This second part of “Confronting COVID-19 with Inspired Art and Determination” is adapted from the text description for “Angels of Music Revisited” featured on Fine Art America and at Pixels.com. It combines my tribute to an inspiring historic Italian artist with my own poetry. In you missed part 1 to this post you can check it out here. Part 2 starts now:

Angels of Music Revisited is a mixed media digital painting reinterpretation of the sixteenth century Italian artist Morazzone’s (Pier Francesco Mazzuchelli, 1573 - 1626) “Angel Musicians.” The original 16th century image minus any text was created using black chalk and brown wash, with white gouache used for additional effect. I chose a palette of bronze, gold, and Earth tones contrasting with shades of blue and indigo to suggest a realistic conflict between human suffering and healing spiritual grace.

The background for this edition is meant to duplicate the appearance of classic parchment or an illuminated manuscript. It is also distinguished from the first version by the integration of short quotes (some of them haikus) from my book THE RIVER OF WINGED DREAMS. Most of the quotes are easily read but a couple are partially inverted to emphasize the script’s dual function as text commentary and visual enrichment. That lets it work as a poster and as fine art. 

​Morazonne’s version was made part of the Getty Museum’s Open Content Project in 2013, classifying it as public domain material appropriate for editing. I wanted to pay tribute to Morazonne’s original vision while hopefully strengthening the sense of visual depth and felt interconnectedness in such a way that it could stand as a true creative response to the COVID-19 2020 pandemic. This seemed fitting enough given the hard hit Morazonne’s homeland of Italy took before the virus jumped the ocean to the U.S.

Below are the quotes from different poems in THE RIVER OF WINGED DREAMS used in the above artwork:

Last month (May 2019) the editors of Excellence Reporter, a website based in France, asked me to respond to these interview questions: "What makes a compassionate city or community?" and "What is the meaning of life?"
The way my creative instincts work these days, questions of this kind tend to inspire both verbal and visual considerations. Anyone wishing to check out the verbal part provided Excellence Reporter is invited to visit the following pages:

• ​Thoughts on What Makes a Compassionate City
• Discussion on the Meaning of Life

The visual results came in the form of two new works of Silk-Featherbrush art now available at Fine Art America and Pixels.com. The one seen just below is titled Journey towards a Brand New Day, and the other further down is called Battle for the Beauty of the Sun.

Journey towards a Brand New Day is my visual metaphor for engaged citizens around the world taking stands against different forms of social and political injustice while simultaneously celebrating their appreciation of life and each other. They are motivated more by visions of compassion and unity than by political sleights of hand.

Election years, like the one we're in right now (or soon will be as 2020 approaches), tend to come with built-in headaches. But there's also a lot of beauty in the way diverse communities assert themselves to participate in a process where the outcome is usually uncertain. Protests currently taking place in Hong Kong are one form of such expressions.
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On this canvas we see waves of determined chromatic lines moving toward a shadowy horizon. Streaks of magenta reflecting against a cobalt blue and indigo sky symbolize emerging potential and hope that sometimes wavers but never completely fades. 

​I see the image here titled Battle for the Beauty of the Sun as representative of resistance to different forms of extremism which increase polarization and encourage violence as a means for resolving conflicts. Although done with a minimalist approach in the Silk-Featherbrush style, it is meant to convey movement toward balance and fulfillment.      

In addition to the questions posed by Excellence Reporter, the composition of Battle for the Beauty of the Sun was also heavily influenced by my reading of Asian author Yang Jisheng's Tombstone, the Great Chinese Famine 1958-1962. TOMBSTONE in particular reminded me of some human beings' strange habit of intentionally corrupting or destroying the abundance of beauty which surrounds us on a daily basis. But how fortunate we are that many more employ their energies toward the exact opposite: preserving and creating all that which makes life the extraordinary adventure it is. 
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Aberjhani
Harlem Renaissance Centennial

This is technically the third work of art to be included in my Redbird Series but the fourth included in the Redbird Gallery at Fine Art America . A recent visitor to the gallery shared some comments offline about her interpretations of the meaning of red cardinals in my life. I found her remarks very interesting because they reminded me of passages from one of my most recently-completed manuscripts in which I discuss how different birds have functioned as symbols in my literary work. Probably the best known is identified in the title of the poetry collection: Visions of a Skylark Dressed in Black. 

