Merry Christmas
Black History Month
Artist of the Week
Selma Hortense Burke was an American sculptor and a member of the Harlem Renaissance movement. Burke is best known for a bas relief portrait of President Franklin D. Roosevelt that may have inspired the profile found on the obverse of the dime.
Selma Burke was born on December 31, 1900, in Mooresville, North Carolina, the seventh of 10 children of Reverend Neil and Mary Elizabeth Colfield Burke.[6][7] Her father was an AME Church Minister who worked on the railroads for additional income. As a child, she attended a one-room segregated schoolhouse, and often played with the riverbed clay found near her home.[3][8] She would later describe the feeling of squeezing the clay through her fingers as a first encounter with sculpture, saying “It was there in 1907 that I discovered me.”[9] Burke’s interest in sculpture was encouraged by her maternal grandmother, a painter, although her mother thought she should pursue a more financially stable career.[10]
Selma Burke died at the age of 94 on August 29, 1995 in New Hope, Pennsylvania, where she had lived since the 1950s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selma_Burke
Christmas Movie of the Week
I love the traditional movies, like White Christmas. Starring Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen. They sing. They dance. They make you laugh. This is available on Netflix and you can rent it on Prime.
A cute new movie is A Castle for Christmas. This little movie stars Brooke Shields and Cary Elwes. It is available on Netflix. I like this movie because of the actors, but the story was fun and quirky.
What Are the Ingredients of Solving a Murder?
Style. Class. And an X chromosome. These are the ingredients for a successful detective.
Phryne Fisher and Jessica Fletcher. dynamic crime fighters whose attention to detail have foiled the plans of many criminals
These damsels are not in distress they are in fact applying stress to all who dare to break the law. Listen as the Sistas explain what makes them so good.
Episode She Murdered It
Artist of the Week
This was one of the first pieces of Kerry James Marshall that I saw live in a museum. I loved it and could not wait to show it to anyone who would come with me. Africa Restored (Cheryl as Cleopatra) (2003) There are a million little stories in buttons and memorabilia across this work. They each tell a story of a history of a people.
Kerry James Marshall describes Africa Restored (Cheryl as Cleopatra) as “the shape of Africa reconfigured as a cubist sculpture.” Reversing art-historical narratives of modernist painting’s appropriation of African sculpture, it offers a complex meditation on African ancestry and black aesthetics. Africa Restored formally references the nkisi nkondi, or power figures, of the Democratic Republic of Congo. These sculptures were crafted as basic armatures into which accretions of metals, mirrors, and nails were driven to activate their force. (Art Institute of Chicago)
They Were So Groovy
Peace, Love and Crime Fighting! 1970 brought us some of the hippest, coolest crime fighters in the hottest threads! They kept the streets crime free and dazzled all the foxy ladies” or at least that is what the Sistas thought. Listen to this episode to find out who these great crime fighters were.
1970 Detectives Episode 3
Artist of the Week
“While the tonal values of Marshall’s figures are universal, their impressions are extremely varied— Marshall’s figures assume all facets of black life. Marshall’s 2012 painting, School of Beauty, School of Culture portrays a scene inspired by the cosmetology school “Your School of Beauty Culture” located in the Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago’s South Side. The world defined in Marshall’s painting designates a space in which black women determine their own images of ideal beauty. With a nod to Hans Holbein the Younger’s The Ambassadors, Marshall uses the anamorphic Sleeping Beauty head to register Euro-centric standards of beauty, populated in the academy for centuries, as a distorted reality. “
Christmas Movie of the Week
I didn’t think I was going to like this movie, but I was wrong. It is cute, quirky and fun. If you need something light and Christmasy, this is good. I also like it because it has a diverse cast. Check it and let me know what you think.
Artist of the Week
Kerry James Marshall is an American artist and professor, known for his paintings of Black figures. He previously taught painting at the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois at Chicago. In 2017, Marshall was included on the annual Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world. (Wikipedia)
Christmas Movie of the Week
Lets get this party started with some fun. Christmas Chronicles 2. Starring Kurt Russell, Goldie Hawn, and Darby Camp. There is a threat to cancel Christmas. I enjoyed it and could even watch it again.
UPP Creative Media 