UPDATED

Saturday, July 12, at 2pm, Reginald F. Lewis Museum

Panel discussion with artists and scholars in conjunction with the exhibition

A People’s Geography: The Spaces of African American Life

Featuring:

Jason Miccolo Johnson
Photographer and Author of Soul Sanctuary: Images of the
African American Worship Experience

Deborah Willis, Ph.D.
Photographer and Professor, New York University

Stephen Marc
Photographer and Professor, Arizona State University

Linda Day Clark
Photographer and Professor, Coppin State University

Suzette Spencer, Ph.D.
Professor of Afro-American Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison

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The Reginald F. Lewis Museum Presents the Special Exhibit: “A People’s Geography: The Spaces of African American Life”
May 2, 2008 – September 7, 2008

For Immediate Release:
Baltimore, Maryland – (April 4, 2008) A People’s Geography: The Spaces of African American Life focuses on the relationships African Americans have to the geography of their environment. Through the eyes of contemporary artists, A People’s Geography imagines the spaces African Americans have created and navigated, from slavery to the present.

Conceived as a multi-media experience, the exhibition includes photography, film, and installations that reveal spaces sacred and profane, architectural and anatomical, public and private, which shape the legacy of Africans in the Americas. For example, churches and barbershops have a special significance in the cultural geography of African American experience. However, slave ship hulls and cotton fields also have forged the parameters of a collective history and memory. The exhibition features twenty artists who explore these varied sites of meaning. Among the artists included are Terry Boddie, Sheila Pree Bright, Linda Day Clark, Jason Miccolo Johnson, and Stephen Marc. The exhibition spans three thousand plus square feet, and includes a reading area and video installation space. A brochure accompanies the exhibition.

BACKGROUND
In the transit of enslaved persons between West Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States—which is referred to as the “Middle Passage”—African captives were tightly packed into cramped ships to maximize the number of persons transported. Contemporary artists use the image of sardine-like ship hulls to provide a visual record of that horrific voyage in which thousands of Africans died. Once Africans arrived on these shores, they were subjected to life in servitude in homes and on plantations. But not all enslaved persons obliged; some sought to escape. Artists in the exhibition creatively interpret the experiences of escape on the Underground Railroad—not a true railroad, but a network of safe spaces in which fleeing slaves could take shelter. In tracing these places and times past, the exhibition visualizes the landmarks and landscapes of African American journeys forward.


Although many African Americans were forced into over-crowded living quarters during and after slavery, the home still has been a source of pride for African Americans. Home is a space for nurturing children, caring for elders, and creating sanctuaries away from the outside world. By making and displaying quilts as well as other functional, but decorative objects, African Americans transformed humble living spaces into sites of beauty and admiration. Outside the home, barbershops and churches serve as key spaces for rituals of African American life. More than a place to get one’s hair cut, the barbershop is a site of uncensored conversations about local and national politics, about public heroes and private failures, and about race in America. Similarly, the church has been a stabilizing force in black communities, providing counsel and comfort to worshippers in all sectors of society. These spaces nurture our outer selves and inner spirit.

As A People’s Geography makes evident, all of the spaces African Americans navigate are charged with and changed by our presence. Whether it is the city streets pulsing with the sounds of teenagers or the quiet interiors of our grandparents’ homes, the spaces of our lives are filled with rhythms and textures that speak to our shared memory and evolving legacy.

The Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture produced A People’s Geography: The Spaces of African American Life to complement the Maps: Finding Our Place in the World exhibition at the Walters Art Museum, and as part of the spring 2008 Festival of Maps in Baltimore.


The Reginald F. Lewis Museum is Baltimore’s premier facility highlighting the history and accomplishments of African Americans with a special focus on Maryland’s African American community. Through its permanent exhibitions, the Reginald F. Lewis Museum is dedicated to sharing the courageous journeys toward freedom and self-determination made by African American Marylanders. Through its changing exhibitions, the museum presents the history and culture of Africans throughout the Diaspora. The Reginald F. Lewis Museum is located near Baltimore’s Inner Harbor at the corner of Pratt and President Streets. For more information, please call 443-263-1800 or visit the museum’s website at www.AfricanAmericanCulture.org

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Exhibition Fact Sheet
Title: “A People’s Geography: The Spaces of African American Life”
Venue: The Reginald F. Lewis Museum, Baltimore, Maryland
Dates: May 2, 2008 through September 7, 2008
Description: Through the eyes of contemporary artists, A People’s Geography imagines the spaces African Americans have created and navigated, from slavery to the present.

