Visionary Vibes: A Blog by Aberjhani

The Jazz Factor: Chronicling Legacies of Black Artists in Savannah (part 3 of 3)

5/29/2022

One of Luther E. Vann’s greatest sources of artistic inspiration was the music of jazz. Viewers of his paintings sometimes attempt to describe a certain fusion of impressionistic and expressionistic energy experienced when looking at his work. It may very well be the same energy the painter experienced when imagining himself in a room with Thelonious Monk seated at one piano and himself at another, the two of them trading riffs and solos “straight with no chaser.”

At the awards ceremony held in the Jepson Center for the Arts, where Vann was recognized as the Telfair Museum Juneteenth Artist of the Year 2015, former Savannah State University radio station manager and Coastal Jazz Association president Theron A. “Ike” Carter spoke of the painter’s passion for the music. He recalled with some pride how Vann once said part of the reason he felt he could remain in Savannah after years of living in New York was because he had heard Carter play Monk's "Coming On The Hudson" on one his broadcasts.

Listening to the Jazz Griot of Savannah

During his stewardship over radio station WHCJ 90.3-FM for more than two decades, Carter became what might be described as a Jazz Griot. He consistently promoted jazz as African America’s “classical music” in a variety of shows, including: Impressions, Jazz by Popular Demand, Masters of the Art, Outside the Box, and Listen Here.

In fact, through the accumulated treasury of transmissions documenting the personalities, moments, instruments, and movements that composed the history of African-American classical music, Vann could do more than commune with Thelonious Monk as an influential muse. He could hang out via the southern airwaves with jazz masters like Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Louie “Satchmo’ Armstrong, Charlie “Yardbird” Parker,” “Sassy” Sarah Vaughn, and Nina Simone as peers providing reassurance from another era.

Screenshot of a Google search result for books exemplifying ekphrasis, or collections of poetry based on visual art, placing Luther E. Vann's and Aberjhani's ELEMENTAL at the top of the list.

Moreover, upon the artist’s passing, Carter dedicated a special broadcast of Listen Here to Vann. The show’s format follows that of a round-table discussion in which guests share and comment on favorite jazz recordings. Participants in the tribute to Vann included painter Suzanne Jackson, sculptor Jerome Meadows, and Lisa Jackson.
Suzanne Jackson recalled first meeting Vann in New York at a gallery where they had work in the same show. Later, they were equally surprised to learn both had relocated to Savannah.
“I believe people,” said Ms. Jackson, “are going to be very grateful to Luther for painting scenes in Savannah that no longer exist.” (Check out: Suzannian Algorithm Finger-Painted on an Abstract Wall)

The music generally provided a Harlem-New-York-City atmosphere in the comfort of his studio (first maintained inside his home and later constructed as the infamous Barn behind it). As he had done while growing up, he could once again combine creative input from the North and the South within his singular being and transfer vibrant interpretations of the experience directly onto canvas. There are some direct homages to music in the pages of Elemental, the Power of Illuminated Love––for example “Christ Listening to Stereo,” “Night Dance,” and “Musical Delight”–– but it is more evident in the 2011 exhibition, Songs of My People.

Cultivating Individual Distinction

What makes any artist exceptionally notable are not outstanding influences or even history-shaping movements with which one might be associated. Those elements play their part but individual distinction derives from how an artist combines different external components with personal experience to communicate statements endowed with elevated meanings.

The different meanings that color images created by Luther E. Vann are not always apparent. That is both as he intended it to be, and for him, the only way it could be.

He generally advised people to spend time with art––not just his but that of any serious artist––and allow it to possibly introduce them to a new experience or empower them in unexpected ways. That is exactly what different forms of inspired expression did for him throughout his life. Those who have collected his work or viewed it in exhibitions over the years have often validated Vann’s words with their own comments. Newcomers to his painted multiverse could find themselves doing the same.

