Address: 1790 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley CA 94709
Curator: Tom Franco
Title:“ No More, No Less”
Pointiflet - Images Rendered in Bleach
http://sigidiart.com/pointiflet.htmlArtist: TheArthur Wright
Artist’s website : http://www.thearthurwright.net
About TheArthur
I was born in Little Rock Arkansas in 1940. Three years later,
during the Second World War, the family moved to Seattle where my father found
defense work at Boeing Aircraft Company. Joining the U.S. Air Force after
graduating from high school I spent three years in Japan, a country that
impressed me then as it continues to do even after all these years. After
discharge I attended Central Washington State College in Ellensburg for a year
then moved to the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Area in October 1964. I am the
father of four children, three robust young males and a lady.
My first writings were published in the early seventies and my art sold well
initially but after nearly a 20 year hiatus I revived my art career in 1994.Reviving my career has taken me on a wild ride, including a call to Hollywood, short-lived and becoming a board member of the Artship, a renovated ship of war that became a seaborne arts venue in Oakland that was discontinued in 2004. My first internet sale in 1997 was to a person from South Africa and one of the most recent to a Swedish representative of the Carnaval, a huge and sprawling, even global celebration that deals intensively with the peoples of the African Diaspora. For the 2004 Carnaval in San Francisco my bleach rendering of ‘Califia, Queen of California’ was chosen as the poster cover for that event. I have since been shown and honored in various schools and colleges such as Stanford, UCLA, Sonoma State and Santa Rosa JC and a much longer and growing list.
The introduction of bleach into my art has been a huge catalyst
and I find enough nuances in using it to take me the rest of the way.
Statement:
Most artists, I believe, dip their paintbrushes, or lift the
hammer, the knife, because it gives them their best bet to connect with the
world at large, to reach the soul, the heart, the spirit of so many others with
a particular set of truths or beliefs about existence as it is known to the
artist.
The tool used really doesn't matter; some artists use more than
a few. The expression is the main thing. This expression is a language we have
chosen to use from life-lessons. These are brief, fleeting moments of
revelation and hopefully it comes from the heart, revealing a "Deep
Within". As with dance, song, or athleticism, painting from the `deep
within' is more or less a `comfort zone', a wellspring we can draw from, using
a few simple tools to express what essentially we cannot speak, only
experience, and what I call my art is my small attempt to show how I realize these
inexpressible things reveal themselves to me because it is the best I can do to
connect with the world at large, to reach the soul, the heart, the spirit of so
many others with a particular set of truths or beliefs about what is as I have
experienced it. This need to communicate, to embrace the environment, to
interact with those within that environment, those things that show how
defining words quite simply fail to encompass the essence of the incredible and
the commonplace things, the rare and not so rare, all the opposites and all the
shades in between. We don't need a ticket; we simply need to get on board and
those who take this ride quite often are the driven ones to do whatever it is
they do: artists all: the choice to do otherwise simply isn't there.
To me artists are cutting-edge tools of our (the human race)
voyage through this 'Grand Continuum' that started with a timeless beginning,
seers into the future, peering down into the depths of our (is)ness. Through
this magic thing called art what they imagine can become real. Romantic as that
may be, my own drive is often satisfied quite simply by dusting off old shoes,
or old beliefs, or old styles, recycling, if you will, but presenting them in a
new way. Perhaps this new way has never been seen or thought of before. I love
those mystical flights but they do not come at a beckon; they choose their
time. I don't care for revenge. But I don't mind at all looking at things
closely and if I need to take action at least I will do it knowingly. Wrongful things
done by those who did them and continue to do them, willingly or not, and to be
the avenger of those wrongs are not so much my concern as my desire to express
the strength and dignity inherent in the subject matter of my choice, organic
or not, whether (still)life or dynamic human effort that find their way under
my brush, or tip of the pen. And even more accurately, as I explore this new
medium of bleaching, the tip of a toothpick, and now, the bamboo skewer is my
instrument of choice. It is a salute I give to things that in turn give
expression simply by being, a vibrant, deep state of being that goes quite
beyond where even the penetrating vision of the seers, and the insightful
musings of dreamers can never give definition. I place blinkers over my eyes so
that I may have a clear and uncluttered view of what is ahead and keeps me on a
narrow track, with a minimum of distraction. No head stuck in the sand here,
but clarity of focus and doing what is nearest at hand is what I am after, and
in the best style possible. Not as the Avenger, not the Revenger, but as the
Affirmer. And that still leaves room for me to defend myself when challenged.
Be careful. I still have teeth.
I am black by birth, born
towards the tail end of the grand march of humanity that began far back at
Olduvai Gorge in South Africa where the oldest fossils of mankind have yet been
discovered. I express who I am every day through the filter of that blackness.
The 17th and 18th centuries bore witness to a great denial of history as it actually
happened, by willing ones who knew and sometimes unwilling souls who may not
have known how much they contributed to this great human mistake. Out of that
denial came a great deal of my own personal grief, and more so, the grief of a
people who were (blind)sided by terrific social forces that took a great
heritage and reduced it beyond the irreducible. Kings and queens of great and
powerful civilizations proliferate throughout our history, and men and women of
great note. Wisdom and tradition belonged to us almost without limit, and
great, great achievement found fertile ground. Discoveries of these ancient
doings are brought to light in daily doses. I intend to take part however small
in the (un)covery, this (re)covery of history as it truly was, if only as one
who toils for long hours, all by myself if need be, and into the dark time of
day.
More than any well-warranted concerns for those who caused slavery and racial divisions I care more about the restoration of the grand things expected of the human race. If black people take the vanguard in this great manifesto that must take place if we as a species of this earth is to continue I will cheer. Indeed, I feel it is our rightful place to do this. A reaffirmation of what was, if you will. It will be simply that few peoples will have had to come from so far as we have, through so much, and survived. If anything drives me to do what I call art, to sell my paintings and other creative endeavors, to hope that they have meaning to those who eventually possess them it will be that quiet little belief lying there, waiting, deep, deep within, my own ‘Deep Within’, that we have come far, taken the blows, are still in the process of recovering from those blows, and we have survived.
More than any well-warranted concerns for those who caused slavery and racial divisions I care more about the restoration of the grand things expected of the human race. If black people take the vanguard in this great manifesto that must take place if we as a species of this earth is to continue I will cheer. Indeed, I feel it is our rightful place to do this. A reaffirmation of what was, if you will. It will be simply that few peoples will have had to come from so far as we have, through so much, and survived. If anything drives me to do what I call art, to sell my paintings and other creative endeavors, to hope that they have meaning to those who eventually possess them it will be that quiet little belief lying there, waiting, deep, deep within, my own ‘Deep Within’, that we have come far, taken the blows, are still in the process of recovering from those blows, and we have survived.