Queens Artist Jocelyn M. Goode Brings The Community Together In An Upcoming Art Exhibition Premiere Event

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Saint Albans, NY (November 10, 2010)--On Saturday, November 20th, from 4-7pm, artist Jocelyn M. Goode will host the premiere exhibition event for her new painting series, “Concerning The Crack”. The eight piece collection was created in part from a grant awarded to Goode in January 2010 by the Queens Council on the Arts. “Concerning The Crack” explores the generational gap in the African-American community between people 21 years-old and younger and 40 years-old and older. Using photography, typography and painting, Goode fuses together the images and words of people in her community. Young and old participated in the project by agreeing to be photographed and interviewed about their opinions of problems facing the Black community and how the Crack Epidemic and the Technological Revolution have affected inter-generational relationships. Each painting is 36” x48”, completed in acrylic paint with printed page pieces of stylized type.

The free exhibition will also include an artist talk and an afterparty with guest performances by “The Rockout King” DJ Sylk, singer ArinMaya, emerging poet Poetic Flow and dancer Delicia Davis Burrell. “I want this to be more than a show where people just look at art. I want it to be a community gathering where we can break bread and enjoy the culture around us”, says Goode of her show, which she has designed to cater to an audience that may be unfamiliar with art openings. Food will be provided at the conclusion of the event and guests will have the opportunity to show their support by making a donation to the on-going fundraising Goode must do to continue to put on community art events. Local businesses such as By The Rock Pizza and Gyro and Positive Images by Joan along with individuals on Farmers Blvd. gave over $125 in one week to help off-set the exhibition’s expenses.

The African Center for Community Empowerment (ACCE) located at 111-20 Farmers Blvd has been one of Goode’s key parners and has donated their space for the event. “Concerning The Crack” will be second art show held at the Center, which provides an afterschool program to neighborhood youth diring the week. Last August, Ben Rowe advised by Goode, completed a mural on the side of the ACCE building. This event is just the beginning of other creative initiatives artist Jocelyn M. Goode has in store to revive St. Albans’ legacy of artistic greatness.

To explore the history and intention of “Concerning The Crack” futher, visit www.concerningthecrack.com

Tips for Successful Selling Online from Chanel Kennebrew, Artistic Money-Maker

by Jocelyn M. Goode

How many artists dream of making a living from their art? A popular fantasy for a countless number of creative people working daily on their craft, but often without any method to actualize a salary, profit or even one sale. Equally common is the myth that artists are terrible at business, further making their ultimate wish nothing more than a pipe dream.

Reality is, there are thousands of artists who have discovered all sorts of ways to get their work seen and sold. The internet is one of the most thriving free markets, filled with software, tools and websites made especially to aid artists and craft-makers in the sale of their products. In this article, FAIM Internet Magazine shares some effective practices from one artist/designer on how to make money online.

Chanel Kennebrew is the founder of Junkprints (www.junkprints.com). On her site you will find a fly, funky, hip-hop, retro collection of limited-edition goodies she has designed along with samples of her illustrations, editorials and product designs.

She recently collaborated with Birkenstock and ReadyMade Magazine to create a run of shoes embellished with her hand drawings. Chanel's other honorable mentions include working as the Art Director of Fredflare.com and features in Honey Magazine, The New York Sun Newspaper, on the Discovery Channel and Good Morning America.

So how did this 27-year old African-American woman from Inglewood, CA get to this point of success? Well the story goes something like this: after earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Toronto she moved to Brooklyn with aspirations to make it as a "New York artist". After hustling her work from gallery to gallery, it wasn't long before she asked herself, "how do you get in? It doesn't seem to about the work...So I focused on making money and having food in the fridge...somewhere down the line I needed to create for myself and I'm not interested in running the gamut and chasing everyone down."

Step One: List your stuff in a communal marketplace
She started an etsy account. For those not familiar with the site (www.etsy.com), it is "your place to buy and sell all things handmade". So long as the items are not mass-produced, creators can have an account for free and list products for $.20 each. The marketplace is a community in itself that produces a high amount of daily traffic and is definitely worth exploring for those interested introducing their art to an online sell space. Chanel saw that people, including art dealers and collectors, liked her "junk" and were buying it quickly. Still she needed a real marketing plan.

Step Two: Subscribe to a service and promote through email blasts.
After really studying what large companies did to attract customers, Chanel asked herself, "how can I do it for myself on a smaller scale?" The answer led her to employ the services of VerticalResponse (www.verticalresponse.com) which offers a number of plans to enable business to send e-blasts, surveys and postcards without limit for as little as $10 a month. With this element of marketing added, Chanel saw increased sales and began to consider taking it to the next level by quitting her freelance gigs and selling online full-time.