Organizer: The Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture organized A People’s Geography: The Spaces of African American Life to complement the Maps: Finding Our Place in the World exhibition at the Walters Art Museum, and as part of the spring 2008 Festival of Maps in Baltimore.
Curator: Michelle Joan Wilkinson, Ph.D.
Contact: Roxanne Umphery-Lucas 443-263-1812
Hours: Regular museum hours are Tuesday through Saturday 10:00 am to 5:00 pm. Sunday 12:00 noon – 5:00 pm. The Museum is closed on Mondays and certain holidays
Admission: Admission is $8 adults, $6 seniors and students with I.D., 6 years and under free and museum members are free. The museum box office accepts cash, American Express, MasterCard, Visa and Discover.

Highlights from the Exhibition


Stephen Marc, Untitled, from Walking in the Footsteps series (2006)

Terry Boddie, Blue Print (2002)

Sheila Pree Bright, Suburbia # 13 (2006)

what you would call a two-fer

Sheila and Julian (with whom I used to work many years ago--lovely man)?! They're at the High Museum talking about Sheila's current exhibition, Young Americans.

Find more videos like this on www.truveo.com.

Check out images from Sheila Pree Bright's Young Americans series, which is currently on view at the High Museum in Atlanta (which opens this Saturday!), here:
http://projects.accessatlanta.com/gallery/view/arts/bright0425/?cxntlid=aa-hp-rtr

including a very sweet image of Sheila, who I know doesn't like to be photographed:

Sheila Pree Bright is one of my favorite photographers--so smart and her work is so thoughtful and interesting.

Check out her upcoming exhibition, "Young Americans" (and her mySpace page)

And hey all you publishers out there--why are you sleeping on this artist?! Publish her!

The High Museum of Art, Atlanta

May 3 - August 10, 2008

Lisa Henry and Julian Cox, curators

UPDATED: Here's the press release: SheilaPreeBrightRelease.FINAL.pdf

Traveling to:

The Amistad Center for Art @ Culture at The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art before touring nationally.

Project Statement:

The Millennial better known as Generation Y, born in or after 1982 in the 20th century are the most influential generation since the baby boomers. Market research suggests Generation Ys who are in their mid 20s and younger are civic-minded and socially conscious as individual consumers and employees. They have been pressed for their vote, sought for their purchasing power and watched closely by sociologists and historians for insight into the way this generation will shape the future. As a group, they are unlike any other youth generation. They are more affluent, better educated, technologically savvy, blunt and expressive, image driven, and the most ethnically diverse. This is a rising generation who has grown up on the war on terror and the 1st Gulf war and who will be the next leaders to run this country.

In Young Americans I am exploring Generation Y's (between the ages of 18 to 25) thoughts and feelings about America, giving them a platform for their voice to be heard thru portraiture. I chose to use the American Flag as part of their apparel, because it represents liberty, freedom and pride in this country.

Before they come to my studio each individual was asked to think about how they would see themselves with the American Flag. Once they arrive at the studio we would sit down and talk about America and then shortly after they would write a written statement. Once they finished we began the shoot.

What I am experiencing as the observer/photographer so far is that this diverse generation is much more aware of the world because of the national tragedies such as 9/11 terrorist attacks, hurricane Katrina, and the immigrant issues which have given them their own brand of social consciousness. In Shawn's statement--who was born in Guam--he asked the question, “America…… wants to be on top of the world. I just wonder, when it comes time to fall, who will want to help?"

if you're in NY

(thanks, Deb)

Friday, December 14, 2007
Arts
Museum and Gallery Listings









SHEILA PREE BRIGHT: 'SUBURBIA' In a show intended as an alternative
view of contemporary African-American life, Sheila Pree Bright turns
from images of street culture to those of upper-middle-class
domesticity as reached by commuter train. Some of the elegant
interiors have a self-aware black identity built into their décor,
through faux leopard skin and tribal sculptures in one case, and a
collection of racist cartoon ceramics in another. But over all, the
houses could belong to any suburban world anywhere. 138 Gallery, 138
West 17th Street, (212) 633-0324, gallery138.com; closes on Friday. (Cotter)

also

* KAMOINGE: ‘REVEALING THE FACE OF KATRINA’ 
The 10 artists in this group show are members of Kamoinge, a collective
of African-American photographers founded in 1963. All traveled to
different parts of the Gulf region in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina
and recorded, in distinctively different ways, what they found: ruined
neighborhoods in a panoramic view of the Lower Ninth Ward by Gerald
Cyrus; displaced citizens in portraits by Collette V. Fournier, John
Pinderhughes, Herb Robinson and Radcliffe Roye; signs and memorials in
pictures by Salimah Ali. The individual images are gripping; the
cumulative record far more than that. HP Gallery at Calumet Photo, 22
West 22nd Street, (212) 989-8500, calumetphoto.com, through Dec. 28. (Cotter)

Go, Sheila!

