I met Linda Darnece Jones at Kwaanza six days into the new year and we started a conversation about her art and poetry. I heard Linda read “Mama’s Powder Puff Was Rough and Tough” at a recent Women’s Art and Vision event and asked her if she’d let us share it on Riehlife, to which…
On a beautiful Spring day two events in the Central West End of St. Louis resonated with National Child Abuse Awareness and Prevention Month. Ashley Rhodes-Courter’s memoir “Three Little Words” focalized a room filled with adoption and foster care reformers at Left Bank Books which donated 10 percent of all purchases to CASA St. Louis…
Woodie Award nominee Miss Fannie Belle Lebby performed her one woman show, “Ladies of the Blues”, including portrayals of blues artist/jazz singer Alberta Hunter and comedienne Moms Mabley at The Space. Fannie Belle Lebby has merged her active performing career with activist work such as Jobs for Justice. Miss Freida Wheaton’s Salon 53 sponsored the…
Sankofa is an Adinkra Symbol from Ghana meaning “Return and Fetch It.” Click here to read Riehlife post from December 5, 2007 on how Sankofa has defined the path of my life. The SANKOFET is a poetry form created by the Sisters-Nineties Literary Group. The format has three verses or stanzas of seven lines each….
Wole Soyinka, playwright, “The Lion and the Jewel” The Lion And The Jewel opens Friday, April 18, 8:00 p.m.at Washington University: Edison Theatre St. Louis, St Louis, Missouri. “The Lion and the Jewel” by Wole Soyinka is diirected by Ron Himes and presented by the Washington University Performing Arts Department. VENUE Edison Theatre St. Louis…
TWO ROZELLE WEBSITES View images of John Rozelle’s work at his website by the same name and also at Sanaa Productions where you’ll find marvelous collages for sale. _________________ QUOTES “Well, its like jazz: you do this and then you improvise.”—Romare Bearden Rozelle has long lived by the slogan “Every symbol tells a story,” and…
“Art is about possibility…it is capacious; its history is ever-changing;and what is lost is only lost until you see it again,” says Holland Cotter in his NY Times essay (April 7, 2006) “Energy and Abstraction at the Studio Museum in Harlem.” St. Louis Art Museum’s “African American Abstraction: St. Louis Connections” brings that capacious, ever-changing,…
(Phillip Hampton’s work is honored at the St. Louis Art Museum’s African American Abstraction: St. Louis Connections.) David Bonnetti at St. Louis Today.com says: Philip Hampton, the fourth artist featured, is sort of odd-man out. Rather than developing here, he moved to the area an already established artist to teach at Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville. The…
The Saint Louis Art Museum African American Abstraction: St. Louis Connections, an installation of thought-provoking abstract works from both the Museum’s collection and local private collections features artists Oliver Jackson (born 1935), John Rozelle (born 1944), Phillip J. Hampton (born 1922) and Michael Marshall (born 1953). John Rozelle’s abstract mixed media works communicate profound emotional…
Click here to watch Naomi Silver’s three vivacious interviews with Curator Andrew Walker, Artist Phillip Hampton, and Artist John Rozelle—all discussing the current African America Abstraction: St. Louis Connections which runs through March 23rd at the St. Louis Art Museum.