Reflected
A Group Exhibition in partnership with The Love Yourself Project and Capital One
Artists Include:
Kimberly Becoat
Musa Hixson
Parris Jaru
Stan Squirewell
The Love Yourself Project in partnership with Capital One is pleased to present Reflected a group exhibition of four contemporary a African American artists who explore abstraction, cultural heritage, and unity. These NYC based artists have developed mixed media and painting techniques that express a love for the visceral elements of paint and the use of found objects to express the binary elements of unique combinations in art. In alignment with The Love Yourself Project, these artists bring together a sense of self-love, purpose, and artistic communication, which further the elements of self-expression and personal growth.
Musa Hixson, a multi-disciplinary artist, uses a spiritual form of writing he has developed called soul script to express the unifying elements of global consciousness and scientific research with a sense of awakening. Know for his earth art and large scale sculptures, Hixson's new painting series related to his installation in particular reference to the seed pods and soul script. The seedpod forms mirror nature with an earthy clarity. Hixson has attended several artist in residence programs and has exhibited works throughout NYC, Miami, Switzerland, Japan, and England.
Parris Jaru a Jamaican born and NYC based artist, captures the elements of place and time with his visceral abstractions. Jaru a world traveler, poet, and documentary filmmaker believes in the return to nature with the use of natural pigments in his painting process. “A Trail of Pigment” by Kiritin Beyer exploring his travels to India to research natural pigments. “Imagination is Creation” is another documentary documenting the travels of jaru and his interactions with youth communities in Africa and France. Earthys and soulful Jaru captures a moment in time with his colorful abstraction reflecting memories such as a summer barbecue or being a traveler in a distant land. Jaru has recently exhibited in Miami and NYC, and has created public art projects in Kenya, France, and India.
Kimberly Becoat a native New Yorker is a mixed media artist, investigated materials and visual experiences with social commentary. The colorful bursts are exploding micro/microcosms that could be examining the cellular level or the cosmic universal flow. Becoat reflects on history and contemporary culture through her work. Becoat has recently exhibited at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Smack Mellon, and MoCADA. She also has an upcoming two-person exhibition at Rush Arts Gallery.
Stan Squirewell, reflects on how ancient civilizations expressed themselves through multifaceted symbols. A DC native and currently an NYC artist Squirewell is a painter, photographer, installation, and performance artist. In this series he uses hoses, tubing, wires and paint mediums to construct abstract sculptural works which relate to the cellular life force of being and binary coding technology. Using red and the string explores the life giving energy of birth and connection. Squirewell has been a nationally recognized artist for his work and has recently exhibited work throughout the USA.
The artists in this exhibition reflect on self, culture, and identity, connecting to global concepts through abstraction. The process of making and creating art is also a process of self-love and connecting to the world around us.
The Love Yourself Project is a 501(c)(3) non-profit arts and education organization providing community programs which promote self-awareness, self-acceptance, self-esteem and skill building. It is our belief that with a strong relationship to the self, every individual can contribute to a future with loving regard for all living beings and the environment. The Love Yourself Project has partnered with many organizations throughout NYC and the global community to bring awareness to the importance of self-love through community building workshops, arts education, youth empowerment, and more.
www.loveyourselfproject.org
ARTIST INFORMATION
Musa Hixson
Musa Hixson’s multidisciplinary art explores the correlations existing between repetitive codes of information uncovered in scientific research and the various structural patterns, which occur in our everyday environment. The artist’s process-oriented practice skillfully incorporates the complexities of painting, wrapping, automatic writing, cutting, scoring, tying, weaving, and nailing. Combining various materials with existing found objects; his multifarious art reflects assemblage, sculpture and large-scale immersive installations. Recurring motifs in his practice are the elliptical forms and spheres often repeated organically in nature. The artist attributes his interest in these forms to their structural sustainability and therefore prevalence in the universe. Hixson’s art implies a lyrical collision of these binary worlds, resulting in visual interpretations embodying such formal elements of composition as; surface, depth, mark making and balance. Anthropological trends in human behavior are another core concern in the artist’s oeuvre. Evidenced by a subtle reference to symbolic, materials, imagery and objects interwoven.