Step Three: Do quit your day job...
This is where faith, determination, guts and discipline come into play. Quitting your day job to invest the time and energy necessary to grow your own business is a decision of definite courage. Yet for Chanel, she just took the leap. "I took a pay decrease but I feel better about the day-to-day." So what does that day-to-day look like? She spells out her routine,"I get up early, around 7 or 8 in the morning and run or something to get my mind running. Then I go to the blog and get stuff off my chest."

Step Four: Blog regularly
Her blog, Dookyblog, loving subtitled as "a fine place to talk shit" , uses a customized Wordpress template. Wordpress (www.wordpress.com) is the best reputed host for bloggers. It cost nothing to get started and the company has a wide selection of features, widgets and templates to help you personalize your blog to your content. Blogging is important because it gives the Junkprints audience a reason to visit the site regularly and to interact with Chanel by leaving comments.

Step Five: Manage your store
After updating her blog, Chanel moves to the store part of her site. Even though she lists on etsy.com, she is able to manage that account from Junkprints and prefers to keep traffic centralized that way. Another e-commerce tool that she uses is Big Cartel (www.bigcartel.com), "a simple shopping cart for artists [that is] easy to use, customizable and awesome." Their plans are free for beginners, but advance to upgraded ones where the user can fully customize, offer discount codes, track statistics in depth and use their own URL, all without a contract or commitment. Chanel likes Big Cartel because the user-friendly interface offers more control. Here she can keep track of her inventory, fulfill new orders and identify the items that are the most popular.

Step Six: Make more friends micro-blogging
An avid twitterer (www.twitter.com), Chanel loves engaging on the micro-blog site where messages must be sent in 140 characters or less. Throughout her day, she is able to share photos of her latest creations with her "followers" with the convenience of her updates linking to her facebook (www.facebook.com) page as well. If she is busy, particularly during holiday seasons, she will schedule her tweets at FutureTweeets (www.futuretweets.com), a free service that lets you plan your Twitter messages and have them sent at a specific time in the future.

Chanel emphasizes the importance of social networking beyond the "look at me!" factor. It is about responding and building relationships with people. She adds, "my online presence is the main way I receive press. I let the people decide what is valid instead of sending out flyers to the press. I use technology to promote and to be an artist." Still, she keeps her online activity limited to three-four hours out of the day and then focuses on making the art and creating special projects.

The biggest challenges of running an online business is having the discipline to manage one's time effectively and efficiently. For Chanel, that meant establishing regular hours, even a regular schedule. All entrepreneurs experience highs and lows, so determination is also key for long-term success. Yet, the integration of social media tools aids tremendously in growing a business, particularly when working with a limited budget.

Step Seven: Success defined
So the big question is how much money does Junkprints make for Chanel? Well she did not give a numeric answer but simply said this, "I live in my own spot in Brooklyn, I do this full-time with no part-time gig, and I just got back from spending a month in Costa Rica." Clearly, for her success is about having a lifestyle that enables her to be creative on her own terms and to share with her work with those who appreciate it, and to make enough to take a long-vacation every now and then.

"The internet is my gallery and the people are the curators...my work is for the people so I will stay online."

Who's Representing the Black Subject?-Part Two

commentary by Jocelyn M. Goode

My fascination with the representation of black subjects is a personal one. It is now the year 2010. The presence and influence of black culture worldwide is prevalent and undisputed. Still, black people as subjects of musical lyrics, film productions, television shows, radio programming, magazine editorials and fine art is highly marginalized. And even when a black subject matter is presented, it is more common to see the negative aspects of blackness highlighted over the positive. Why is this, especially in the instances when black authors/artists are the creators of the work? Of course the answers are layered in all sorts of historical, political, psychological and economic factors but my experiment last week at the Armory Show was another attempt to extract data to further analyze the conundrum.

When talking about art and showcasing, the underlying issue is sales. Once art moves into the gallery space, it becomes an object for purchase. Preference and taste increase in importance at this point and new questions comes into play: how consumable is art that features black subjectivity? How willing are patrons to buy this type of work and which galleries support it to even present it to their audience? The answers to these most likely provide some insight as to why fine art showing blackness is such a minority.

My observations at the Armory Show confirmed what I already knew, the racial composition of the fine art market is primarily white and upperclass. As a matter of fact, I saw even less black visitors than I did black art during the five hours I spent at the show. Excluding the almost all black security staff, there were very few people of African heritage in attendance as artists, observers or patrons. Given this, I had to ask myself, well how many of these people really want to buy and hang art that shows a black subject? Probably not many. Artists like Romare Bearden and Benny Andrews with a years of critical validation are more desirable, however they emerged over 40-75 years ago, not too encouraging for the present-day black artist.

This is not to say that there are not contemporary black fine artists receiving mainstream appeal while depicting black subject matter. One of my favorite is Kehinde Wiley, who creates large portraits of black men with the highest esteem. He recently collaborated with athletic company Puma Africa and painted portraits of Africa's most celebrated football players.

