Visionary Vibes: A Blog by Aberjhani

Acknowledging Achievements and Fine-tuning Aspirations

8/1/2022

Pandemics, wars, racism, and climate change have ways of derailing some of our very best stated intentions. Start-ups fail to get started. Planned families get put on hold. Dream vacations remain dreams to be pursued another day.

While my Bright Skylark Literary Productions has taken more than a few unsettling hits of its own this year, I’m grateful for what has been achieved up to this point. Moreover, there’s a lot to be excited about when it comes to promising projects still in development.

A Couple of Highlights So Far

Participation in two major offline events played significant roles helping to reconnect with live audiences and patrons after the restrictive distances imposed by COVID-19 for the past two years. The first event was the Authors Day observance held March 27 in Lafayette Square in Savannah, Georgia (USA). The display table showcasing Bright Skylark products was more unique than most participants’ because it not only contained books, but first-print artwork and photography, greeting cards, and collectible giveaways. Copies of every available catalog title sold along with framed visual works. Overall, the day easily qualified as a win-win for all involved.

The second major offline event also took place in Savannah when I accepted an invitation to participate in a celebration of the 25th anniversary of The Moth storytelling organization. Founded by popular bestselling author George Dawes Green, the celebration coincided with the release of Green’s new novel: The Kingdoms of Savannah (presently an Amazon “Editor’s Pick” and sitting in the top 5 best sellers of 3 fiction categories).

A memorable Moth 25th anniversary storytelling night at the Gingerbread House in Savannah, Georgia (USA), July 18, 2022.

What made the occasion especially momentous for me was that it marked my first time, in roughly 14 years, stepping onto a stage as a “raconteur.” Moth storytelling events have become major, and even legendary, cultural happenings wherever they take place, so it was thrilling to share the stage with fellow storytellers: Edgar Oliver, Jon Goode, Opollo Johnson, and Green himself. Further rounding out the evening were several musical performances, including by: internationally renowned jazz vocalist Cynthia Utterbach, Velvet Caravan co-founder Ricardo Ochoa, and virtuoso guitarist Travis Pullman.

A Look at Things to Come

My forthcoming art book on the pandemic, which includes letters and poems from myself as well as authors around the world, was first announced more than a year ago. The ongoing COVID-19 crisis, with U.S. President Joe Biden becoming the latest high-profile case, continues to underscore the value of this undertaking. The selection of texts for the project was completed in early 2022, and 90-100 works of original art have been created to correspond with the texts. Among the contributors are: celebrated educator Dr. Patricia M. Stewart, legendary San Francisco poet and educator Duncan McNaughton, England’s multi-talented Sara L. Russell, and additional mindful creatives whose voices enrich the volume in unique and important ways.

Click here to view art from pandemic book project

At this point, Bright Skylark is working with a highly-regarded publisher to make the title available to readers, art lovers, and booksellers in the United States and around the world. More details along with excerpts and sample art will be shared in either a separate blog for the book, or on a full website devoted to it. Anyone wishing to donate to support the effort is invited to do so by clicking here.

It is not often that someone is featured in a major literary publication both as a visual artist and as a literary one. That is, however, the case with the 2022 Flannery O’Connor Review (Vol. 20, published by Georgia College) due out in August. The review has on its cover my Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle painting titled Sermon in the Valley of Broken Angels.

The watermark seen here on the cover of the 2022 edition of the FLANNERY O’CONNOR REVIEW does not appear on the actual journal. The Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle creation is by Aberjhani and titled: Sermon in the Valley of Broken Angels. As seen on the cover, this edition of the review, which is published by Georgia College in Milledgeville, GA, where Flannery O’Connor spent most of her adult life, is a commemoration of 20th and 50th anniversaries.

Additional original works are included inside the review along with a poem on Flannery O’Connor titled “History and Prophets’ Prerogatives.” The published artworks will remain available to view only within the pages of the journal until selected pieces are presented for sale as prints, or placed on exhibition.

