2011 Conference on International Opportunities in the Arts: The Interconnected World is the international forum for emerging and established artists, cultural administrators, residency directors, teachers, critics and curators providing a unique cross-disciplinary platform to network, showcase, support and promote artists’ work.
“One of the best things in the world of art today.” -Director or the London Biennale, David Medall
This ambitious project consists of a series of doors and panels that are carved and painted sculptures. In Shahid Al-Bilali’s words: I am an artist whose intentions are to interpret the aspirations of my people, to get at the heart of our spiritual and material power, to the roots that enrich and strengthen the African in America.
Born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1943, as a child in the segregated South, Shahid Al-Bilali experienced life in the all Black rural community of Newburg. As a politically and socially conscious person, he became involved in the Black Nationalist movement, first as an organizer for the Black Unity League of Kentucky, then as a member of the Black Panther Party and finally as a member of the Nation of Islam.
His first mentor was an extraordinary art teacher, Mrs. Anna Huddleston. Under her tutelage, Al-Bilali won statewide arts competitions and with her financial support he attended classes at the University of Louisville. He took classes in painting, printmaking, illustration and jewelry making. After dropping out of school, he married at nineteen and began raising a family. Over the next two decades Al-Bilali trained as a skilled tradesman, channeling his creativity into building renovation and new construction including interior and exterior design.
After moving to Amherst in 1997 to get a degree in African American Art and History from UMASS, Al-Bilali met renowned sculptor, Professor Dorrance Hill who introduced him to metal sculpture. Al-Bilali began expanding upon a concept placed in his mind by Hill, which was the notion of Fourth Dimensional Art. Hill had said to Al-Bilali, “You are breaking new ground in art by going beyond a three dimensional view of light and luminosity. You are a Fourth Dimensional artist”. This was a concept Hill told Al-Bilali he would have to define for himself. These words offered him a new direction. The Fourth Dimension is the connection, the bridge of the physical world into the spiritual world, a new culture created by the African American experience. As he says: The African American is like the crow in the Native American mythology and just like the crow can move between the worlds we can be in two places at the same time. This particular type of aesthetic and ideological movement is what Al-Bilali has come to understand as the art of survival, the art of development and the coming together of the worlds” cultures.
He explains: “African American art is the Fourth Dimensional experience. The Fourth Dimensional grid falls outside of what we call the natural world – it is the space, the bridge between the physical and spiritual worlds. Because of our position in the slave system, Africans in America experienced the space between many cultures and classes and endured the physical and spiritual effects of slavery. African American art, Fourth Dimensional art is the cutting edge in American and world art development. We find in African art all the definitions of the isms in European art. Many critics define African Art as primitive. In my opinion all art is primitive compared to the creation of the heavens and the earth. African American art is the evolution of African art, European art, American art and World art. African American art is neither African nor European; it is a new school of thought. African American creativity has touched our whole world. None of the many cultures of the planet Earth has escaped the influence of the creativity of the African American experience. More Information
p>These composite photographs are constructed from images made over intervals of hours, months or decades, hinting at the complex experience of time.
Sandra Matthews works in photographic collage, and engages – as a teacher, writer, curator and editor – with cultural issues raised by the practices of photography. She is Associate Professor of Film and Photography at Hampshire College and Editor of the online journal Trans-Asia Photography Review.
Matthews is co-author, with Laura Wexler, of Pregnant Pictures (Routledge, 2000). Her photographic work is represented in collections including the Fogg Art Museum (Harvard University), the Smith College Art Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum (London), and the Women In Photography International Archive at Yale University.
The paintings in this exhibition started out as, what LaPrade Seuthe calls, clean slates. Beginning with discarded maps, she carefully color matches the hues in the existing maps and applies these opaque paint mixtures to eradicate names, symbols and other location identifiers. Once the clean slate has been established, she adds drawings of images culled from encyclopedias, dictionaries, travel guides and assorted manuals. The images are separated by layers of grid lines – a device suggesting there is a connection between all that exists in the natural world. Translucent layers of paint are built up in a process that unifies the surface while modifying the imagery in various ways. Some images become obscured while others become more pronounced. For her, this process seems to parallel an internal process of creating a clean slate or starting over. Some experiences remain vivid in our minds and can easily be recalled, while others exist as vestiges. Her painting is complete when connections between seemingly random images are revealed.
