Rhythmistic Residency

Summer 2020 at the Hyde Park Art Center of Chicago, the Eighth iteration of the Jackman Goldwasser Residency.  Each year this residency provides a dynamic platform for important international, national, local artists and curators.  In Prof. Turtel Onli The Goldwasser Residency has a rare combination of all four critical distinctions.

Onli will focus on extending his long curing “Rhythmistic Quilts” body-of-work that channels his future-primitif re-contextualization of selected world icons resulting in a universal expression that overrides “otherness” with a creative expression of ‘us’ across cultures, racial limits and eras.

In the upper levels of the art world and to most folks, should an artist work in the world of comix and cartoons the artist is thought of as being less of an artist.  Devalued and sometimes as a non-artist.  Yet highly valued artists often state they were influenced by comix or cartoons and they are treasured, highly sought after and often their artwork sells endlessly for high prices to collectors and museums.  Why is that?  We even see "fine artists'' who actually copy a panel ....poorly at that, from an obscure comic book...painted in oils or acrylics....then sold at very high prices.  Not sharing a cent of the revenues with the comix-artist who created the original art.  Why is that?  What is that logic and appraisal?

I contend that good to great comix artists are way more skilled and prolific than most celebrated "fine artists." Put them both to a universal measure of imagination, technical skills, design draftsmanship, time management, expressive narratives, and production consistency.  Then evaluate them yourself.  Not using the bias filter of 'comix are junk for kids" or personal tastes.  Be objective.  That is why these fine artists could only....at best....poorly..... copy a single panel for a page of a comic book.  Then using snob-appeal marketing methods present it as "FineArt" for a monied market that looks down on comix. The rigor and skill set needed to do more is simply beyond most fine artists.....and they n=know this.  No wonder they find comix a source of inspiration.

Another one of my objectives with this Summer 2020 Residency is to shed that bias that others apply to leverage my vast output in comix to devalue my more opulent practice as a Rhythmistic Fine Artist.  Not to mention my diverse tenure as a major market illustrator."

The following is from a Cultural Historian about Rhythmism:

“The art of Turtel Onli is African Centered. Many who have seen it appear to be confused by it. The culture conscious African Americans find it unacceptable because it doesn’t bespeak the “traditional” African that they have come to know and love.  The middle class find it difficult to accept because it is too African and not like what they have been told is “good art.  The Rhythm & Blues Hip-Hoppin’ Black Americans don’t know about him or his work.

As I stated earlier, his work is African-Centered. He has termed his style Rhythmism.  He coined the term in 1977, and rightly so.  The paintings, wearable art and performances he creates are alive with RHYTHM.  His work is demonstrative in its force.  The colors appear to dance before you.  The eyes, the lips, the styles of hair pull you, cajole you, take you in, The colors are bright, vibrant, steamy as they vaporize into a thin layer of white heat and back the vibrantly charged colors.  The colors dare you to laugh, to play, to join in the high energy of life.  Life on a higher plane. Life in a new Africa, a futuristic Africa with a neo-tradition that doesn’t deny itself but digs down into itself to bare yet a new fruit for the future.  This future fruit, a Rhythmistic one, is an universal fruit to embellish the entire fabric of humanity.

Universal is mentioned because the reference to Olli’s work being African Centered and not generally accepted in that community is due to its power and influence being misunderstood.  There is another community into which Onli has yet to be accepted and that is the White Art Community. Onli is representative of a new age, a forward-thinking age. An age that has a vision of an Africanization of the future by an Africa that is viable in the world scheme of things.  And a world unified by its universal values.

The disparities between Blacks and Whites and specifically between White and Black Males stumbles blindly over into the Art World.  The continuance of this practice inhibits the flow of contributions by Black artists creating voids of sterility.  This disparity curtails the universals that we as a culture look for in the world of innovative artists like Onli.  The works of artists like Turtel Onli must be reviewed because their universals will rhythmically pull at the ancestral memories that continue to make us human.  We can no longer afford the limitations of Euro-Centric Art as the only contemporary modernistic approach to unleash the potential power of Art.  Onli and his Rhythmistic movement give the art critics, patrons, and makers the opportunity to expand their concept of the universal.

Back to the “Rhythmistic Residency:  “Goals met!”

When I was awarded this Flex Summer 2020 Residency at the Hyde Park Art Center, December 2019, I was excited and challenged.  

The honor was overwhelming.  Then came the flood of ideas.....potential and channeling.  I determined my focus.  To complete four textile based panels.  Each representing one of the Expressive Arts.  Performing. Music, Literature, and Visual. 

Each panel becomes a re-contexualization of the First Nation’s People’s iconic character, the Kokopelli.  These completed textile works will find their way to extend the growing body of work, “Rhythmistic Quilts” that is a larger more ambitious collection of quilts that are via a collaborative, co-contribution and division of labor based process. 

This process has had tangible input since 1988 from various creative practitioners.  It started with my re-contextualizing selected African icons in a future-primitf...Rhythmistic context in 1988.  It hit a serious stop when most of them were destroyed and damaged in a devastating studio-live-space fire in 2001. 

I was surprisingly inspired to return to this body of work in 2017 when I met the master quilter Patrick Whalen in Michigan City at the Quilters Apocathecary’.  In Patrick I sensed his ability to feel and embrace the art then contribute to it.  I learned from him.....to let it flow means to let it go.  So I turn them over to him.....and await the enhancements per his contributions.  WOW!  Lucky me.....and of great benefit to this body of Rhythmistc works.

The goal was to be sure to set up the space to produce these four large 50 inch by 40 inch cotton panels.  As of September 26th 2020 That goal is met.  Plus these are the first set of panels I have created with aspects of Patrick’s vibrations flowing within the process.

I was to leave on Oct. 2nd per the original agreement. However I was granted a generous extension to this Residency until Nov. 30th 2020.  Two whole additional months!  WOW.  Now to plan to make the best Rhythmistic use of that resource.