Restorative justice: Vanessa German’s art celebrates black lives

Vanessa German grew up in Los Angeles in a creative household, wearing clothes her artist mother made, writing stories, and crafting creations from the scrap materials her mom laid out on the dining room table for her and her siblings. “We were makers as a way of life,” says German, the 2018 recipient of the […]

First Fridays: December 7

While working on her newest series of paintings, Uzo Njoku learned the importance of telling a story through portraiture. The story Njoku tells with “Out of the Shadows,” on view this month at the New City Arts Welcome Gallery, is one that has global reach and widespread effects, and is perhaps not told—or heard—nearly enough. […]

Artist Frank Walker captures the value of human life

It’s a humid but not hot Saturday evening in early May. Jazz floats through the auditorium of the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, filling in the spaces between laughter, delighted gasps and conversational murmurs in the next room. Dressed in brown slip-on shoes, relaxed fit jeans, a short-sleeved chambray shirt and a dark blue […]

First Fridays: December 1

First Fridays: December 1 “Every artist starts with something inside themselves that feels true to them,” says sculptor and installation artist Ivy Naté. “I’m not sure what came first for me…balancing chaos and order, or reinventing the obvious.” “I feel lucky that at times I am able to take some abstract shit in my head, interpret […]

First Fridays: November 3

First Fridays: November 3 Ann Robertson made her first art quilt more than 20 years ago, as a way of working through her experience in the Great Hanshin earthquake that hit Kobe, Japan, in the wee hours of January 17, 1995. With no prior quilting experience and only one American quilting book and some Japanese quilting […]

First Fridays: October 6

When Georgia Webb draws, she tends to draw things that are close to her—her mother, Ali, her grandpa Jim or her friend Sidney. She draws her favorite cartoon characters, iconic items like Spam cans, and often reinterprets famous paintings, such as Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring,” in her own distinct black line-and-marker style. A […]