Since her first solo show in 1994, Massachusetts-born LaPrade Seuthe has participated in numerous group exhibitions including most recently the London Biennale, and the Zendai Museum of Modern Art in Shanghai. She is Director of Hampden and Central Galleries at the University of Massachusetts. More Information
“Never Arriving” is an installation that focuses on concepts of the temporal and duration. Dickson will create a site-responsive installation in the Incubator Space over the course of several weeks with the installation process on view to the public.
The final work itself will have a finitduration; its own life span. Each stage of the process is both a part of the work and of the conceptual intention. When the exhibition is over the piece will cease to exist as the de-installation destroys it. The impermanence of the installation connects it to the life span of the body in aging and death, but also to the uncertainty of life in general and the ever changing dynamics of personal relationships. More Information
Victor Signore’s solo exhibition of new mixed-media sculpture and installation explores the creation of a liminal space where the boundaries between corporeal and immaterial states or physical and mental experience are blurred. Utilizing the visceral quality of natural materials such as beeswax, ashes and lead; the works attempt to evoke both personal and collective memory through seemingly disparate channels of perception and experience. More Information
Pigment prints and video that focus on the effects of nature and time on architecture
Join us on our travels to view two extraordinary Chinese exhibits. Never before seen by the public, The Emperor’s Private Paradise highlights the contents of an Emperor’s private retreat deep within the Forbidden City. Ninety objects of ceremony and leisure – murals, paintings, wall coverings, furniture, architectural elements, jades and cloisonne – unveil the private realm of the Qianlong Emperor (r.1736-1796), one of history’s most influential figures.
Fish Silk Tea Bamboo: Cultivating an Image of China
Through delicate works on paper and other select objects, explore four essential motifs Westerners often associate with China — fish, silk, tea, bamboo. Each was cultivated for its artistic expression as well as profit. All helped shape the emerging concept of the Middle Kingdom in 18th-century Europe.
For reservations call 413-577-2486 or email
Holly Lynton is interested in photographing people who work with animals on small scale, sustainable, local, organic farms and in the wild to expose the spiritual conviction they have for this way of life, and as a gesture to her commitment and belief in their importance.
Holly Lynton is a photographer who received her BA from Yale University in 1994, and an MFA from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College in 2000. More information
Through a series of compelling drawings and paintings, this show honors the promising artist who received his MFA degree from the UMASS Art Department and died suddenly in 1982 at the age of 29 while studying to receive his doctorate at the University of Illinois.
John Anthony Kendrick was born on November 6, 1952 in Roanoke, Virginia. During his early elementary school days his art talent became known, especially during the art talent shows that displayed many of his works from the fence of the school yard. After intermediate school, he decided he would attend the High School of Art and Design. There he studied painting, exhibiting tremendous creativity.
John Anthony Kendrick completed carvings, sketches, oil on canvas and portraits, and used his talent to mentor those who were incarcerated, as well as the students he mentored as a doctoral candidate. While growing up in Harlem, his vision would walk with him to sketch the surrounding life on the streets. He also used comic books, magazines and photography to help pull his vision into the art world.
With an enormous talent, he was always such a serious young man, taking in all he could during his short life to learn about art and its history. Dedicated to his work, he never stopped to take a break. He set goals and was determined to succeed. While working to achieve his goals, he bartered many of his works in return for services (such as dentistry). He also sold one of his earlier works to Earl Monroe former NBA player.
His sister Gay Chestnut, who is the curator of this exhibit attests: “After his death, many of his works of art were left behind, diminished into the unknown from his last known residence. Many others were displayed and protected by the love of our mother prior to her death. John Anthony Kendrick is ‘an artist at rest.’ As the works of art he left behind continues to be displayed, the silence of his talent now opens up to the world.”