Carl Musa Hixson was born in Cleveland, Ohio but has mostly lived in Brooklyn, NY. He earned an MFA in Sculpture at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York in 1998 and a BA in Comprehensive Art from Hampton University, Hampton Virginia, in 1995. Hixson was selected as artist-in-residence at Wave Hill, Winter Workspace, Bronx, New York in 2015, at The 3-D foundation, Verbier Switzerland in 2011, Obama City Art Residency, Obama Japan in 2010, Vermont Studio Center, Johnson Vermont in 2006 and Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Amherst, Virginia in 2005. In 2014 he received an artist development grant from the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art(MassMoca)/Rockefeller Foundation, in 2010 he was selected for the Aichi Triennale in Achi, Japan, Hixson is also a 2007 Oxford Round Table Fellow, University of Oxford, England. He has taught Art History, Sculpture, Painting, and Drawing at a number of Universities, including City University of New York, College of New Rochelle, and New Jersey City University. In 2003 He founded Brooklyn Art Incubator with a mission to serve needed communities through the Arts. Presently, Hixson is very interest in the future of art’s relationship with and it’s responsibility to the natural environment.
Parris Jaru
As a child growing up in New York City Parris was exposed to various cultural identity’s melding together through art, music and lifestyle. The scene in the 80s and all around NYC was saturated with invention through creativity adding to the allure and the identity of the artist. In his late teens Parris began working at Marvel Comics as a photo tech, while gaining character drawing skills and comic story writing experience. It was a great time, Parris would work and hangout with some of the pioneers of comic art and story at that time.
In the late 90s Parris started a hand-made jewelry company named “Blufork’s NYC”. Catering to such clients as Barney’s Co-op, Anna Sui and Patricia Fields. Parris says, “Creating hand made jewelry from wood, semi precious stones, copper and silver colored with metallic paints and pigments. Truly brings me back to my earliest understanding of how to create Art from materials found on the earth.” At the same time and as a source of gaining exposure and selling his canvases, Parris began selling his works on the streets of Soho and the East Village. He befriended and collaborated with some of the most talented painters, artists and musicians of the underground scene at the time.
Parris found a venue to create and share his ideas of art, being a part of the art world independently and gaining a name among the underground. Parris now concentrates on remaining active at the art fairs in NY, Miami and gallery exhibitions at home and abroad. In the last few years Parris has had the pleasure of collaborating on art projects in East Africa, India and Europe, while living and working in Brooklyn NY.
Kimberly Becoat
Kimberly M. Becoat is a contemporary mixed media artist whose work is a stylistic abstraction with a conceptual investigation of new materials and visual experiences with social commentary. Her artwork incorporates layers of drawings and painting with found/recycled objects as well as work developed in commercial-driven, advertising styled paintings with elements of graffiti. “This series of recent abstract & conceptual work is grounded in texture and structure (many of the works incorporate paint mixed with sand, plaster, etc; applied to the paper, using these in a dynamic way on Mylar/paper.)
Kimberly has also been featured in a number of exhibits including her solo exhibition, New Abstractions at Essie Green Galleries, BAMart at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, MoCADA Museum, (The Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts, the Deutsche Bank as well as the television shows, Netflix Original Series “Luke Cage” and the FX series, The Americans.
A few other exhibitions include: Dadaesque, 701 CCA Gallery (Columbia, South Carolina), Respond, SMACK Mellon Gallery, (Brooklyn, NY) Honoring Romare Bearden, The Corridor Gallery (Brooklyn, N.Y.), Crown Heights Gold, Skylight Gallery, Brooklyn, New York, and Dirty Sensibilities: A 21st Century Exploration of the New American Black South, at the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute, New York, NY
Kimberly is a native New Yorker, born in Harlem NY - and presently resides and works as an artist in Brooklyn, NY.
Stan Squirewell
Stan Squirewell was born and raised in Washington, DC and currently lives and works in New York, NY. His artistic training began at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts. Since graduating he has continued his tutelage under many of DC’s legends including artists Michael Platt and Lou Stovall.
Mr. Squirewell, is a painter, photographer, installation and performance artist. His work is multilayered and his subject matter tackles themes such as: race and memory through mythology, sacred geometry and science. He draws his inspiration from theory books, science fiction movies and novels, avant-garde jazz and indigenous storytelling.
He is a (2007 MFA) graduate of the Hoffberger School of Painting where he studied with the late, Grace Hartigan. Mr. Squirewell is the first winner of the Rush Philanthropic and Bombay Sapphire Artisan series. He has performed with Nick Cave (SoundSuits) at the National Portrait Gallery and Jefferson Pinder with G-Fine Arts. He is privately and publically collected, his works are in the Reginald Lewis Museum, the Robert Steele Collection and recently acquired by the Smithsonian for the African American Museum (2015.)
For more information and sales inquiries please contact: charvozstudio@gmail.com