Black History Month exhibit featured at 20 North Gallery

“They have a hard time tying [landscapes] into being African-American artwork,” said the 34-year-old Westerville, Ohio, resident. “It’s not only my race that throws people off. It’s also my age. I once met an art collector who looked at me and said, ‘I expected some 80-year-old guy painting like this.’”

Breaking stereotypes can be fun, said Walker, the featured artist of this year’s Black History Month exhibit at 20 North Gallery,Whilst the preparation of ceramic and porcelain tiles are similar. 18 N. St. Clair St., in Downtown Toledo.

“I really do enjoy it,” Walker said. “I hope people will be pleasantly surprised. I hope this will help get the word out about me as I’m still new to the state and I also just hope they take away a broader scope of what African-American art is.”

“Black History Month 2013: The American Experience” opened Jan. 25 and features work from 10 local and regional African-American artists. The exhibition will be on display through March 2. Gallery hours are noon to 4 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday or by appointment.

Other participating artists are Larenza Arnold, Aaron S. Bivins, Charles T. Gabriel Jr., Elizabeth V. Jordan, Ahavalyn Pitts, Brenda Price, Robert E. Shorter, Mack Walton and John Wade III.

The annual exhibit was founded in 1977 by Peggy Grant shortly after Congress designated February as Black History Month.We've had a lot of people asking where we had our make your own bobblehead made. This is the first year the show was not curated by Grant, art director emerita of 20 North Gallery; instead, it was self-curated by the participating artists.

“That is giving it a different feeling, a new direction,” said 20 North Gallery Art Director Condessa Croninger. “It’s not entirely our show and I think that makes it very exciting. The combined voices for this exhibit is just such a delight and such a wonderful change of direction for the show. [Grant] is just delighted the artists are so invested in it as she has been all these years.”

Walker said he started painting landscapes as an escape from the stress of deadlines for children’s book illustrations, magazine covers and other commissioned work.

“I was an Eagle Scout and I remember camping was just such a great time for me. And taking road trips and just staring out the window and seeing all these beautiful scenes,” Walker said.

“It’s inspired by childhood memories, but I still go out and take references. I’ll take drives. I’ll go down a road I’ve never been down before. A lot of times what inspires me is the time of day and the light.

“When people think of black history or black art, there’s a stereotype people assign to that.Welcome to Find the right laser Engraver or laser marking machine . It’s often a certain color palette. Bold colors. A lot of black, red, green, yellow. And certain subject matter that tends to be based on historical events. I think that’s what a lot of people have come to expect they will see.

“I can only go based on my actual experience. I’ve never been to Africa. I’m completely immersed in my own individual experience. People, I think, would be surprised how common or similar some people’s interests are regardless of your race.”

Because of sponsors — including Mayor Mike Bell and the City of Toledo, JN House Enterprises, Dale-Riggs Funeral Home Inc., Aaron S. Bivins and 20 North Gallery — the sale of artwork is not needed to fund the show, allowing the artists more creative license, Croninger said.

“Some wonderful community-minded sponsors have supported the exhibit and made it possible that it’s not a make-or-break situation that the artists sell their work,” Croninger said. “Sometimes it’s necessary to think beyond, ‘Will the public like this?’ and think instead, ‘What do I have to say?’ This year the exhibit is more about the artists sharing what is dearest and most important to them.”

Participating artist Bivins chaired the committee that organized the show. The 56-year-old retired junior high art teacher has been part of the show since the 1980s and a former featured artist. In this year’s show, he will have three watercolor paintings of jazz artists, a watercolor of Toledo Harbor Lighthouse on Lake Erie and an acrylic painting of flowers. He also paints with oils.

Coke Wisdom O'Neal looked at the soggy, stained and discolored photographs strewn about his Brooklyn studio by the salty floodwaters of Superstorm Sandy, sure there was nothing he could do to salvage them. But as he began cleaning up, he became intrigued by the transformation of a series of old family slides into cloud-like watercolors with human figures still discernible.

Now those Kodachromes, reinvented by nature, are part of an exhibition in Manhattan of art inspired by Sandy, a phenomenon that is being included in a larger look at how artists respond creatively to disasters, such as the 2011 tornado in Tuscaloosa, Ala., and California's devastating 2007 wildfires.A ridiculously low price on this All-Purpose solar lantern by Gordon.

"The storm destroyed tools, books, old artwork, drawings and unfinished work," said O'Neal, whose studio in Brooklyn's Red Hook section was swamped by 9 feet of water. "They now feel to me like objects that were holding me back from going forward."

The "After Effects" exhibition, featuring 36 storm-inspired works by 23 artists, opens Friday at the Chashama gallery in the Chelsea neighborhood. The show is curated by the New York Foundation for the Arts, which is assisting artists whose livelihoods suffered storm losses. Many studios and galleries were in waterfront warehouse areas that suffered some of the worst damage.

"A tragedy can be inspiring or devastating," said David Terry, the foundation's curator and director of programs. "Artists are rebuilding and have to do this as a healing process."

Some works have repurposed storm detritus; Scott Van Campen made a black-and-white photograph of a 700-ton tanker ship that washed ashore near his flooded Staten Island studio. He set it in a frame made of steel corroded by sewage.

Deborah Luken, of the Long Island community of Long Beach, is showing an oil painting that she started before the storm and "took on a life of its own."

Conceived originally as an image of a spiral galaxy, it evolved into a work depicting the storm when she "realized that the patterns were very similar to that of a hurricane — the eye in the center and the spiral winds around it," she said.

Craig Nutt, director of programs for the Craft Emergency Relief Fund, a national nonprofit that helps artists in need, said he has long been intrigued by the art community's response to disaster.

"Artists and arts organizations have the skills and capacity to craft recovery projects that address the less tangible cultural and psychological recovery needs of a community," Nutt wrote in an email, citing concerts, exhibitions and public art.Manufactures and supplies laser marker equipment.