Uncovering Our History Through The Relics Left Behind
Posted in Art
I first came upon a Magiscope sculpture about five years ago when an auction house was selling five small tabletop pieces. They were new and different and beautiful with their irregular metal stands and round…
When I saw the photo it took my breath away. That’s how powerful it was, even though the image simply showed fragile faded pages covered in weather-beaten leather held together with an equally worn strap. I had…
Posted in Art
“You know who I’m talking about,” my friend Renee was saying on the phone, “from the West Indies.” I had no idea who she was talking about. She was trying to get me to remember…
Posted in Art, Carvings, collectibles, and Figurines
From where I stood, staring across rows of heavy furniture at the auction house, I could barely make out the carvings framing the mirror. I could see that they were colorful and a little crude,…
I had seen the mural before as I drove down Parkside Avenue in Philadelphia, where one block held the once-stately old mansions of some of the city’s elite and middle class. I was driving down…
I was standing in the last room of the Norman Lewis exhibition when my friend Monica walked over to me. I was admiring a 1978 painting bathed in lilac with Lewis’ familiar figures in motion.…
I wasn’t sure who would buy the marionettes. They had belonged to a theater company that apparently had stored and forgotten them. Their clothes were aged and their strings were an entangled mess. I purchased…
Posted in Art
The boys were adorable. That was not the first word that popped into my head when I saw the art print at auction – it came later. What I saw was a painting with a…
Norman Lewis is much like many other African American artists of his generation. Since their skins were brown, these artists were ignored by the so-called art world, lost and unrecognized. That is changing now –…
