Baltimore Sonnets

What a joy to spend a day at the Met with artist and educator Noah Jamison and see his painting "Black Valhalla" currently on view at the museum. Black Valhalla by Noah Jamison About Noah: After receiving his MFA from the University of Iowa in 1974, Noah moved to NYC and began teaching and exhibiting.  He exhibited his work at JAM or Just Above Midtown, a gallery and experimental space open from 1974 to 1986 where Black artists were free to explore various forms of art and push their creative boundaries. Noah's painting of "Black Valhalla" shows his mastery of encaustic, a technique in which paint is mixed with molten wax.  The painting was purchased by the Met museum in 1977.  I was impressed with the large fields of color that form the two silhouettes.  When you stand close to the painting, the numerous and meticulously applied pigmented layers needed to achieve the bold forms becomes evident.   Created in the immediate aftermath of the Vietnam War, the paint...

 What a magnificent exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Girl in Pink Dress by Laura Wheeler Waring, ca. 1927 Featuring 160 works of art - paintings, drawings, sculptures, photography, and various types of ephemera - this exhibit spans the rich cross-disciplinary artistic and cultural period of African-American life.  Through these vast and varied works of art, visitors can explore the myriad of ways Black artists depicted modern life in the 1920s-40s in NYC's Harlem and nationwide. Langston Hughes by Winold Reiss, 1925    Girls in a Green Cap by Laura Wheeler Waring, 1930 Dr. Murrell, the curator of the exhibition was present during my visit. It was a pleasure to meet her and to hear about the vast research that went into making the exhibit successful.  I was excited to see the inclusion of the beautiful paintings by artist Laura Wheeler Waring and the intricate sculpture "Lift Every Voice (The Harp)" by Augusta Savage.  Although women writers, da...

Journée internationale des femme s   The theme for UN Women's Day 202 4 is aligned with the demands of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women 2023: ending gender-based violence through adequate funding.  Without ambitious investments to scale-up prevention programs, implement effective policies, and provide support services to address violence against women and girls, countries will fail to end gender-based violence by 2030.