The publication of my art and poetry in The Flannery O’Connor Review is particularly important because it helps further clarify my position on the overall complexity of O’Connor’s life and work. It also, I hope, helps demonstrate in general the vital role which creativity plays when it comes to defining and addressing the most pressing issues of our times.

Aberjhani
Co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Author of Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind

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Conversations with the World 109: Reading Myself All Year Long

12/29/2021

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"Wonders Quietly on the Way" artwork by Aberjhani)

Between public issues impacting all of our lives and individual events involving my cultural arts labors, a lot occurred which different media commentators might have quoted me about in 2021. Take, for example, so far as public matters go, the now historically infamous January 6 Insurrection. Or consider the potential fate of Jalal al-Din Rumi/Balkhi’s hometown following the fall of Kabul, Afghanistan. Other opportunities included statements in support of environmental justice, social justice, and a world free of the COVID-19 coronavirus.

To see pages and publications featuring quotes by Aberjhani in late 2020 and throughout the year 2021, please check out the above slideshow.

The articles, blogs, essays, books, and institutions in question covered a lot of territory. While I focused on making progress on my pandemic book project of original art and texts (featuring guest authors), I was also involved via the quoted word in a wide range of dialogues. The topics dealt with everything from current governmental practices and putting historic events into more informed contexts, to the popularity of cognac in Kenya and the inspiration drawn from rainbows across the planet.

After a quote from Elemental The Power of Illuminated Love was published in the December 2020 issue of Science of Mind magazine, I found it interesting that another from the book was published on page 15 of the August 2021 issue of Franciscan Media’s St. Anthony Messenger. A favorite, I have to admit, was a post on Spiritual Passages used to help celebrate a meeting between Pope Frances and Spiderman.

In addition, publications as fundamentally different as The Jerusalem Post and Pakistan Today have employed texts to emphasize the need for more democratic and compassionate practices within their governments and societies at large.
What all of this means to me as we leave 2021 behind and move forward into 2022 is that our collective yearning for unity and coexistence is stronger than any hunger for war and division. The primary challenge remains how to best accomplish the former in order to avoid mutual destruction by the latter.

Aberjhani
Happy New Year 2022

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Love Letters to a World Weary of Chaos

12/10/2021

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(“Love Letters to a World Weary of Chaos” art composite by Aberjhani featuring “Swallow” silhouettes courtesy of Culture Declares Emergency)

It’s not necessarily the best way to be and can result in the loss of friendships and other human connections. But some creative artists are known for becoming so absorbed in the flow of creative productivity that they lose sight of everything else until the process slowly eases toward completion. They (we) can only hope that once all the lightning of unleashed imagination and nervous energy relaxes, they (we) will have something worthwhile to balance out the price paid.

This scenario has been fairly descriptive of my life for the past year or so while creating art and assembling texts for a book I had hoped to see published in November. A couple of COVID-19 variants named Delta and Omicron, along with the pandemic-induced supply chain crisis, decided that was not going to happen. So, instead of waiting until next spring, when hopefully it shall see the light of day, I’ve chosen to periodically share excerpts from the work in progress.

With the above in mind, my most recent art print posted for sale on Fine Art America is a very special one titled “Love Letter to the Earth and Life Itself Number 3.” In addition to being part of a triptych included in the book, this is also my way of pledging support for the Letters to the Earth project. Not to be confused with the classic American author Mark Twain’s Letters FROM the Earth, the Letters TO the Earth initiative got its start in Great Britain and has now spread around the world. Not surprisingly, given his call for existential creativity, author Ben Okri has also lent his voice in support of the initiative.

The following is taken from the artwork’s product page and provides context for the inspired intentions which led to its creation:

A Blossoming Earth

“Love Letter to the Earth and Life Itself Number 3” is one of the last images created specifically for inclusion in my current artbook project, a blend of visual fine art and literary texts. This artwork also happens to be my 200th post milestone on Fine Art America, which is a big deal to me because the creation of art (my own and that of others past and present who inspire me) has always been an important part of my survival strategy.

