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Category Archives: Artist News

Check out Pat Juneau’s new rig!

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Here is a look at the row of Who-Ha booths participating in Folk Fest 2011. For the fourth year in a row, we had the largest booth in the house! The show was a killer, kudos to Amy and Steve Slotin. Thanks for all the good people who showed up. Look at the banners in the row shot, you can easily spot us at the show.

Who-Ha Row, Folk Fest 2011, Atlanta, GA

Who-Ha Row, Folk Fest 2011, Atlanta, GA

John Sperry Booth, Folk Fest 2011

John Sperry Booth, Folk Fest 2011

Missionary Mary Booth

Missionary Mary Booth, Folk Fest 2011

Eric Legge Booth, Folk Fest 2011

Eric Legge Booth, Folk Fest 2011

Ellie Ali Booth, Folk Fest 2011

Ellie Ali Booth, Folk Fest 2011

Madison Latimer Booth Folk Fest 2011

Madison Latimer Booth Folk Fest 2011

Charla Steele Booth Folk Fest 2011

Charla Steele Booth Folk Fest 2011

Chris Beck Booth Folk Fest 2011

Chris Beck Booth Folk Fest 2011

Paul and Deborah Flack Booth, Folk Fest 2011

Paul and Deborah Flack Booth, Folk Fest 2011

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Sad news. During Folk Fest, Mary learned that her son had been involved in a fatal car accident in Florida. Our thoughts and prayers are with her.

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Jennifer Frith has passed on news to us that Chris Clark has passed, as more information is available, we will post it.

Update from the Birmingham News: http://mobile.al.com/advbirm/db_/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=TMAgnHaX&full=true#display

thanks to Kathlene Rushing for the photo.

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Hey everyone, just wanted to let you know that we just opened a little place off the beaten path in Jasper, Georgia. We are looking for folk artist that would like to show and sell their art work as we have dedicated a room for visiting artist… and would love to put you on the schedule!!!

Click here for more

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Opening Reception, Friday, July 8, 6-9PM Click here for more

From childhood on, Dial built “things” using whatever he could salvage, recycling even his own work to reuse materials in new creations. Dial referred to what he made only as “things,” though late in life he found out that others call them “art.” Having developed during the era of racial segregation, Dial’s style is both personal and culturally rich, and it speaks with a resolute voice that was denied him through the years as a black factory worker. In Dial’s art, intense surfaces, multilayered narratives, shifting compositional relationships and a metaphysical concern with issues of recycling and ancestry exist hand in hand with an ironic, earthy wit and an almost religious determination to make art’s complexities and mysteries central to the human understanding of reality. Dial works from within southern African American vernacular traditions, the same cultural impulse that gave birth to blues, jazz, and rock n’ roll. From these roots has emerged an epic, twenty-first-century art whose sophistication and ambition confound all aesthetic categories. Dial’s art transcends labels and bankrupts dichotomies between “fine” and “folk,” “inside” and “outside,” “high” art and “low.”

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WhoHaLogo
Who-Ha Da-Da is back in business, so to speak. Well, we are back on the web and our blog is back. All the old stuff is gone up in cyber smoke, but, like Atlanta and Mr. Imagination, we are rising from the ashes…look for us at www.whohadada.com or www.whohadada.org.

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Greg, Charley, Lonnie and Kevin in Venice

Dear Friends,

The artists, Lonnie Holley, Mr. Imagination, Charlie Lucas and Kevin Sampson were invited by the American Folk Art Museum (funded with the generous support of the Ford Foundation) and Benetton to create large site specific installations as the first exhibition in Benetton’s newly acquired Fondaco dei Tedeschi in Venice to open on June 1, 2011 during the Venice Biennale. The inclusion of four African American self-taught artists during the 54th Venice Biennale would have been revolutionary because the artists, who have been historically excluded from the American art canon, would have had the opportunity to exhibit within a broader contemporary art dialogue during the world’s largest art event. Unfortunately this potentially groundbreaking exhibition was abruptly canceled two weeks before the artists were to depart for Venice. The four artists and I, as curator, decided to travel to Venice anyway to create an exhibition during the Biennale even though we had no materials and financial support..

L’Espace Re-Evolution offered these American artists the opportunity to create an exhibition in less than one week in one of the most beautiful spaces in Venice, a 1000 year old garden located on the Zattere on Dorsoduro next to the Vedova Foundation and near the Pinault and Guggenheim collections. Limited by time and working with only materials they found on the streets and in the waters of Venice, the four artists  created almost 50 site specific works that respect the Venetian spirit of this special place.

A press release is below and also attached.  If you are planning to travel to Venice before the end of July and you would like to visit the gallery, please contact me.

Best wishes,
Martha Henry

 

 

Kevin Sampson Sculpture

Kevin Sampson, U.S.S. Palin, 2010, mixed media

L’Espace

R E – E V O L U T I O N

Zattere, Dorsoduro 49, Venezia

You are invited Sunday, June 5, 2011, 5 to 8 PM
to the opening of an exhibition by American artists:

Lonnie Holley, Mr. Imagination, Charlie Lucas, and Kevin Sampson

«The Roots of the Spirit»

On view from June 5 to July 31, 2011, organized by Martha Henry to coincide with the 54th edition of the Venice Biennale

Lonnie Holley, Mr. Imagination, Charlie Lucas, and Kevin Sampson are renowned as self-taught American artists but refer to themselves as simply American artists.

The exhibition, «The Roots of the Spirit», on view in Venice at L’Espace Re-Evolution from June 5 to July 31, 2011, presents four African American artists who have integrated their experiences in Venice, once the crossroads of the world, with the city’s own encounters with Europe, Asia, Africa, and America. Their artworks express both their African and American culture, their everyday lives, their dreams, and their aspirations.
L’Espace Re-Evolution, an 11th-century garden completely unknown to the public located on the Zattere on Dorsoduro, is one of the most beautiful spaces in Venice. In less than one week and working only with materials found on the Venice streets and in the canals, the four artists created nearly 50 site-specific works that reflect the spirit of this special site. Lonnie Holley combined sculptures with paintings that read as a diary of his sojourn. The ghostly appearance of Mr. Imagination’s silver wire mesh dress and shoes alludes to the garden’s secret past. Charlie Lucas painted two works on bedsheets that are consistent with his philosophy of art and life. Kevin Sampson created an ephemeral wall installation of grottoes and shrines using seaweed and bones in an attempt to connect the past with the present.
The artists’ work is included in many major American museum collections: American Folk Art Museum, New York; Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama; American Visionary Museum, Baltimore, Maryland; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; and Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art, Chicago, Illinois, among others.
The artists and curator acknowledge the support of the Ford Foundation.

L’espace Re-Evolution is open by appointment only.
Contact Venice: Karine Trotel, Gallery Director 00 39 348 342 17 06 ktrotel@yahoo.fr
Contact New York: Martha Henry, Curator 011 212 308 2759 mh@marthahenry.com
Vaporetto stop: S. Salute

Photo: Kevin Sampson, U.S.S. Palin, 2010, mixed media

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