Aberjhani
Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
Co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Creator of Authentic Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

More from Aberjhani on Cultural Preservation and Erasures of History

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The 2017 Rise of Multicultural Voices
Ukraine, Russia, and the Art of Being Human
Discovering the Many Ways of Looking at a Black Man
Why Genocide in Ukraine Matters to a Black Poet in America
Commemorating 100th Anniversary of Black Wall Street Riots

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Laureates and visionaries: Chronicling legacies of black artists in Savannah (part 2/3)

5/6/2022

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"Luther and the Coming of Light No. 2" digital art by Aberjhani)

In his introduction to section two of Luther E. Vann’s Elemental the Power of Illuminated Love, contributing writer Bill Dawers makes this statement:

“Even those already familiar with Luther’s work are likely to find the images collected here startling. (Doubly startling, I imagine, since so many of the works are still in the collection or the artist.) Certain thematic and structural elements are visible across the decades––the presence of the spirits, the grids, the convergence of multiple realities, the exploration of human interaction in public spaces.”

(To read part 1 of this article please click here.)

In the decades following his move back to Georgia, the month of May became one in which Vann’s life and career saw numerous milestones. It was May 1991, and again in 1994, that the city of Savannah’s Beach Institute hosted critically acclaimed exhibits by him. Although the historic Elemental show opened at the Jepson Center for the Arts in April 2008, the book launch occurred May 29. Moreover, the legendary Barn Studio and Gallery show took place May 24, 2014. It would seem appropriate enough, then, to consider at this time the implications of the work that remains.

Visionary Artists and Thinkers

The synthesis of Vann’s cultural, spiritual, and philosophical perspectives within his paintings and sculpture––what Dawers referred to as certain thematic and structural elements–– make him something of an anomaly in African-American art. He eschewed what could have been, for him, the easier path of producing––or, more accurately, re-producing–– popular images cast in a Southern motif.

He chose instead to make visual statements aligned with the observations of visionary artists and thinkers with whom he felt a kind of metaphysical kinship. Influences like Italy’s 15th-century Renaissance genius Leonardo da Vinci, Spain’s 16th-century Renaissance painter El Greco, and African America’s 20th-century Harlem Renaissance talent Beauford Delaney probably would not surprise many people. Certain others might.

Doris Lessing and Vann's Universe That is Actually a Multiverse

British author Doris Lessing’s novel, The Golden Notebook, was one of Vann’s favorite reads. He easily related to what it portrayed about a creative individual’s attempt to bring intellectual order to the fragmented landscape of her inner being by working with a collection of four notebooks to produce one definitive Golden Notebook. Those who might question such a link between Nobel Prize for Literature winner Lessing and Georgia Arts Festival winner Vann need only do two things: first read The Golden Notebook, and then study different images in Elemental, the Power of Illuminated Love.

Just as Lessing’s character Anna Wulf drew on different aspects of her imploding biography to compose a more wholistic representation of herself, Vann fused personal spiritual meditations with more objective public observations to paint his evolving theories on humanity as “One.” This oneness was organic in the sense that our physical activities inevitably impact each other’s lives and our spiritual dispositions, or the lack of such, color the nature of our relationships.

The concept of conscious unity is important to the artist because these intertwining dynamics (what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., called “an inescapable network of mutuality”) occur quite paradoxically within a universe that is actually a multiverse. While Doris Lessing’s novel may be described as an innovative work of feminist fiction, it contains numerous passages descriptive of experiences in Vann’s life and the place art occupied within it. Moreover, in Lessing’s introduction to the 1971 edition of the novel, she discusses how opposing characters reconcile their different perspectives:

“…They have also reflected each other, been aspects of each other, given birth to each other’s thoughts and behavior––are each other, form wholes. In the inner Golden Notebook, things have come together, the divisions have broken down, there is formlessness with the end of fragmentation––the triumph of the second theme, which is that of unity...”

Lessing’s aesthetic declaration could be applied to many of Vann’s masterful works, such as “The Widow Remembers” or “For the Love of the Poet,” and prompt the viewer to discover how dominant and sub-narratives flow in and out of each other on their way toward wholeness. The freedom allowed by such a strategy could produce what Lessing referred to as “delicious intoxication” leading to “the recklessness of infinite possibility.”

For Luther E. Vann, Infinite possibility meant painting outside the lines of aesthetic and cultural assumptions. Even as he relished celebrating his adored African-American community on Millen Street in West Savannah, when it came to making some of his more profound statements either on canvas or off it, he reached so far beyond his earthbound surroundings that commentators often referred to him as a visionary.

Carl Jung and More Benevolent Consciousness

From the Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung’s mapping of the human psyche the artist extracted an operational template which influenced the language he committed to paintings. You could say it helped him both to literally paint his place in the world at a given time, and to shape the purposes that defined his life as they unfolded throughout adulthood.