Another artist is Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. I discovered her work at the Armory Show and was so impressed. Faye Fleming & Partner, the Geneva based gallery representing her, had a booth solely dedicated to her work that portrays understated yet dignified paintings of imaginary black people. She is of Nigerian heritage and works in London. Over the past nine years, the 33-year-old woman has shown in several exhibitions in places such as Cape Town, Korea, Spain and New York.

by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye

Lynette says this of her work,"although they are not real, they are imbued with a power of their own, they have a resonance--something emphatic and other-wordly...These people are neither heroes nor victims. But if they are pathetic, they don't survive; if I feel sorry for someone, I get rid of them. Cruelty is as unappealing to me as pomp and circumstance are. I don't paint victims."

Here are some examples of her work along with others who represented a black subject matter.

by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye

by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye

by Niki de Saint Phalle

by Niki de Saint Phalle

by Niki de Saint Phalle

by David Levine

by Alexander Calder

by Bernard Perlin

by Fred Wilson

by Fred Wilson

by Whitfield Lovell

by Whitfield Lovell

by Whitfield Lovell

by Peter Blake

by Dimitris Andreadis

by Hank Willis Thomas and Rashid Johnson

by Xiomara de Oliver

by Chris Ofili

by Hank Willis Thomas

Here is a list of galleries that carried some of the featured work:
Rena Bransten Gallery
77 Geary St., San Francisco, CA
94108
www.renabranstengallery.com

Nohra Haime Gallery
730 Fifth Ave, New York, NY
10019
www.nohrahaimegallery.com

Jack Shainman Gallery
513 West 20th St, New Yorkm NY
10011
www.jackshainman.com

Gallery Side 2
2-6-5 Higashiazbu, Minato-Ku
Tokyo 106-0044 Japan
www.galleryside2.net

Jenkins Johnson Gallery
521 West 26th Street, 5th fl, New York, NY
10001
www.jenkinsjohnsongallery.com

Faye Fleming & Partner
14 rue de l'Arquebuse, CH-1204
Geneva
www.fayefleming.com

Tomorrow I will show the last set of twenty and continue this conversation...

Who's Representing the Black Subject?-Part One

Commentary by Jocelyn M. Goode
"Market Twins" by Jocelyn M. Goode

The debate over the definition of black art is a long-standing one. Is black art, art that represents a black subject or topic regardless of the race of the creator of the work or is black art made by a black person regardless of what he/she is representing in the work? and who is black anyway?

I take the position that black art is art about a black subject and anyone of any race can create it. The black subject includes people of African heritage and topics related to the history of that heritage. Given this premise, who is presently representing the black subject in fine art and what are they visually communicating through their work?

For the answer on a microcosmic level, I attended the Armory Show held last week in NYC. This annual festival reputes itself as being "America's leading fine art fair devoted to the most important art of the 20th and 21st centuries". Over 300 galleries from all across the world had booths showing more than 2,000 pieces of art. I surveyed each exhibit, taking five hours, to find the art that featured black subjects. My curiosity was tiered: how popular is blackness as a subject, what are artists saying when they do make black the subject and which galleries have opted to represent this work at such a major showcase?

Well, I came across approximately 60 pieces of art out of the thousands. Over the next few days, I will post the images and the names of the artists who made them. It was an exciting experiment, just discovering new work and seeing the different dialogues about the black subject emerge.
Here are the first 20 pieces.

by Kehinde Wiley, one of my favorite contemporary artists

by Titus Kaphar

by Luigi Ontani

by Zwelethu Mthethwa

by Ken Lum

by Will Ryman

by Corneille

by Ulrich Lamfuss

by Romare Bearden

by Chuck Close

by Romare Bearden

by Romare Bearden

by Helen van Meene

by Beauford Delaney

by Benny Andrews

by William H. Johnson

by Benny Andrews

by Benny Andrews

by Benny Andrews

by Ed Paschke

Something to note is the high percentage of work by men. Regardless of race, male artists receive more exposure than female artists. Also notable is the general sobriety of the art. While this is just a third of the pieces, you will see in the following posts that much of the art addressing a black subject is serious, carrying an unsettling weight. Few pieces are upbeat and whimsy but this is not the trend.

I have 40 more images to share. While I have made a case study of the Armory Show, I do not believe that it is the end-all in terms of demonstrating the best in contemporary art. There are some amazing artists out there struggling to have their worked viewed on a larger platform. One of the objectives of FAIM Internet Magazine is to represent culture and creativity, from the margins to the mainstream, so readers please post links to your sites if you also represent black art. It would be great to have this dialogue continue on a broader level.

Until then, check back tomorrow for "Who's Representing the Black Subject?-Part Two" where I will also list some of the galleries that support black art.