Revelations - January 2022 Group Exhibition

REVELATIONS

ALICIA BROWN | CYDNEY CAMP | CAILYN DAWSON | SYDNEY G. JAMES DON KILPATRICK, III | RICHARD LEWIS | SABRINA NELSON | JOSHUA RAINER SENGHOR REID | RASHAUN RUCKER

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Sabrina Nelson, These Either, 2021

ALICIA BROWN CYDNEY CAMP CAILYN DAWSON SYDNEY G. JAMES DON KILPATRICK III

REVELATIONS JANUARY 8 - FEBRUARY 4, 2022

RICHARD LEWIS SABRINA NELSON JOSHUA RAINER SENGHOR REID RASHAUN RUCKER

M CONTEMPORARY ART 205 EAST 9 MILE FERNDALE, MI 48220 MCONTEMPORARYART.COM

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BEYOND SEEING

by NICHOLE M. CHRISTIAN The finished work of almost any artist is at least a partial optical illusion, a trick between the viewer’s eye and the artist’s mind.

You, the viewer, look. You wonder. You think you see a sliver of the artist’s aim.

The questioning, the mystery, is equal to that of the artist, who playwright Anna Deavere Smith insists, in her book Letters to a Young Artist, must liken themselves to “an explorer...after something that does not yet exist.’’

Yet even after that something morphs from a nascent idea into being, its existence does not complete the story, not until the viewer joins the journey, willing to look, and look again, in search of some revelation, much like the artist, including the discovery and the acceptance that, “A thing is never seen,’’ as German painter Josef Albers said, “as it really is.’’

At first glance, the paintings and drawings featured in the group exhibition Revelations are exactly as they appear, vividly executed oils and acrylics, portraits, self-portraits, and still lives, all seemingly void of any distinct connected narrative. The range of techniques on display is reason enough to gather, and to be satisfied. Revelations is after all a roll call of ten fine artists in full command of their chosen forms; rising young stars such as Cydney Camp, Cailyn Dawson, and Joshua Rainer sharing the spotlight with master mark makers and art educators like Richard Lewis, Sabrina Nelson, Senghor Reid, Rashaun Rucker, and Don Kilpatrick. The prolific, and ever surprising, Sydney G. James unveils still another dimension of her skill. Painter Alicia Brown lights up the walls with a portrait probing her Caribbean roots and its layered connections to nature and colonial rule.

The exhibition’s revelation isn’t in any one work alone, but in the collective invitation that these seemingly straightforward paintings and drawings present, a chance to suspend the known, and to test the possibility of seeing beyond what’s seen, as artists do.

Nichole M. Christian is a writer and veteran journalist. She has worked as creative director, editor and lead writer for the Kresge Foundation’s annual eminent artist monograph series. The titles include: A Palette for The People (2021), honoring painter and educator, Shirely Woodson; Wonder and Flow, (2020) honoring ceramicist Marie Woo, and A Life Speaks, (2019) honoring poet and activist Gloria House. Nichole was also co-author

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REVELATIONS

of Canvas Detroit. Her writing also appears in the poetry chapbook, Cypher, summer 2021; Portraits 9/11/01: The Collected Portraits of Grief from The New York Times; the online arts journal, Essay’d; A Detroit Anthology, and Dear Dad: Reflections on Fatherhood.

She is currently co-director of We exChange, a yearlong arts project with Signal-Return letterpress, pairing six writers and six visual artists in a collaborative exploration of the meaning of change in a time of chaos — its limits and its unexpected possibilities. The project will culminate in an exhibition in late 2022.

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ALICIA BROWN ARISTOCRAT, 2019

“There’s a lot of statements that people can get from the painting—political and social and cultural—but when you pare it all down, here’s this woman, this person who looks like somebody you just saw on the street, and she’s adorned with what seems a color, but it’s wasp nest and other elements of nature. More than seeing, I want viewers to feel how we all connect as a form of nature. It doesn’t matter the gender or skin color of the figure. Human connection, one person to the next, it’s there, if you choose to see it.’’

Alicia Brown (b.1981) in St. Ann, Jamaica.

Alicia Brown attended the Edna Manley College of the Visual Performing Arts, Kingston, Jamaica, and received a diploma in Art Education in 2003 and a BFA in Painting in 2009. Brown received her MFA from the New York Academy of Art in 2014 and was awarded a residency scholarship in Leipzig Germany from the school.