Jung’s teachings allowed him to view and embrace human beings beyond categories defined by racial, political, or social constructions. In Vann’s multiverse, whether lost in shadows or made radiant by grace, all living souls are on a mission to manifest and serve a self-contained, higher, and more benevolent, consciousness.

NEXT: The jazz factor: Chronicling legacies of black artists in Savannah (part 3/3)

By Aberjhani
Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
Co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Creator of Authentic Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

More from Aberjhani on Cultural Heritage and Erasures of History

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Marking a Savannah Milestone

1/13/2022

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Editors at Time Magazine in July 2021 reached the same conclusion as editors of the Literary Savannah travel anthology in 1998. They decided the city of Savannah, Georgia (USA) was one of the “world’s greatest places” and listed it alongside such frequently-visited locales as: Cannes, France; Seattle, Washington; Arouca, Portugal; KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa; Nuuk, Greenland; and North Goa, India.

Among the distinctions noted by Time Magazine for placing Savannah on its list of “100 extraordinary destinations to explore” was its impressive revitalized riverfront. Hill Street Press, 24 years ago as of 2022, included the city on its roster of “Travel Literature” titles following the phenomenal success of author John Berendt’s “nonfiction novel,” Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

Surviving to Tell Our Stories

With my poem “Return to Savannah” concluding the volume, I was one of eight living writers (out of thirty-seven total and not counting editor Patrick Allen) included in the Literary Savannah travel anthology published by Hill Street Press in 1998 (and by Trinity University Press in 2011). Of the other authors living at the time, James Alan McPherson and I were the only ones actually born in the city. (Long-time resident, and Savannah State University professor, Ja A. Jahannes, 1942-2015, was a native of Baltimore, Maryland).

As of this writing, I am one of four of the anthology’s remaining living authors and the only native. The others are John Berendt, Rosemary Daniell, and Ben Greer. Publication of the compilation is something I celebrated in Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah, and, an event I commemorate now because too many noteworthy literary voices become targets of historical erasure prompted by commercial indifference or literary genocide.

A Cultural Arts Milestone

The publication of Literary Savannah represented a major cultural arts milestone because it was the first to showcase a comprehensive diverse selection of living and historic authors associated with the city. As writer Lynn Hamilton put it:

“…What will attract buyers to Literary Savannah will probably be the rich collection of stories and bon mots by the cream of Savannah’s local and living (kicking and screaming) literati. The wry, slightly wicked, Tom Coffey is not omitted from these pages... poet and story teller Aberjhani is a presence with his contribution… Though there’s little subversion present in the pages of Literary Savannah, Ja A. Jahannes does provide a surprisingly pointed comment on the exploitation and subsequent historical revisionism of the Yamacraw Indians which is not just good protest, but also beautiful and powerful poetry.” (Savannah Creative Loafing, Vol 5, No. 40, Dec 29, 1998)

Just like the city itself, now 24 years after the book was first published, Literary Savannah continues to demonstrate why so many still find America’s 13th colony such an exciting and intriguing travel destination.

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

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Two Savannah-born Authors Shine in 2021 Literary Spotlights

6/13/2021

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Some unquestionably will view it as a strange kind of paradox but the stature and influence of two Savannah, Georgia-born authors has just increased in two spectacular ways. Specifically, Iowa City council members recently named one of its largest public spaces the James Alan McPherson Park after Savannah’s own Pulitzer Prize-winning native son, who for years headed the world-famous Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

Equally significant, after the COVID-19 pandemic forced the American Literature Association to cancel its annual conference last year, it will return June 17-19, 2021, with the Flannery O’Connor and Families Symposium at the DeSoto Hotel only a few blocks from O’Connor’s birthplace. Headlining the event is author Minrose Gwin, who will give a presentation titled “’Where you come from is gone’: What Flannery O’Connor Taught Me about Mothers” (free and open to the public June 18, Friday, at 5PM).

A DELAYED PUBLIC DEBUT

There are not, so far as I know, any plans to name a park anywhere after me (understandably enough and totally acceptable) but I am happy to note my book, Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind, is among the titles being made available by The Book Lady Bookstore for the O’Connor symposium. Given numerous postponements of efforts to host booksigning events while simultaneously taking precautions against the pandemic and moving ahead with projects addressing the full scope of recent social, political, and racial developments, the opportunity to include autographed copies of Greeting Flannery with other titles on exhibit for the O’Connor symposium is a welcomed one.