The title was inspired by the worldwide Letters to the Earth Project, which was established in 2019 to encourage support of policies and practices designed to reverse catastrophic climate change caused by humanity’s activities. At this point, we know the climate crisis is very real because things like giant melting glaciers and entire towns wiped out by raging fires that burn for months refuse to be ignored. But that doesn’t mean beauty no longer exists in our extraordinary world because it does.

Aberjhani
Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
Co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance

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The Art of Reversing Climate Change Denial (part 2 of 2)

10/19/2021

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On September 21, a TV meteorologist appeared practically giddy with excitement while confirming rainfall in the region had shattered long-standing records. In Savannah (Georgia, USA) that meant smashing one which had stood at 2.12 inches, since the 1880s, with a new reported total of almost 7 inches.

(To read part 1 of this post please click here)

The reporter’s eyes glazed over with the kind of hypnotic intoxication genuine science nerds sometimes display when laying claim to a historic firsts. Viewers were informed to expect at least one more night and day of extended pounding before sunshine returned to make everybody smile again.

As I waited anxiously to hear something about how this record-breaking “impact event” was a sign of our climate crisis times, I thought maybe I’d been maintaining a climatological blind spot of my own. Had I remained too focused on pet creative projects without devoting enough energy to the apparent reason repairs for my roof were not standing up to an intensified challenge?

Confirmation of a Kind

The station meteorologist’s forecast did not directly reference anything regarding global warming and was followed by some fun sports tidbits. Is it like this, I wondered, everywhere in a country clearly suffering from climate-change devastations? A few minutes later into the broadcast, however, the anchor introduced a climatologist whose shared insights ran along these lines:

“Climate change is no longer on the way. It’s here. We’ve seen that from the continued melting of the icecap and how quickly fires in the west increase in their intensity. Hurricanes are getting stronger and lasting longer. The heavy prolonged rains we’ve seen in the southeast this week are likely to become the norm.”

These were the words I had hoped the local station weather expert would say because they effectively erased the idea a mythological window of time exists to “prepare for or prevent” catastrophic ecological damage. The catastrophe is happening now. Coming from a local meteorologist, such words as the expert’s would not be so comfortably dismissed the ways statements, for example, from the science and healthcare community frequently are in these historic COVID-19 times. The strength of the anti-vaxxers movement in the United States, even as the death toll from the coronavirus pandemic surpassed 700,000, is proof enough of that.

Acknowledging corporate-hired meteorologists are paid to direct viewers’ interests toward short-term weather conditions, I could not fault them for doing their jobs. What I could do was continue holding myself accountable for continuing to help raise awareness and encourage species (ours) saving action. An opportunity soon came to do just that.

Expanding a Visual Narrative

Upon learning the Savannah Art Association was teaming up with the coastal conservation group called One Hundred Miles to install artwork celebrating Georgia’s well-preserved coastline, throughout the ground floor of the Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport, I nodded with gratitude. The only problem for me was I would not be able to spend time on a beach or near a marsh to contribute to this innovative effort to advocate for the protection of the coastline.

As it happened, SAA was also preparing to hang its regular quarterly exhibit in the airport’s official art gallery on the upper floor. The suggested genre, or theme, for the new exhibit (October 1, 2021 - January 7, 2022) was “narrative story art.” For my submissions, I decided to expand the general concept with two photographs and an original Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle (a technique and style created by me) digital painting.

The photographs, one in color and one black and white, had never been printed before or viewed in any form by anyone else. I titled them “Professor Hurricane’s Lecture on Climate Change Number 1 & 2.” The digital painting was named “Planetary Consequences of Human Indifference.” As I saw it, this was my way of helping strengthen the narrative dealing with something too many others remained dangerously reluctant to acknowledge as an immediate threat.