Alicia was one of the winners of the Dawn Scott Memorial Award in the Jamaica Biennial 2017. She is a recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant, Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant, and LCU Foundation Grants. She has participated in numerous group shows in Jamaica, USA and Europe. She has had a solo show at Studio 174 in Kingston, Jamaica and Virago Gallery, Seattle Washington. Her work has been featured in Hyperallergic magazine, Painting the figure now 2019 magazine, The Jamaica Gleaner and Observer, Caribbean Quarterly Journal and other publications. Her work is in the collections of Steven Alan Bennett, Imago Mundi, George N’Namdi, and Brenda Thompson among others.

Alicia Brown uses traditional and contemporary painting techniques and iconographic references to examine race, cultural identity, adaptation, beauty and social status.

oil on canvas, 44 x 30 inches, signed executed in 2019

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CYDNEY CAMP WOMAN WITH FLOWERS, 2021

“I tend to discover the painting as I’m creating it. I started with the idea of giving a woman her flowers and a very loose image but then conceptually, I was surprised by this extreme contrast of beauty with stoicism, and a more sinister element. I don’t think this piece is particularly sinister, but it does hold this stoic reverence and dark contrast. You’ve got this woman, she’s looking at you really square in the face with this very serious expression. It makes you wonder like, she’s surrounded by these flowers, all this beauty, why isn’t she smiling? What’s the disconnect?”

Cydney Camp (b. 1994, Detroit) is an artist whose oil paintings and drawings embody the diversity of Black life. She imbues her works with an aura of power and tranquility through a vibrant color palette, often introducing elements of abstraction, forming dreamlike compositions. Many of her scenes reflect moments of peace among Black figures, positioning leisure as an act of protest against marginalization, particularly in regards to Black femininity. As a whole, her works engender a reality outside the exploitative extraction of the Black body that pervades our broader cultural ethos. Camp has exhibited across Detroit and Michigan, including at Louis Buhl & Co., K.O. Gallery, Norwest Gallery, Ann Arbor Art Center, Center for Detroit Arts & Culture, Detroit Fiber Works, and many more. She is currently pursuing her MFA in Painting at Cranbrook Academy of Art and lives and works in Hamtramck, Detroit.

oil paint, oil pastel, oil stick, and collage on canvas 40 x 24 inches, signed executed in 2021

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CAILYN DAWSON SPOTLIGHT, 2021

“It’s easy to get caught up in projecting yourself perfectly and all put together. But when I’m painting myself, I have freedom to explore, to be vulnerable. I like to imagine I’m the one shining the spotlight on myself underneath a microscope and taking the time to really understand who I am. I think looking is a form of self-care. Everyone should be in touch with themselves, just be willing to look.’’

Cailyn Dawson is an artist who was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1999. Through figurative painting, her work explores issues of identity, specifically how themes of separation and displacement affect racial identity. Cailyn has been creating art since a young age but really took a passion for it in high school. Cailyn has shown her work at the College for Creative Studies, Detroit Artist Market, and Annex Gallery. She currently resides in metro Detroit and has her bachelor’s degree in fine arts from College for Creative Studies, Detroit, MI.

acrylic on canvas, 30 x 30 inches, signed executed in 2021

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SYDNEY G. JAMES

REVELATIONS 12-30-21: THOU SHALT DAYDREAMETH, 2021

“I’m a planner, but I don’t go into the work knowing. People think it’s all intentional, the hardness, the softness, but oftentimes it’s not. I can’t plan the execution because that’s where exploration, the feeling, comes in. When I’m sitting and painting or drawing, whatever mood I’m in is going to come through the piece. Sometimes it’s in the eyes or facial expression, period. It’s me in the moment and that feeling. That’s the part that’s private, that’s quiet, really sometimes a surprise for me.”

SYDNEY G. JAMES Fine arts painter and muralist Sydney G. James is proudly a girl raised in, and by, Detroit. Her name is synonymous with colors and brushwork as strikingly defiant, and ever changing, as the city itself.

Since returning to her hometown in 2011, Sydney has personified artist in flow, quickly building upon her creative roots as a BFA graduate of Detroit’s College for Creative Studies. Her murals have transformed Detroit’s skyline and its arts narrative, and helped her earn a coveted 2017 Kresge Arts in Detroit Fellowship.