McPHERSON’S LASTING LEGACY

Next month, July 27, 2021, will mark the fifth anniversary of James Alan McPherson’s death. By now, my admiration for his work as expressed in Greeting Flannery is well-known. Therefore, when news broke in March (just as Americans were glimpsing light at the end of the pandemic tunnel) that Iowa City Council members had voted to rename the former Creekside Park in his honor, I happily applauded.

McPherson had sometimes joked that winning a Pulitzer Prize could be a terrible thing for a writer because once, or if, that happened, people rarely acknowledged any of his or her other accomplishments. However, as Lee Hermiston reported in The Gazette, Iowa City Mayor Bruce Teague was well aware of the author’s overall value when noting:

“I think Mr. McPherson is well-deserving. 'He was all about community... I think this is a great honor, and I'm so happy the city of Iowa City had the opportunity to vote to name this park after him.”

Highly-treasured as an educator in the city, the park was named after McPherson partly in response to the Black Lives Matter movement which swept through the U.S. in 2020. The honor stands in odd stark contrast to the absence of any major tributes to McPherson in his hometown. He is mentioned on a historical marker dedicated to the Carnegie Branch Library but his death in 2016 was all but ignored by media in the city even as it made headlines worldwide; the same lack of acknowledgement followed the announcement of the park’s renaming.

FROM COVID-19 LOCKDOWNS TO O’CONNOR SYMPOSIUM

For some three decades, with the exception of last year, the American Literature Association (ALA) has held annual conferences in cities around America, including: Boston, San Francisco, Chicago, Cambridge, and on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. It started, according to ALA’s website, like this:

“In June 1989, members of the major societies devoted to American authors met at the Cal State Symposium on American Literature in San Diego, to discuss ways to provide specialists in American authors with new opportunities for scholarly interaction. The result was the American Literature Association: a coalition of societies devoted to the study of American authors.”

The ALA conference has been held in Savannah previously. But with cities reopening after a year of COVID lockdowns and struggling to regain economic footing, the choice to hold The Flannery O’Connor and Families Symposium in the city makes it something like the lucky winner of a lottery prize.

The complexity of O’Connor’s writings when it comes to addressing such issues as religion and race has often resulted in divided critical responses ranging from high intellectual praise to doubt-riddled contempt. Extracting meaning from that skillfully-woven web of complexity is an important part of my own reasons for approaching reflections on her work via three creative routes: the essay, visual art, and poetry.

(“Flannery O’Connor and Families” Minrose Gwin poster art courtesy of Georgia Humanities in partnership with Georgia College, Andalusia Institute and other notable supporters of the cultural arts.)

The scholars addressing the symposium, directed by Georgia College’s Marshall Bruce Gentry, will present panels and papers on everything from “Flannery O’Connor and Race” and “Love, Law, Medicine: Teaching (Almost Anything) with O’Connor,” to breakout sessions on individual O’Connor short stories and miscellaneous related topics.

In a city where the concept of literature is too often restricted to references to John Berendt’s now-classic tome on Savannah, the current nods to McPherson’s and O’Connor’s legacies demonstrate its literary significance runs much deeper than generally suggested.

Aberjhani
Co-author Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
Creator of Original Silk-Fatherbrush Artstyle

(“Flannery O’Connor and Families” poster art courtesy of Georgia Humanities in partnership with Georgia College, Andalusia Institute and other notable supporters of the cultural arts.)

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A Little Social Distance Holiday Fun with Former U.S. President Barack Obama

11/25/2020

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I considered myself exercising patience and restraint when I resisted paying additional shipping fees to receive my order of Barack Obama’s bestselling book, A Promised Land, just one day after it came out on November 17, 2020. Having opted for the longer arrival time of approximately 2 weeks at the much cheaper cost of “Free Shipping,” I did not expect to receive the book until either the end of November or early December. So imagine my surprise and #gratitude when it showed up November 19, just 2 days after the release date.

There’s no question A Promised Land is one of the most significant, if not THE most significant, memoirs of the modern era. Because of Mr. Obama’s direct involvement with public events which have shaped much of America’s and the world’s history in this first half of the 21st century, it could not have been otherwise.

