December Trolley Post Conversation with the Artists and Supporters






Special Thanks to all our Supporters
Phantom Gallery Chicago Board of Advisors:
William G. Hill, William Hill Gallery
Laura Weathered, Near North West Arts Council
Toni Collie Perry- Leadership Consultant
Mariana Buchwald, International Art Group

Featured Artist/ Network  Organizations 2020
July 17, 2020

 Caryl Henry Alexander Clinton Maryland, Daphne Burgess Moulton Albama, Shonna McDaniel's, Sacramento California, Talver Germany Miller- Mather California, 

August 21, 2020 
Larissa J. Akemremi, The Social Movement and cultural curator

September 21, 2020 

Renee Baker,  Artist in Residence, Chicago Modern Orchestra Project,  
Talver Germany Miller, Los Rios Community College District 

October 16, 2020

Shonna McDaniel's Sojourner Truth African Heritage Museum
Shonna McDaniel's, Wide Open Walls
Co-Owners Gallery 157 Daphne, Burgess, Milton 510 Bowens.

October 21, 2020


Virtual Open Studio, Phantom Gallery Chicago

"Art is Business"  December 18, 2020


2020 Bronzeville Art District Virtual Gallery Tours


Forecasting what the future holds, and how we adapt to new ways of presenting art engagement, and audience development while practicing social distancing.  Alpha Bruton, Founder of the Phantom Gallery Chicago, is moving to mark out a new and exciting program for the future of Phantom Gallery.

The Phantom Gallery will look at how the city influences art, and artists transform the city by contributing to civic dialogue and quality of life. These installations will produce "Creative Conversations" presenting artists speaking about their art.

2020 Program virtual gallery openings will focus on Examining the State of Our Environment- and having conversations with artists in their studios. 

The aim of the Phantom is to examine changes in current curatorial production and to develop innovative displays in relation to virtual spaces. "Curatorial Practice" explores the impact of the urban environment on the artist and their work, and the contributions that artists make to the vitality of a city. The place where art is imagined and made, whether in a physical or virtual space, affects the idea, the process, and the final product. 

Artist in Resident – Renee Baker

Renee Baker visual artist/media and film is a resident artist/curator, who has invested in the Phantom Gallery Chicago Loft as an AIR to stage her experimental film screenings, and as an ancillary gallery to showcase and exhibit her sculpture and paintings. Renee is an internationally renowned artist best known for her work in the classical music industry. She is a resident artist working in found objects, sculpture, and the experimental film just to list a few of her multidisciplinary work.






       "Home Molasses" artist Renee Baker, an installation by curator Alan Emerson Hicks


LOIS STONE ARTS

Artist Statement
My artwork explores the subject of transformation and change in the human condition. What I want to discover are the ways these changes are inspired and the awareness that is revealed. I use color, shape form, and texture to inform my audience. Through my work, I attempt to evoke a feeling, response, or even a question from the view on what they feel in hopes to transform something in them.  I use spontaneous mark-making movement and rhythmic patterns. My work is most often done on paper, but some work is done on wood canvas and synthetic paper and is often used together in collage pieces.

Lois Stone



"Lotus  Revised 3 Kunst", 19" x 26"         Lois Stone Art, Oil on Paper, 2020 


    
    Lotus Series 1 Revised by Lois Stone


Phil M. Cotton

Although the images and subjects of my artwork are diverse; the influences and subject matter originate from the 1950’s era, abstract expressionist movement, and architectural/ designs of the Mid Century Modern/ Bauhaus periods. My contemporary artwork consists of organic and architectural visual images that respond to my observations of historical moments in time and the present state of our ever-changing complex society.


        "Fetish Sacrifice" Found Object Sculpture, Phil Cotton, Private Collection Alpha Bruton 


"Dinosaur" Phil Cotton  Mixed Media, 2017 

Bronzeville Art District Virtual Trolley Tour "Creative Conversation" - Abstract Expression

"Art is Business" 
Join us for our end of the season Virtual Trolley Tour - Friday, December 18, 2020. 7pm - 8pm
Bit.ly/bronzevillearttrolleytour                    Facebook Live- Phantom Gallery

    @ Video produced by Joseph Rzodkiewicz




BOARD OF DIRECTORS 
WOULD LIKE TO GIVE A SPECIAL THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS AND SUPPORTERS, YOUR GENEROUS DONATIONS AND ARTIST RELIEF FUNDS HAVE ALLOWED THE GALLERY TO SUSTAIN PROGRAMMING, DURING THIS DIFFICULT TIME OF COVID-19.




Postmodern Art movement in a Post Black Modernist World

"Art is Business"  Just think of it as "Experimentations" December 18th, 2020 Virtual Open Studio, "Creative Conversation", featuring artist Lois Stone, of Stone Arts discussing her work as a modernist painter.