But it is Sydney’s artworks – on walls, on canvas, on fabric, on Vans shoes; on whatever she damned well chooses – that give her name and her life a fierce focus. She is a painter on a pointed mission to let each brush stroke spark conversations long silenced. In paintings and murals, Black women are first. Never last and never forgotten. Her works boldy rewrite the narrative in hues evoking the complexities of Black reality, joy and pain, and phoenix-like resilience.

Her artwork has been exhibited at Detroit’s Museum of Contemporary Art and Design ( MOCAD), the Charles H. Wright Museum, Inner State Gallery, PlayGround Detroit Gallery, Collective Detroit Gallery, Detroit Artist Market, Red Bull House of Art; and Janice Charach galleries as well as the Arts, Beats and Lyrics traveling exhibit. Sydney’s murals have lit up walls in New Orleans, Brooklyn, NY; Atlanta, GA.; Los Angeles, CA.; Pow Wow Hawaii, Pow Wow Long Beach, Pow Wow Worcester, and across six continents.

She is a co-founder of the biannual BLKOUT Walls street mural festival which debuted in Detroit in 2021. Sydney’s artwork is featured by major marketing brands looking for authentic cultural connection. Brands include: Vans shoes, PepsiCo, Ford Motor Company, Detroit Pistons, Detroit Lions, as well as being one of the faces of the Lip Bar brand of cosmetics.

graphite on Arches Hot Press, 36 x 24 inches, signed executed in 2021

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DON KILPATRICK, III

MIDNIGHT AT MCNICHOLS AND JOSEPH CAMPAU, 2021

“I’m really trying to discover something for myself as a viewer, and as someone who does a lot of street photography and is drawn to the cityscapes, really urban centers like Detroit, New York, Tokyo. But when I’m using these images as references, I’m looking at the abstraction before I build up on top of it, really trying to look beyond representation to see the design patterns, the shapes, the visual language, the shapes and patterns that we see every day but somehow forget how to see.

I’m always looking.’’

Donald Kilpatrick III earned his M.A. in Illustration from Syracuse University in 2006 and moved to Detroit in 2007 to join the faculty of CCS in traditional and digital illustration; he became department chair in 2010. A successful freelance illustrator, Kilpatrick’s work has been featured in publications such as Fortune, the L.A. Times, and the Wall Street Journal. He was involved in the design of the 2002 Olympic medal for the Salt Lake City Winter Games. He has received numerous awards from organizations such as The Society of Illustrators. He has exhibited his artwork in cities including New York, Philadelphia, and Miami.

Kilpatrick is a founding member of The Detroit Wood Type Co., and Signal Return.

acrylic gouache on gessoed panel, 12 x 16 inches, signed executed in 2021

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DON KILPATRICK, III UNLOADING AT RUSSEL STREET, 2021

acrylic gouache on gessoed panel, 11 x 14 inches, signed executed in 2021

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RICHARD LEWIS

SELF-PORTRAIT WITH WHITE SHIRT, 1996

“The self-portrait has been done over and over again, but in terms of the way I make paintings, I see it as a political statement. When I paint my sisters, or I paint myself, my mother or my grandparents, anybody, not only am I painting portraits of them, I’m fighting images of racism with normal images of people. I’m painting people the world often ignores, and the world makes policies that are directly against their survival. I paint them so that you have to confront them as people, their personhood.”

Richard Lewis was born in Detroit in 1966. He started drawing when he was four. When he was 10, his godmother told him to study his family and go into the next room and draw. That started him looking at faces. He graduated from Cass Technical High School in 1985. He earned his B.F.A. from College for Creative Studies and his Master’s degree from Yale School of Art. He came back to Detroit, drove a cab and taught African American art history. He was an artist-in-residence at The Studio Museum in Harlem. He moved back home to Detroit in 2002 and was a Kresge Artist Fellow in 2011.

oil on canvas, 30 x 30 inches, signed executed in 1996

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SABRINA NELSON

DON’T MESS WITH THESE/ THESE EITHER, 2021 DIPTYCH

“I haven’t done a nude painting in over twenty something years. I’m 54 now. Then, I was all in my ego, but here I’m not talking about how sexy I am. I’m painting openness, and anguish. I’m in this Wonder Woman stance, but I’m also in this protective stance, and you can imagine me having a machete in my hand, something besides feathers but the feathers are my children and black and brown children that have been lost in our communities. My body is weeping for them, for the mothers. I’m vulnerable, I’m growing older, and I’m starting to look at myself as a reflection of God, as medicine, as a protector, and I’m saying, ‘Don’t fuck with my kids.”