After all, the issue is no longer just about replacing an aged roof (though yes, I need to find a way to do that). It is now about rebuilding (in some cases preserving) the lives of human beings and animals displaced or severely damaged by the climate crisis. For some, it truly is too late because much of what they have lost, and gave meaning to their lives, can never be replaced. For an artist-writer like myself, the calamity demands I not only bear witness to these history altering times. It obligates me to continue contributing whatever I can to the creation of a sustainable life-affirming balance.

Aberjhani
Creator of Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle
Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
and Greeting Flannery O'Connor at the Back Door of My Mind

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The 2017 Rising Tide of Multicultural Voices

2/10/2017

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"The 2017 Rising Tide of Multicultural Voices" Postered Poetics art graphic by Aberjhani. (Bright Skylark Literary Productions)

The United Nations may have officially tagged 2017 as The Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development and the Chinese dubbed it Year of the Fire Rooster, but I am inclined at this point to declare it: Year of the Rising Tide of Multicultural Voices.

Sounds a little awkward I know. However, it is fairly accurate and the poetic quality lends to the description an aspect of hopefulness as opposed to a smell of certifiable doom.

The tones of the Rising Tide of Multicultural Voices range from the humanely compassionate and passionately engaged to the apathetically detached and dangerously dictatorial. They include, but certainly are not limited to, the following:

African-Americans, although increasingly dubious about ever closing the racial divide in the United States and living as citizens with equal opportunities who are not routinely targeted for marginalization or annihilation, continue to do more than protest such issues. Advocates for racial justice and equality have become more inclined to propose solutions in the form of social data analyses used to formulate strategies for making changes in institutional procedures and individual behavior to help avoid violent conflicts.
White-Americans who continue experiencing difficulty accepting Donald Trump as POTUS alternately engage dialogues to help the president help the country move forward. When finding compliance too difficult, some encourage "resistance" to administrative policies they consider non-democratic or inhumanely repugnant.
Immigrants and Refugees fleeing to America and other lands as yet in 2017 wander the earth like tribes in Biblical times, but the mainstream media and social media of these modern times continues to amplify their cries for compassion and force humanity to examine hidden depths of conscience.
Members of the American Press, traditionally referred to as "the fourth branch of a democratic government," feeling under attack by the POTUS via his frequently-tweeted condemnations, have found themselves switching back and forth between reporting the news and using their platforms as journalists to fight a war of presidential accusations.

Add to the above chorus Native Americans and committed environmentalists taking a stand against the on-again Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines, women across the globe convinced they have been cheated of their time to shine in history, and Millennials struggling to find the right balance between trust placed in technology and the flaring passions of their innate humanity.

In truth, members of any number of various demographic groups who thought they had gained solid social and political ground on which to stand for the rest of their lives during former U.S. president Barack Obama's administration are now screaming "Oh hell no!" as the new commander-in-chief --doing exactly as he promised to when campaigning for the job--steers America toward the far right.

Allowing Ourselves to Hear Each Other

Probably the biggest mistake anyone can make when wishing for his or her voice to be heard and respected is to ignore the voices of everyone else. That observation helped drive the launch and growth of the Creative Thinkers International (CTI) online community 10 years ago.

The sharing of visions and voices for the purpose of inspiring unity in a world turned morbidly cynical by 9/11 was what made the community possible and drove it to thrive for nearly a decade. At a time when hatred threatened to permanently erase the potential for any meaningful cooperation between cross-cultural populations, Creative Thinkers International demonstrated the exact opposite: unity in the name of shared humanity.

The glorification of hatred is predicated on a foundation of fear-induced ignorance venomous to haters and those they believe they hate. Without awareness of root causes inflating their fears, prejudices, and destructive actions, it is easy for someone such as an alt-right terrorist, or a jihadist more faithful to a love of violence than love for Allah, to misinterpret aggravated frustrations as saintly devotion. Given the chance to do so, their own hearts can provide the insight necessary to correct themselves.