My artwork began primarily in watercolor however my work quickly expanded to acrylic, mixed media, and surface design. My work is abstract concentrating on color, shape, form, and movement.  In my work, I try to explore the process of transformation, the humanistic and spiritual changes that take place guided by intuitive expression and stream of consciousness. Through my art, I hope to have the viewer have an experience there are no words for.

Abstract Alcohol  Ink Resin

I have lived and worked in the Bronzeville community for the past thirty-eight years. Originally from Birmingham, AL my family moved to Chicago during the early sixties and attended catholic school. After graduating from the Academy of Our Lady I attended the University of Illinois at Chicago. I also studied at Ray-Vogue College of Design, attend some adult continuing education classes at the Art Institute of Chicago began a Curatorial Program with the Hyde Park Art Center and the University of Chicago.
Artist Bio Lois Stone

I applied for and became a designated Illinois Artisan in 1987 and was an artist at the Illinois Artisan Gift Shop at Thompson Center in Chicago and the Illinois State Gift Shops in Springfield. I was a member of the Artisans 21 artist’s cooperative in Hyde Park for over ten years until its closing. I have exhibited at the Community Art Fair in Hyde Park and most recently The Chicago Creative Expo for two years. In 2010 I opened Stone Art Supply, an online art supply store where I carry brand names Fine Art, Drafting, and Craft Supplies for the student to professional.

In 2018 I began a one-year course in abstract art with Nancy Hillis in Santa Monica, CA. and I am a member of an artist group, ArtNXTLevel, and now a member of Phantom Gallery Chicago. Being a part of an artist collective has helped me to strengthen my own artistic practice.  I am not an artist in the traditional sense. I would say that I am self-taught. There is an audience for my art and I have an obligation to find that audience.

Some of my most recent work can be viewed on my website, Loisstoneart@wordpress.com. 
 
How did you find your voice?

Postmodern art is a body of art movements that sought to contradict some aspects of modernism or some aspects that emerged or developed in its aftermath. In general, movements such as intermedia, installation art, conceptual art, and multimedia, particularly involving video are described as postmodern.

Modernism is both a philosophical movement and an art movement that arose from broad transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, and social organization which reflected the newly emerging industrial world, including features such as urbanization, new technologies, and war.

The African American Roots of Modernism: From Reconstruction to the Harlem Renaissance



SUMMARY
In identifying Jim Crow with the coming of modernity, Smethurst focuses on how artists reacted to the system’s racial territorialization, especially in urban areas, with migration narratives, poetry about the black experience, and black performance of popular culture forms such as ragtime and vaudeville. He shows how black writers such as Fenton Johnson and William Stanley Braithwaite circulated some of the earliest and strongest ideas about an American “bohemia.” Smethurst also upsets the customary assessment of the later Harlem Renaissance as the first and primary site of a nationally significant black arts movement by examining the influence of these earlier writers and artists on the black and white modernists who followed. In so doing, Smethurst brings forward a host of understudied figures while recontextualizing the work of canonical authors such as Charles Chesnutt, Pauline Hopkins, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and James Weldon Johnson. As such, Smethurst positions his work as part of the current growing intellectual conversation about the nature of African American literature and culture between Reconstruction and the Harlem Renaissance. Far from being a “nadir” period, Smethurst argues, this period saw black artists creating cultural forms from which issued some of the most significant literary works of the twentieth century.

 Focusing on the years from 1922 to 1938, this book revisits an important moment in black cultural history to explore how visual elements were used in poems, novels, and photography to undermine existing stereotypes. Miriam Thaggert identifies and analyzes an early form of black American modernism characterized by a heightened level of experimentation with visual and verbal techniques for narrating and representing blackness.

7@7: Black Artists & their Art with Seven [UK], Curators Rose Cannon & Alpha Bruton


Rose Cannon of Rose Cannon Gallery facilitated the discussion. 



7@7: Black Artists & their Art with Seven [UK]; Curators Rose Cannon & Alpha Bruton & Artists Baz@ Cumberbatch; David Niari; David Anthony Geary; Sholo Beverly; William Kwahmena-poh
WATCH ON EXOPOLITICSTV https://youtu.be/BlkwdO07y18

WATCH ON TRUE TUBE.CO: https://newsinsideout.com/2020/07/77-black-artists-their-art-with-seven-uk-curators-rose-cannon-alpha-bruton-artists-baz-cumberbatch-david-niari-david-anthony-geary-sholo-beverly-william-kwahmena-poh/

WATCH LIVE July 25, 2020 STREAMING ON Exopolitics TV: https://youtu.be/C7XEjz9yrTw