Sabrina Nelson was born in the wake of the ‘67 Rebellion in Detroit, Michigan. She is a painter by degree from Detroit’s College for Creative Studies. Influenced by Yoruba Religion, as well as Eastern and African philosophies, Sabrina’s work is a combination of spirit, motion, and intimacy. Not limited by two dimensions, the scope of her work also includes sculpture, objects, and installations.

Sabrina has been a professional artist for over 35 years and an educator for nearly as long. As a studio art teacher at the Detroit Institute of Arts, she lectures and performs artist demonstrations. She is also on staff at the College for Creative Studies, where she works hard at motivating and preparing students to pursue art degrees in Detroit.

Sabrina has lectured on the preservation of Black Feminism in Art at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit. She is a guest curator at both The Carr Center and the Music Hall Performing Arts Center. For over 30 years she has judged art competitions, curated numerous art talks and exhibits, and conducted interviews of guest artists for the City of Detroit’s Culture video channel MyDetroitCable.

Her work has been exhibited at the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, and the African American Art in Culture complex in San Francisco. Sabrina’s work has also been exhibited in Florida, New York, Louisiana, Illinois and Ohio. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History and private collections in Florida, New York, Ohio, Georgia, California, and Michigan. She has also shown work at Jakmel Gallery as part of Art Basel Miami, as well as at the American University in Paris.

2 panels: 60 x 48 inches, signed executed in 2021

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SABRINA NELSON

DON’T MESS WITH THESE/ THESE EITHER, 2021 DIPTYCH

2 panels: 60 x 48 inches, signed executed in 2021

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JOSHUA RAINER THE MOON BE STILL, 2021

“It used to be my chief goal in making work was that it was aesthetically pleasing, everything else would be secondary. The work wouldn’t have a deeper meaning or speak to anything except a really high level of photo realism. These works show how after going back and forth with myself, I resolved that if I’m painting something, I want it to accomplish something more than just looking good. I want my work to speak to something important to me, Judeo-Christian themes, something I hope the core of can be seen by viewers, even if they don’t understand or relate.’’

Joshua Rainer (b. 1996) in Feburary in Detroit. He lives in and works from his hometown. Rainer began formal art education at Cranbrook Upper Schools, is a member of the Birmingham Bloomfield Arts Center (BBAC). He was the recipient of four Scholastics Regional Gold Medals in Painting, the Regional Best of Show, a Regional American Vision Nomination, and a Scholastics National Silver Medal in Painting. Rainer graduated from the College for Creative Studies’ Illustration Department in 2018 and has exhibited in the Grosse Pointe Art Center, the U245 Gallery, two College for Creative Studies Juried Student Exhibitions, Marygrove College, and been featured in DDEAF Magazine.

oil on canvas, 40 x 30 inches, signed executed in 2021

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SENGHOR REID

SHIRLEY WOODSON: PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST, 2022

“I’m always trying to create a visual experience that is unprecedented in one way or another, even though the viewer and I can never have the same experience of the painting. We’re not even really looking at the same work because the painting that I end up with, I couldn’t have made it if I hadn’t gone through the process of making ten other paintings and sketches they’ll never see, but they all came together to get to this one. And even as the artist, I still won’t always know the full meaning until there’s a viewer. The work of art is to create that discourse, not just a beautiful object or experience.”

Senghor Reid (b. 1976) explores the interactions between the human body and the environment, creating visual representations of dreams, memories and traces of human contact with nature. Reid earned a BFA from the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI); a Masters of Teaching in Art Education from Wayne State University (Detroit, MI) and attended the internationally recognized Marathon Program at the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture (NY, NY).

He is currently an Artist-in-Residence at the Cranbrook Schools (Bloomfield Hills, MI) and is a National Board Certified Visual Arts Educator. He has received many awards including the Kresge Foundation’s, Kresge Arts in Detroit Visual Artist Fellowship prize and the prestigious Governor’s Award for Emerging Artist (Michigan). Reid’s work has been exhibited in the U.S. and abroad in galleries and museums including the Museum of Contemporary Art – Detroit in Michigan, Kentler International Drawing Space in New York, St. Catharine Museum in Canada and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York.

