Willie Birch

dig

A print by Willie Birch from P5forNOLA.

Wildflowers in the Artist’s Backyard, 2009/2020

Print, 11 x 14 inches, Edition of 54+2 AP

Willie Birch is best known for his large-scale grisaille charcoal drawings that feature everyday scenes and settings in New Orleans. The works have an arresting graphic quality and capture the dynamism, tenderness, ritual, and quotidian aspects that define life in the city; each work revels in details while hinting at a larger cosmology. 

In this drawing, abundant flora weaves through a chain-link fence. It is dark and densely rendered, and despite the tightly cropped framing of the image it is replete with symbolism and nuance, from the diamond pattern of the fence to the careful detailing of each plant species.

Posted in art

The Porch is the Tree is the Watering Hole

dig

The Porch is the Tree is the Watering Hole, on view at the African American Research Library and Cultural Center. Viewed through art, architecture, photography and poetry, the exhibition is a dynamic exploration of space and community within this historical Black neighborhood. The exhibition features artists and designers Germane Barnes, Darius V. Daughtry, David I Muir, Adler Guerrier, Olalekan Jeyifous, Adrienne Chadwick, Marlene Brunot and George Gadson, and is presented by Broward County Cultural Division.

Steinbrunn

dig
© Carly Steinbrunn 2015 courtesyof MACK.

The Voyage of Discovery Photographs by Carly Steinbrunn, MACK, London, England, 2015. 96 pp., 8¼ x 10¼”.

Humanity is present through the traces it has left behind, traces that could be those of a remote or vanished civilisation.

[…]

[The book] is sequenced with pictures I considered ‘archetypal’ to carry a collective iconic memory – such as the historical artefacts, photographed in a simple and direct way. Then I introduced mysterious places, plants or architectural structures to show a more subjective point of view. One of the main questions I had in mind while making this body of work was how might a subjective experience also speak of a collective one? This is partly why I photographed places in Brazil, as an homage to Claude Lévi- Strauss’s Tristes Tropiques.

Carly Steinbrunn interview with Paper Journal

Image is part of a portfolio of collotype prints on 29 x 36cm Japanese Washi paper by MACK and the Benrido atelier, Kyoto.