"Michael Ellison: Urban Impressions"

“Michael Ellison: Urban Impressions” opens this Saturday, February 18, and runs through May 21, 2017. Organized by Shawnya Harris, Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson Curator of African American and African Diasporic Art, it features block prints and collage works on paper by the Atlanta-based printmaker and educator. This exhibition draws from a selection of Ellison’s block prints and collage works in the collection of Larry and Brenda Thompson.

 Michael Ellison, Waiting Room, 1999

Ellison grew up in Collier Heights, a middle-class African American neighborhood in southwest Atlanta. He studied art at Atlanta College of Art on the GI Bill, where he learned printmaking. The title of the exhibition comes from the way in which one of Ellison’s early printmaking instructors, Norman Wagner, described Ellison’s subject matter, referring to his prints as “urban landscapes and/or impressions.”

Michael Ellison, Ding, 1991

After receiving his diploma from Frederick Douglass High School in 1970, Michael Ellison wanted to go to New York to further his study of the performing arts, despite his mother’s misgivings. In 1975, he joined the U.S. Army and served toward the end of the Vietnam War. While stationed in Europe, Ellison took advantage of the cultural offerings there, visiting museums and painting watercolors that he sold to friends. After he completed his tour of duty, Ellison briefly attended DeKalb Community College, then transferred to Atlanta College of Art (ACA) in 1981 on the GI Bill. He soon realized his affinity for printmaking, creating linocut and woodcut prints saturated with dense patches of color that also created texture. He often focused on social settings such as the black church, bars and other gathering places. Ellison said, “The bar is sort of like a modern icon. It’s similar to a house of worship for some folks.” In 1991 an electrical fire badly disfigured the artist. As he began to recover and re-learn how to make prints, he created works with striking colors focusing on scenes of isolation and community in urban landscapes. Ellison passed away from heart complications at the age of 48 in 2001.

Harris says, “Michael Ellison's work represents an important piece to the discussion of not only only African American printmakers, but also the history of Georgia-based printmakers, their unique narratives and their contributions to the medium.” This exhibition is part of the museum’s commitment to presenting single-artist shows by under-recognized African American artists.

Related events include:

“Conversation on Collecting,” a discussion with collectors Brenda and Larry Thompson and Curlee Raven Holton, executive director of the David C. Driskell Center
Thursday, February 23 at 5:30 p.m

Black History Month Dinner ($55 members, $75 nonmembers)
Friday, February 24 at 6 p.m.

Tour at Two, led by curator Shawnya Harris
Wednesday, March 15 at 2 p.m.

Toddler Tuesday (register by emailing callan@uga.edu).
Tuesday, May 9 at 10 a.m.

All events are free and open to the public unless otherwise indicated.

"My Mother's Clothes"

"My Mother’s Clothes", an exhibition at Jackson Fine Art, a photography gallery in Atlanta, features photography by Jeanette Montgomery Barron of the wardrobe of her mother, Atlanta socialite Eleanor Morgan Montgomery Atuk.

Barron began the project when Atuk was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Barron realized that when Atuk viewed photographs of her wardrobe, it jogged her memory and briefly brought her back from the degenerative disease. The combination of photographs and emotional value creates a “collection with a compelling narrative that explores the complex interstices between memory and the tactile, evoking a complete life through the objects that surrounded it.”

Barron began experimenting and selected specific backgrounds to make “a multi-layered snapshot of the past.” After Atuk passed away, Barron’s project became an even more moving collection. A publication of the pictures combines them with Barron’s written recollections of her mother.

Barron comments on her work: “I suppose this project started as my way of coping with the loss of one part of my mother, her memory, then, with the loss of my mother. It has helped me understand and appreciate her more, thankfully. Ultimately, this project is a love letter to my mother.”

"My Mother’s Clothes" is on view at Jackson Fine Art through next Wednesday, August 27. Click here to read an article on ArtsCriticATL.

Atlanta Artist to be Featured at High

Radcliffe Bailey, Windward Coast (detail), 2009. Piano keys, plaster bust, glitter. Collection of the artist.

The High Museum of Art announced recently that it will be organizing the most comprehensive display of work by Atlanta-based artist Radcliffe Bailey. “Radcliffe Bailey: Memory as Medicine” will comprise 25 works, demonstrating the artist’s diverse use of media by showcasing sculptures, paintings, installations, works-on-paper, glass works and modified found objects. The exhibition is scheduled to premiere a year from now, on June 28, 2011, and feature works created specifically for the exhibition, as well as previous pieces never before seen on public display.

Bailey, born in New Jersey, was raised in Atlanta and graduated from the Atlanta College of Art in 1991. He first gained acclaim in 1996 for his large-scale mural, “Saints,” which was commissioned during the 1996 Summer Olympics and remains on view in Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. He later taught at the University of Georgia’s Lamar Dodd School of Art for five years, from 2001 to 2006.

Bailey’s exhibition at the High will be divided up into the three main themes of “Water,” “Blues” and “Blood.” “Water” contains pieces referring to the Black Atlantic as a site of both historical trauma and artistic and spiritual growth; “Blues” refers to the importance of music in this spiritual journey; “Blood” focuses on ancestry, race, and sacrifice.

All pieces have significant ties to family, history and the South. One portion of the exhibition features seven sets of “medicine cabinet sculptures” composed of raw materials such as tobacco leaves and Georgia red clay.

“Radcliffe Bailey’s art is consistently informed by a strong social and historical consciousness, and solidly grounded in family and community. The exhibition combines a rich, narrative content with a high-level of abstraction and poetic resonance to explore questions of history and memory,” said Carol Thompson, the High’s Fred and Rita Richman Curator of African Art and curator of the exhibition. “Bailey’s art traces the complex network of his ‘aesthetic DNA’ to create an antidote to cultural and historical amnesia,” she continued.

The High will also juxtapose classic African sculptures from the museum’s permanent collection with the exhibition to emphasize the influence of African art on Bailey’s work. The exhibition is set to premiere on June 28, 2011, and run until September 11, 2011.

For more information on this exhibition, please click here.