His work is in private, public and corporate art collections.

acrylic on canvas, 48 x 36 inches, signed executed in 2022

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SENGHOR REID MOONSTRUCK 3, 2021

acrylic on clayboard, 24 x 18 inches, signed executed in 2021

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SENGHOR REID MOONSTRUCK 4, 2021

acrylic on clayboard, 24 x 18 inches, signed executed in 2021

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RASHAUN RUCKER IN DEFIANCE OF IT ALL, 2021

“These drawings look like they’re just about my family and personal history, but they’re also me overcoming fear, finding courage. I’ve always been scared of painting, and I don’t ever use color. Sometimes, as humans, we get really good at something, you don’t want to try anything else because you don’t want to fail. But really, the only true way to live is to have adaptability and the willingness to try things. This is me exploring. I can’t live in fear of paint and color the rest of my life.”

Rashaun Rucker (b. 1978, Winston-Salem, NC) is a product of North Carolina Central University and Marygrove College. He makes photographs, prints and drawings and has won more than 40 national and state awards for his work. In 2008 Rucker became the first African-American to be named Michigan Press Photographer of the Year. He also won a national Emmy Award in 2008 for documentary photography on the pit bull culture in Detroit. Rucker was a Maynard Fellow at Harvard in 2009, and a Hearst visiting professional in the journalism department at UNC-Chapel Hill in 2013. In 2014 Rucker was awarded an artist residency at the Red Bull House of Art. In 2016 Rucker was honored as a Modern Man by Black Enterprise magazine. In 2017 Rucker created the original artwork for the critically acclaimed Detroit Free Press documentary 12 and Clairmount. His work was recently featured in HBO’s celebrated series “Random Acts of Flyness” and “Native Son.” In 2019 Rucker was awarded the Red Bull Arts Detroit micro grant as well as named a Kresge Visual Arts Fellow for his drawing practice. In 2020 Rucker was named a Sustainable Arts Foundation Awardee. He received an International Studio & Curatorial Program Residency in 2021.

In addition, he was awarded a grant for Arts in Activism from Black Box Press Foundation and the Mellon Residency at the University of Michigan Department of Humanities in 2021. Rucker’s diverse work is represented in numerous public and private collections including Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, DC.

oil on Arches paper, 30 x 22 inches, signed executed in 2021

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RASHAUN RUCKER LONG LAST, 2021

oil on Arches paper, 30 x 22 inches, signed executed in 2021

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Aristocrat, 2019 Alicia Brown

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Woman with Flowers, 2021 Cydney Camp

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Spotlight, 2021 Cailyn Dawson

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REVELATIONS 12-30-21: Thou Shalt Daydreamth Sydney G. James

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Midnight at McNichols and Joseph Campau, 2021 Don Killpatrick, III

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Unloading at Russel Street, 2021 Don Kilpatrick, III

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Self-Portrait with White Shirt, 1996 Richard Lewis

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DON’T MESS WITH THESE/ These Either, 2021 Sabrina Nelson

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The Moon be Still, 2021 Joshua Rainer

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Shirley Woodson: Portrait of the Artist, 2022 Senghor Reid

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Moonstruck 3, 2021 Senghor Reid

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Moonstruck 4, 2021 Senghor Reid

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In Defiance of it All, 2021 Rashaun Rucker

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Long Last, 2021 Rashaun Rucker

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Richard Lewis, Self-Portrait with White Shirt, 1996

REVELATIONS January 8- Feburary 4, 2022 M Contemporary Art 205 East 9 Mile Ferndale, MI 48220 mcontemporaryart.com Inquires Melannie Chard mc@mcontemporaryart.com (347) 665-7011 Text: Nichole M. Christian Catalogue Design: Andre Moore aaprintandpublishing.com

©2021 Rashaun Rucker ©2021 Senghor Reid ©2021 Joshua Rainer ©2021 Sabrina Nelson ©2021 Richard Lewis ©2021 Don Kilpatrick III ©2021 Sydney G. James ©2021 Cailyn Dawson ©2021 Alicia Brown ©2021 M Contemporary Art ©2021 Aa Print and Publishing All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retreivial system or transmitted in any form or by any electronic, or other means without prior explicit written consent from the copyright holders.

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