Black Artists show their Art:
Black Artists: https://www.evanstonartcenter.org/black-lives-matter
Black Artists: https://www.evanstonartcenter.org/exhibitions
Rose Cannon: Facebook.com/CannonFineArtGallery/
Alpha Bruton: https://alphabrutonartprojects.blogspot.com/
Baz: http://www.bazmauiart.com
Alpha Bruton: https://www.blogtalkradio.com/phantomgallerychicago/2020/07/21/soulwork-a-conversation-with-william-kwamena--poh-part-2​
David Anthony: http://www.Davidanthonyart.com
David Niari: www.davidniari.com

Launched in December 2014, NewsInsideOut.com has begun its mission to expose a media-built matrix of fabrications being promoted against the public interest.

Backed by a cooperative of Truth journalists citing contractual rights to mainstream access, NewsInsideOut.com offers investigative reporting, news, and opinions turning the matrix of manufactured consensual reality inside out. In addition, reports from the site deconstruct memes (evolutionary principles in the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena) whose ongoing production was identified as a de facto mission of the current mainstream.

NewsInsideOut.com represents a deliberate attempt to ensure that news from Truth movement journalists such as Jon Kelly and Alfred Lambremont Webre reaches a more comprehensive public arena in the mainstream media. Both Kelly and Webre have defined current YouTube, Facebook, and website presences known throughout the awakened communities. The NewsInsideOut.com site is focused on professional news publishing operations providing grounds for digital syndication (how stories enter mainstream news outlets including radio, newspapers, and television.

NewsInsideOut.com interviews and articles further our journalistic mission and protection from governmental interference under the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms of the Canadian Constitution, and the Magna Carta (UK). They are an absolute prohibition and bar to any imposition, criminal, equitable, common law, admiralty law, civil to NewsInsideOut.com‘s publication of actual facts.



Sojourner Truth: The Forgotten History of the Slave Who Fought For Women's Rights

"Art is Business"  https://www.sojoartsmuseum.org/about

The Phantom Gallery Chicago Network has sustained during the COVID-19 Pandemic, due to the support of the SOJO Art Museum, one of the Phantom's network partners. Shonna McDaniel's has worked with me over the years, from 1990 founding member of Celebration Arts Visual Arts, 1995 to one of the co-founders of Visual Arts Development Project. She started her museum project in 1999.

Shonna McDaniels, a visual artist, and community activist, envisioned an institution to preserve Black history and celebrate the accomplishments of African American people and their legacy. As a result, the previous name of Sojourner Truth Multicultural Art Museum changed to Sojourner Truth African American Museum. We offer resources to document, preserve, and educate the public on the history, life, and culture of African Americans.


                            Parent and Founding Board Director Ollie McDaniel's and Shonna McDaniels  

From the archives of the Resistance Library: Unsung Heroes The Forgotten History of the Slave Who Fought For Women's Rights 

 Sojourner Truth: The Forgotten History of the Slave Who Fought For Women's Rights Sojourner Truth was a lot of things. She was a slave. A mother. A wife. An activist. A preacher. A woman who wasn’t afraid to stand up for what she believed in, regardless of the consequence. A woman who spoke her mind, even when everyone around her disagreed. Filled with such courage and bravery, she could see the potential of liberty for all, even when faced with adversities far worse than people see today. 

Sojourner Truth was never a victim of circumstances, even though they were bleak for much of her life. When life knocked her down, she’d get back up, ready to fight again. She lived by her own standard, even though it was considered radical. She didn’t care. She was here to speak her truth, which she never failed to do. Even her self-given name says as much. 

“Sojourner” means “to stay awhile,” combined with Truth. To stay awhile in truth. To stand in truth. Many would say that’s exactly how she spent her life. 

  Sojourner Truth: From Slavery to Freedom Sojourner Truth was brought into this world a slave named Isabella Baumfree around 1797. Born on a plantation about 95 miles north of New York City, Belle only spoke Dutch until she was nine years old when she was sold, along with a herd of sheep, for $100. She would be sold two more times by the age of 13, when she found herself owned by John Dumont and his second wife, Elizabeth. The truth was not treated well as a slave and would recall her owners as cruel and punitive. At 18, she fell in love with a slave boy named Robert, who was owned by a neighbor. When his owner found out the boy was in a relationship with a slave from a different master, he was severely beaten, and Truth never saw him again. It’s believed that her first child, James, may have been Robert’s. Her second child, Diana, is most likely the result of rape by Dumont. Truth birthed three other children to Thomas, a slave she eventually married, who was also owned by Dumont. 

