Just as some classically trained musicians scoff at the notion of hip-hop as a legitimate form of music, many traditional art connoisseurs disregard contemporary visual art as a passing phase.
But for nearly 20 years, sculptor Robert Powell has provided these new-school artists with a home by way of Portfolio Gallery.
“Everyone is an artist,” Powell said. “That’s the freedom of art.”
In his latest exhibit at Portfolio entitled Four of a Kind, all of the featured artists share the common bond of the Kansas City side of Missouri.
“These are all great stories that these artists are telling about life experiences,” Powell said about the exhibit that features the artwork of Bonnye Brown, Anthony High, Keith Shepherd and Ed Hogan.
While they all have the common denominator of Kansas City, the different images that make up Four of A Kind could be reflections from anywhere in Black America.
In Keith Shepherd’s mural-like visual novella “Riding through the hood in my daddy’s black Cadillac,” it was nearly impossible to tell if the piece was an illustration of the Kansas City ghetto or the North Side of his native St. Louis.
With a Chop Suey joint, liquor store and church on the same stretch of a barren street, a little girl peeks out of the backseat and absorbs the dangerous scene. It’s as if Shepherd had Donny Hathaway’s “The Ghetto” playing in the background as he painted.
Shepherd’s work is an illustration of the collective urban black experience, in a sharpness that almost appears three-dimensional, from juke joints with harmonicas and upright pianos, to blue light basement parties and hip-hop heads nodding as a DJ scratches on the ones and twos.
Anthony High, on the other hand, wears the black-hand side of Kansas City like a badge of honor in his work. “18th and Vine” reveals a bustling African-American arts district in the heart of Kansas City and the jazz for which it has been known for decades. High also presents several pieces that pay homage to Negro League greats.
Bonnye Brown warmly adds a woman’s touch to the exhibit with her themes of motherhood, love, learning and loss.
In “Whou! Whou! Whou!” Brown shows a baby literally popping out in a unique paper mache/canvas painting combination of a woman in the throes of labor.
On the opposite end of the complexity of motherhood, “A long kiss goodnight,” blue and turquoise are painted in contrast to the earthy terracotta colors of “Whou!” as a woman says goodbye to her child for the final time. According to Powell, the painting was inspired by a miscarriage that Brown endured.
The black-and-white drawings of Ed Hogan are not nearly as concise. His series includes colorless, androgynous figures whose simultaneous actions straddle the fence between morally acceptable and obscene behavior while piled up on top of each other and engaged a host of activities. For example: a couple in an apparent sex act on the pews of what appear to be a church. And while titles like “Rev. Joy’s Supper Club” and “Chittlin’ Supper” add to the sense of ethnicity, they don’t contribute at all to unveiling the message or themes of the drawings, which are anybody’s guess.
Four of A Kind includes pieces that are literal, some that leave much to the imagination and a few that even manage to confuse. The exhibit successfully shows the depth and variety that can be found within black art of.
Four of A Kind is on display through July 30 at Portfolio Gallery, 3514 Delmar. For more information and gallery hours, call (314) 533-3323 or visit http://www.portfolio-stl.com.
