Artist Bio: Fran Joy is an artist, designer, curator, and life coach currently living in Evanston. Born and raised in southern Illinois, she moved to New Orleans and the greater Chicago/Evanston area. This life experience, ten years of residence in Los Angeles, and frequent visits to New York City have flavored and colored her passion as an artist.
After studying oil painting, creative writing, and drawing at Columbia College in Chicago, Joy combined her own experimentation with the impromptu training she received from independent artists whose work she admired. Joy is known for her images on social justice, women, spirit images, iconic portraits, colorful abstract landscapes, and large designer wood screens and wall mounts. Her paintings usually begin with an acrylic base on canvas or wood, followed by oil pastels used with various sponges for texture, blending, and intensity.
Joy has exhibited at the Evanston Art Center, the Noyes Cultural Art Center, 1100 Florence Gallery, Curt’s Cafe, Open Studio Project, Garrett Theological Seminary, Artem Gallery, Danon Gallery, Lorraine Morton Civic Center, and Creative Coworking. Her works are in private collections in Evanston; Chicago; New York; Los Angeles; San Francisco; New Orleans; Philadelphia; Seattle; Centralia, Illinois; Arizona; New Mexico; Canada, and New Zealand.
Joy has coordinated various art installations throughout the greater metro area, including co-curating SOULWORKS at the Evanston Art Center, a collection of art by both renowned and emerging artists of color.
Email: fwjoy@icloud.com
Website: http://www.franjoy.com/
Vibrational Sound Narrative, 2019 "Fletcher Fire II"
Chicago Jazz Ensemble at Millennium Park 07
Acrylic on Canvas, 24" x 36"
Alpha Bruton
PUR
Fletcher Henderson was very important to early jazz as the leader of the first great jazz big band, an arranger and composer in the 1930s, and a masterful talent scout. Between 1923-1939, quite an all-star cast of top young Black jazz musicians passed through his orchestra. And yet, Henderson's band was little-known at the height of the swing era.
Fletcher Henderson had a degree in chemistry and mathematics. Still, when he came to New York in 1920 with hopes of becoming a chemist, the only job he could find (due to the racism of the times) was as a song demonstrator with the Pace-Handy music company. Harry Pace soon founded the Black Swan label, and Henderson, a versatile but fairly basic pianist, became an important contributor behind the scenes, organizing bands and backing blues vocalists. Although he started recording as a leader in 1921, it was in January 1924 that he put together his first permanent big band.
He was soon at the top of his field using Don Redman's innovative arrangements. His early recordings (Henderson made many records during 1923-1924) tend to be both futuristic and awkward, with strong musicianship but staccato phrasing. However, after Louis Armstrong joined up in late 1924 and Don Redman started contributing more swinging arrangements, the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra had no close competitors artistically until the rise of Duke Ellington in 1927. By then, Henderson's band (after a period at the Club Alabam) was playing regularly at The Roseland Ballroom. Still, due to the bandleader being a very indifferent businessman, the all-star outfit recorded relatively little during its peak (1927 to 1930).