 In 1826, the year Dumont told her he’d grant her freedom, then refused, Truth took her youngest child who was still an infant and left the Dumont estate, escaping from slavery. Years later, when talking of the event, Truth said, “I did not run off, for I thought that wicked, but I walked off, believing that to be alright.” Two years later, when Dumont unlawfully sold Truth’s son, Peter, she took him to court. Truth became the first black woman to win a case against a white man and gained custody of her son. 

 She spent the next decade working as a housekeeper and servant, and in 1843, Isabella Baumfree had a religious experience. She converted to Methodism and changed her name to Sojourner Truth. She moved from the city and devoted her life to serving God through preaching about the abolition of slavery and equal rights for women. In 1844, she joined the Northampton Association of Education and Industry, a self-sufficient religious and abolition group that lived on over 470 acres, raising livestock and running a sawmill, gristmill, and silk factory. 

While there, she met many heroes within the abolition movement, including William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and David Ruggles. Sojourner Truth: A Radical Among Radicals At six feet tall, Truth stood out in a crowd, but it wasn’t just for her height. She was a woman who said what she thought and what she believed in without reserve. 

She gave her first anti-slavery speech in 1845 in New York City and was soon considered one of the most inspiring speakers of the era. In 1851, Truth gave her most famous speech, entitled “Ain’t I a Woman?” at the Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio. Although it’s held in esteem today, the speech is surrounded by controversy. Given extemporaneously, the speech focused on not just being black, but on being a woman, something that was unusual even amongst abolitionists, who only focused on the rights of black men, not black women. The original speech was reprinted in two different local newspapers, and the phrase “Ain’t I a Woman?” wasn’t recounted in either one. But 12 years later, in a transcription published by Frances Dana Barker Gage, the speech had changed. “Ain’t I a woman?” appeared four times and the whole speech had a southern feel. This was odd, given that Truth was from New York and Dutch was her first language. 

But a southern dialect fit the narrative that was being created at the time, and after multiple publications of the speech by Gage, the modified version has stood the test of time. Truth’s advocation of rights for not just blacks, but women – and even black women – was considered radical, even in her circle. She was ostracized among the abolitionists, although she did remain friends with others within the equal rights movements, including Susan B. Anthony. 

 Perhaps it was also her unorthodox and no-BS attitude that made her unliked. At one speech in 1858, after being ridiculed and called a man, Truth revealed her breasts to the crowd to prove her womanhood. Sojourner Truth: Fighting Through the War and Beyond When the Civil War broke out, Truth did what she could to help the cause. She recruited black men to fight for the Union, and her grandson even enlisted and served in the 54th Massachusetts regiment. Truth started working for the National Freedman’s Relief Association in 1864, which led her to meet with President Abraham Lincoln regarding the needs of black people in America. 

 After the war, Truth fought to secure the promised land grants (40 acres and a mule) for t was unsuccessful in her attempts. She continued to fight for equal rights for both blacks the black men who fought in the war. She even met with President Ulysses Grant in 1870 brand women until she died of infected leg ulcers on November 26, 1883. Nearly blind and almost deaf, Truth spent her life fighting for what she believed in, regardless of the cost. 

Sojourner Truth: A Legacy Although Truth saw the 13th Amendment passed, she did not live to see women granted equal rights. Even so, Sojourner Truth has been recognized as having a huge influence on the women’s equality movement and that her influence helped pave the way for the 19th Amendment, which wasn’t ratified until 1920

 In recognition of her efforts, Truth, along with four other women and the 1913 Women’s Suffrage Procession, will be featured on the $10 bill in 2020, as part of the 100-year celebration of women winning the right to vote. Sojourner Truth was also memorialized in 2018, with the U.S. Navy naming a ship the USNS Sojourner Truth. She was the inspiration for the NASA Mars Pathfinder Robotic Rover, “Sojourner.” Smithsonian Magazine listed her in the “100 Most Significant Americans of All Time.” She has been inducted into the Women’s Hall of Fame and her face has graced a USPS stamp. Although recognized as a hero today, Sojourner Truth’s life was not an easy one. Yet even when, literally, stoned and beaten, Truth continued to fight with words and with dignity. She stayed with her truth and worked to change the world. 

This tribute was written by Molly Carter Ammo.com's Resistance Library: Unsung Heroes The Forgotten History of the Slave Who Fought For Women's Rights You're free to republish or share any of our articles (either in part or in full), which are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Our only requirement is that you give Ammo.com appropriate credit by linking to the original article. Spread the word; knowledge is power! 

Phantom Gallery CHI

Pop Up Research Station ask the Question- Why Aren’t There More Black Librarians?

"Art is Business"  Reposted by Alpha Bruton,  WordInBlack.com February 11, 2022 Photograph by Tima Miroshnichenko/Pexels Why Aren...