What I find particularly interesting about the red cardinal is that it actually has not been incorporated into my writings. The preferred mode of creative expression, where it is concerned, seems to be visual art.

While finishing "Redbird in the Valley of Beautiful Possibilities," I recalled a former co-worker telling me the red cardinal was kind of like a shooting or falling star. "When you see a red bird," she explained, "you should blow it a kiss for good luck." I don't know how many people have discovered that to be either true or false but the artist in me considers the idea very poetic.
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Aberjhani
August 2018

​On July 27, 2002, journalists and everyday people from virtually every region of the United States and from around the world made their way to Savannah, Georgia, where they joined local inhabitants to witness the dedication of the African-American Family Monument on River Street. The event was the culmination of a decade-long battle waged by Dr. Abigail Jordan to make certain that in a city renowned for its historic parks and monuments, at least one would stand in recognition of the contributions of African Americans to city.
 
Since that day, Dr. Jordan has become one of Savannah’s most celebrated figures. Just before the monument's dedication, she had been named Woman of the Year by the Beaufort Gullah Festival in Beaufort, South Carolina. November 12, 2005, the African American Business Magazine presented her with the Fannie Lou Hamer Award and named her one of 100 Black Women of Influence. She died on January 9, 2019. In celebration of her life and legacy, new artwork was posted at: 

Prior to the unveiling of the African-American Family Monument on River Street in Savannah, Georgia, USA, on July 27, 2002, there were no public artworks commemorating the contributions of African Americans to the city's rich history. The absence of such recognition was particularly glaring because of Savannah's more than 50 percent black population. It was also problematic because of the numerous statues and public sites dedicated to acknowledging the lives and values of slave-holders who had attempted to separate from the Unites States and form their own confederacy. 

Dr. Abigail Jordan insisted on a more balanced public representation of Savannah's history and for a decade led the battle to construct the African-American Family Monument. She personally donated more than $100,000 to help get the job done. The monument, painted golden-bronze in my "Historic Triumph of Dr. Abigail Jordan" montage seen here, is now one of the most visited in the city. 

Abigail Jordan died January 9, 2019. The essay I first wrote about her for my book, The American Poet Who Went Home Again, has been revised for a forthcoming volume titled: Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah. Although completely different from the originals, the oil and watercolor rendered images of Dr. Jordan seen in this artwork, with one exception, were modeled after photographs she gave me with permission to use them in works documenting her legacy. (I invite anyone responsible for any original, and who wishes to be acknowledged for it, to contact me.) In the upper left quadrant, she is standing next to a bust of civil rights icon Rosa Parks. 

Fittingly enough, Abigail Jordan was born at the height of the Harlem Renaissance so I am honored to present this artwork during the 100th anniversary of the renaissance. 

Aberjhani 
Co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance 
Editor & Author of The Wisdom of W.E.B. Du Bois 

As the title indicates, this mixed media text edition of "Climate Change Is Not Fake News" is meant to function primarily as a poster. It is a very different work visually from the first non-text edition on a number of points easily apparent when comparing the two.
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Debates get underway every day about the severity of climate change, or global warming, in the modern era and hopefully some will find this work useful. Is climate change real or is it just fake news which media uses to stir up drama and boost ratings? 

Some claim we are experiencing a period of increased planetary warming as part of a natural pattern of changes in the Earth's atmosphere. Others say we are experiencing the direct impact of human disregard for the environment. This, they say, has brought us close to a "tipping point" likely to have increasingly catastrophic results. The divisions are so clear-cut that one U.S. presidential administration (Barack Obama's) readily signed up for the historic 2015 Paris Agreement on global warming. But the next administration (Donald Trump's) just as quickly nullified U.S. participation in the program set to begin in 2020.

No matter which side of the debates you stand on, video footage of huge shelves of ice breaking off from the Antarctic, raging fires devouring communities in California (56 currently nationwide), heatwaves causing Europeans to faint in the streets, and horrific floods in India and elsewhere are unsettling. Therefore, they are forcing more and more dialogues on the subject.

Personally, I would prefer to err on the side of overly-cautious preventive measures rather than apathy or negligence. The Earth most likely can survive and continue evolving beyond human-induced anomalies. The real important question might be can we survive such indifference ourselves?
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Aberjhani