A Parallel Literary Journey

In the photograph above, I have placed A Promised Land between 2 of my own most recent books: Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah and Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind. The reason is not because I megalomaniacally imagine myself to be as famous or influential as the 44th president of the United States of America, but to commemorate a parallel literary journey through some extraordinary shared history. It is also my way of having a little social distance holiday fun with the great man himself.

Upon his election to the Oval Office 2008, I wrote the first (“There upon A Bough of Hope and Audacity”) of several poems about Barack H. Obama’s historic achievement. During my time as a national cultural arts columnist for AXS Entertainment, I wrote a number of articles documenting responses to Mr. Obama’s first term as president (with now #PresidentElect Joe Biden as his vice president). The proliferation of what we now frequently refer to as disinformation and misinformation prompted me to coin the term guerrilla decontextualization for the extreme nihilism directed against him and his family. Many Americans were not certain he would still be here to write and publish this book. The fact that he did endure to tell his remarkable story in A Promised Land is something totally worthy of celebration and gratitude.

Aberjhani
Harlem Renaissance Centennial 2020-2030

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The Jazz Factor: Chronicling Legacies of Black Artists in Savannah (part 3 of 3)

Listening to the Jazz Griot of Savannah

Cultivating Individual Distinction

Aberjhani
Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
Co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Creator of Authentic Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

More from Aberjhani on Cultural Preservation and Erasures of History

Contact Author-Poet-Artist Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Laureates and visionaries: Chronicling legacies of black artists in Savannah (part 2/3)

Visionary Artists and Thinkers

Doris Lessing and Vann's Universe That is Actually a Multiverse

Carl Jung and More Benevolent Consciousness

By Aberjhani
Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
Co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Creator of Authentic Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

More from Aberjhani on Cultural Heritage and Erasures of History

Contact Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Marking a Savannah Milestone

Surviving to Tell Our Stories

A Cultural Arts Milestone

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

Contact Author-Artist Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Two Savannah-born Authors Shine in 2021 Literary Spotlights

A DELAYED PUBLIC DEBUT

McPHERSON’S LASTING LEGACY

FROM COVID-19 LOCKDOWNS TO O’CONNOR SYMPOSIUM

Aberjhani
Co-author Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
Creator of Original Silk-Fatherbrush Artstyle

Contact the Author

A Little Social Distance Holiday Fun with Former U.S. President Barack Obama

A Parallel Literary Journey

Aberjhani

Archives

Categories

The Jazz Factor: Chronicling Legacies of Black Artists in Savannah (part 3 of 3)

​Listening to the Jazz Griot of Savannah

​Cultivating Individual Distinction

AberjhaniAuthor of Dreams of the Immortal City SavannahCo-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem RenaissanceCreator of Authentic Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

More from Aberjhani on Cultural Preservation and Erasures of History

Contact Author-Poet-Artist Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Laureates and visionaries: Chronicling legacies of black artists in Savannah (part 2/3)

​Visionary Artists and Thinkers

Doris Lessing and Vann's Universe That is Actually a Multiverse

Carl Jung and More Benevolent Consciousness

By AberjhaniAuthor of Dreams of the Immortal City SavannahCo-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem RenaissanceCreator of Authentic Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

More from Aberjhani on Cultural Heritage and Erasures of History

Contact Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Marking a Savannah Milestone

Surviving to Tell Our Stories

A Cultural Arts Milestone

AberjhaniAuthor of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah& Greeting Flannery O'Connor at the Back Door of My MindCreator of Authentic Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

Contact Author-Artist Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Two Savannah-born Authors Shine in 2021 Literary Spotlights

A DELAYED PUBLIC DEBUT

McPHERSON’S LASTING LEGACY

FROM COVID-19 LOCKDOWNS TO O’CONNOR SYMPOSIUM

AberjhaniCo-author Encyclopedia of the Harlem RenaissanceAuthor of Dreams of the Immortal City SavannahCreator of Original Silk-Fatherbrush Artstyle

Contact the Author

A Little Social Distance Holiday Fun with Former U.S. President Barack Obama

A Parallel Literary Journey

Aberjhani

Archives

Categories

Listening to the Jazz Griot of Savannah

Cultivating Individual Distinction

Aberjhani
Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
Co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Creator of Authentic Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

Visionary Artists and Thinkers

By Aberjhani
Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
Co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Creator of Authentic Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

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

Aberjhani
Co-author Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
Creator of Original Silk-Fatherbrush Artstyle