For Creative Thinkers International in 2007, allowing ourselves to hear each other and work together to identify the common ground on which we could build trust and cooperation was a matter of working to either: 1) sustain humanity; or 2) watch it simultaneously implode and explode. It is not so different at this 2017 moment in history when words like "polarization," "fake news," and "alternative facts" shape stories heard, viewed, and read every day.

Most people understand achieving unification is more complicated than sticking labels on entire populations and trusting in bias or bigotry to solve the world's most existential dilemmas. Many, however, do not bother to consult any kind of discerning social or political analyses of the turmoil raging around them like the very real tornadoes that slammed New Orleans East on February 7, 2017 (twelve years after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita caused historical damage from which the city is still recovering). To them it is a simple matter of opposing dichotomies: good versus evil, white versus black, the past versus the future, the aged versus youth, East/West, Christian/Muslim, nationalism/globalism, and so on.

Empowered Consciousness

What does it take for us to hear each other clearly enough to not only respect what is being said but understand that often the concerns of one group or individual mirror those of "the other." How do we recognize and remove the most unyielding roadblocks to harmonious coexistence between nations and communities?
We begin by acknowledging the reality of the need to do so. We begin by setting aside denials of truth blazing like wildfires right in front of our faces.

In addition, for example, to xenophobia and cultural bias, we know the so-called wealth gap and insufficient education all fall in the same category of oppressive strategies that do not work. We know also that a predatory instinct prompts some power-brokers to use divisiveness as a tool to manipulate social unrest for personal financial benefit. That is a sadly-cruel non-alternative fact we are able to improve with the kind of empowered consciousness represented by the 2017 Rising Tide of Multicultural Voices.

Author

Author-Poet Aberjhani is currently completing a book of nonfiction narratives about race relations, histories of erasure, the cultural arts, and practices of slavery in his hometown of Savannah, Georgia, USA.

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Acknowledging Achievements and Fine-tuning Aspirations

A Couple of Highlights So Far

A Look at Things to Come

Aberjhani
Co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Author of Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind

Contact Artist-Author Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Conversations with the World 109: Reading Myself All Year Long

ENJOY MORE CONVERSATIONS WITH THE WORLD

Contact Author-Artist Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Love Letters to a World Weary of Chaos

A Blossoming Earth

Contact Author-Artist Aberjhani at
Bright Skylark Literary Productions

The Art of Reversing Climate Change Denial (part 2 of 2)

Confirmation of a Kind

Expanding a Visual Narrative

Aberjhani
Creator of Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle
Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
and Greeting Flannery O'Connor at the Back Door of My Mind

Contact Author-Artist Aberjhani

The 2017 Rising Tide of Multicultural Voices

Allowing Ourselves to Hear Each Other

Empowered Consciousness

Author

Aberjhani

Archives

Categories

Acknowledging Achievements and Fine-tuning Aspirations

A Couple of Highlights So Far

A Look at Things to Come

AberjhaniCo-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem RenaissanceAuthor of Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind

Contact Artist-Author Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Conversations with the World 109: Reading Myself All Year Long

ENJOY MORE CONVERSATIONS WITH THE WORLD

Contact Author-Artist Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Love Letters to a World Weary of Chaos

A Blossoming Earth

Contact Author-Artist Aberjhani atBright Skylark Literary Productions

The Art of Reversing Climate Change Denial (part 2 of 2)

Confirmation of a Kind

Expanding a Visual Narrative

AberjhaniCreator of Silk-Featherbrush ArtstyleAuthor of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannahand Greeting Flannery O'Connor at the Back Door of My Mind

Contact Author-Artist Aberjhani

The 2017 Rising Tide of Multicultural Voices

Allowing Ourselves to Hear Each Other

Empowered Consciousness

Author

Aberjhani

Archives

Categories

Aberjhani
Co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Author of Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind

Contact Author-Artist Aberjhani at
Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Aberjhani
Creator of Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle
Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
and Greeting Flannery O'Connor at the Back Door of My Mind