November, 2008 - Fred L. Joiner

November 20, 2008

check this artist: Barkley L. Hendricks

First of all big ups to Google Reader because without it I would have never found out about this artist. I was reading John Keene’s blog J’s Theater and the a painting in his post caught my attention because it looked like a Kehinde Wiley ( I won’t link him, there is plenty of info out there about himyou can find it) , but it was actually a portrait done by Barkley L. Hendricks check out more of his work here . The similarities are pretty striking… check out the Fela portrait here to see how striking the similarities are; I like how keene put it on his blog. He said that “His (Hendricks) DNA is all up in Wiley’s and others’ work. ” Apparentely, The Studio Musuem after (w)rapping the Kehinde Wiley show put up Barkley L. Hendricks show and it will be up through March 15, 2009, get more info here

Big ups all the way around to Google Reader, John Keene for posting to J’s Theater, Sarah Ball for her article Battle of the Brushes of Urban Portraiture or Urban Outfitters , and the curators at the The Studio Museum of Harlem for their research in finding and showing Barkley L Hendricks.

Sources for this post.

http://jstheater.blogspot.com/

http://www.newsweek.com/id/169158

http://nasher.duke.edu/galleries/main_gallery/?cat=1&offset=0&pic_id=1

http://www.studiomuseum.org/barkley-l-hendricks-birth-of-the-cool/

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/h/barkley_l_hendricks/index.html

http://www.newsweek.com/id/169158

November 20, 2008

RIP Lawrence Wheatley

Sometimes I feel like “going fishing,”

Like life is just a can of worms.

A lonely musician, sitting here wishin’

You’d listen, but on my own terms.

—Lawrence P. Wheatley

Looking in The Post this afternoon I was a little blown to hear about the passing Jazz Pianist, Lawrence Wheatley. I only recall having heard him play once and before i could a chance to rap to him he had gotten up from the piano and walked out the door.

According to this article he apparently was a poet and called himself the “Bard of Bebop.” I would really have loved to talk to him about the INTERSECTION of jazz and poetry and how he negotiated that INTERSECTION in his work, if at all.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/19/AR2008111903942.html

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/display.php?id=12577

November 17, 2008

kind of blue

man i jumped on Google Reader to check one of my new favorite blogs (http://blackclassical.wordpress.com/) only to find that is now a protected blog.. Appearantly some ungrateful jerks really offended the tremendously generous soul who runs the site so he/she put the blog in protected mode..i cannot say I blame him or her..sucks for me and the rest of the world that really dug what they were doing over there. BlackClassical if you are reading this you are appreciated!