre de Ceramique in Port au Prince. He also holds a BA in Philosophy and Religion from Union University and a Masters Degree in Psychology. He is currently an artist in residence at Art South of Homestead.

Kristie Stephensen was born in Kingston, Jamaica and studied graphic design at the Edna Manley College for the Visual and Performing Arts. She holds a Masters Degree in Architecture from RISD (The Rhode Island School of Design.) Her work is highly informed by multicultural spiritual ideas of myth and legend.

The College of Arts & Sciences/Wesley Gallery is free and open to the public. A special opening reception will be held on Feb 19, 2010 from 6:30pm-9pm.

The following lectures, intended to contextualize the exhibition will be presented in conjunction with the exhibition:

1. African Diaspora Art and Heritage as Catalysts for the Reconstruction of Haiti

2. African Diaspora Art and Healing

Related Links:

Relentless Resilience

AFA — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:15:57 +0000

The University of Miami’s Department of Art and Art History, Africana Studies, The Global Institute and international art curator, Ludlow Bailey present:

“Relentless Resilience” is an art exhibition celebrating Black History Month with a unique focus on three contemporary Haitian artists from the Miami community. Part of the collection will be available for sale.

A portion of the revenues will go to support University of Miami’s Global Institute’s Haiti Relief Fund.

The Artists

Asser Saint-Val

Guy Syllien

Kristie Stephenson

Ansel Butler

Fred Thomas

The Show:

Location:

University of Miami

College of Arts & Sciences, Wesley Gallery

1210 Stanford Drive, Coral Gables, FL 33146

305.284.2542

Duration:

February 7 – 28, 2010

Gallery Hours:

10am-5pm daily

Grand Opening

Friday, February 19, 2010

6:30pm – 10pm

>About the show

Relentless Resilience – Cover Page

AFA — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 07:53:44 +0000

>More

“Hidden Names / Complex Fate” – #1

AFA — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 06:15:46 +0000

Kerry Stuart Coppin

Title of Print: Untitled: The Giza Plateau, Egypt
Media: Giclée Print (archival, pigment, inkjet print)
Dimensions: Image: 15.7 x 38 / Paper: 22 x 44 / Frame: 22 x 44
Date: 2005

Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center / Cambridge / Massachusetts
December 30, 2005 – March 3, 2006

[About] your project and your stories … do u know what, [those are] very great and important pictures that you [make] to tell all of the world the truth about the real Africa and the great [many] things that you saw here in Egypt, about the industry and the modern city Cairo … I hope also that you changed your ideas about the Arabians and the Muslims here in Egypt …
- Sherif Gaberty / architecture student / University of Cairo, Egypt / 2005