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Wear this flag and talk to me

Focus On Arts: Photographer stops at Winston-Salem State during tour to give voice to the attitudes of America's Generation Y

By Tom Patterson

Sheila Pree adjusts the flag wrapped around Michael Wright of Gastonia, a freshman at Winston-Salem State. Her photos, taken at Diggs Gallery, will be part of an exhibit to premiere at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta next year. (Journal Photo by Lauren Carroll)

Sheila Pree, a photographer from Atlanta, is looking for members of "Generation Y" - young people from 18 to 25 - who are willing to be photographed with the U.S. flag in poses that reflect something about their identities and their feelings about the country.

Last week she brought her search to Winston-Salem State University. On Monday and Tuesday the university's Diggs Gallery was temporarily closed to the public so she could use it as a makeshift studio. She made color photographs of 15 students posed with a large U.S. flag against a white backdrop.

Images that she selects from these studio sessions and others she is holding in cities across the country will become part of a series titled "Young Americans," set to premiere in May as a solo exhibition at Atlanta's High Museum of Art. The photographs are also scheduled to travel to the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Conn., and to be reproduced in a book devoted to the series, Pree said.

"Young Americans" is the first series in which Pree has focused on generational identity. Her parents are black Americans from Waycross, Ga., she said, but she was born and raised in Germany as an "Army brat" and never lived in a predominantly black neighborhood.

Pree said she began working on her "Young Americans" series in July, after she came up with the idea of using the U.S. flag as a prop. "Young people born between 1983 and 2000 make up the biggest generation since the baby boomers, but they're often negatively portrayed in our society," she said. "I wanted to give them a platform to speak for themselves, to show and tell how they feel about this country."

Rather than directing her subjects, Pree said, she collaborates with them by allowing them to choose what to wear, how to pose and how to interact with the flag in the photographs.

"One of them said to me, 'Nobody has ever allowed us this type of freedom before,'" she said.

While the sessions are in progress Pree encourages her subjects to talk about their ideas and feelings about America. She makes audio recordings of these exchanges and plans to include some of the recordings in the exhibition, so that viewers can listen to them on iPods while looking at the photos.

Josh Phifer, an 18-year-old Winston-Salem State freshman from Charlotte, posed for Pree on Monday afternoon. In talking about the session afterward, he said, "I took her idea a step further and tried to show how I feel as a black person about America. For one of my poses I had the flag enveloping my body, and I held my fist up. For another one I held out the flag and looked down at it, to represent the struggle of black people in the past and how much I've gained by that struggle."

About the generational theme of Pree's project, Phifer said, "There's so much negativity about this generation. I just want to be able to make a change in the way people perceive us."

Soon after she began the project, Pree said, a group of art patrons from Hartford, Conn., came to her studio during a visit to Atlanta. One member of the group was on the board of directors for the Aetna Foundation in Hartford, and was so enthusiastic about Pree's project that she arranged for the foundation to award Pree a $45,000 grant to complete it, Pree said. She said that she spent most of the money on the Hasselblad camera and special lenses she is using to make the photographs.

Belinda Tate, the Diggs Gallery's director and curator, also visited Pree's studio last summer, while in Atlanta for the city's annual Black Arts Festival. Tate had arranged to talk with Pree about acquiring additional photographs from her "Plastic Bodies" series for Winston-Salem State's art collection.

"She told me about the new project she was working on, and I immediately fell in love with the idea," Tate said. "She wasn't originally planning to come to Winston-Salem, but I wanted to create a voice for our students within her project, and I was able to convince her to come here. Participating in this project is a wonderful opportunity for Winston-Salem State to demonstrate the diversity of the student body and to give a voice to our students who might not otherwise be heard."

Pree said she began making photographs for the project in Atlanta, and before coming to Winston-Salem she made additional photos at several northeastern colleges and universities, including Yale, Trinity College and the University of Connecticut. "But this project is not just about schools," she said. "I want to include young people from diverse backgrounds and from all socio-economic groups."

After leaving Winston-Salem, Pree was scheduled to make photos for the project in New York. She said she also plans to photograph young people in New Orleans, Little Rock and Memphis, and hopes to schedule sessions in California.

She said that her sessions to date have yielded 45 to 50 of the 100 photographs she wants to include in the series, and that she aims to complete the project early next year.

Pree, 37, holds a master of fine arts degree from Georgia State University in Atlanta, where she has lived since 1996. Her previous work highlighted issues related to ethnic identity and gender. Her "Suburbia" series focused on suburban-dwelling black Americans.

In her "Plastic Bodies" series, Pree merged images of dolls and black American women to critically examine body-enhancement practices driven by the physically idealized portrayal of women in the mass media. A gallery representing Pree's work has donated a photo from the latter series to Winston-Salem State's art collection.