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

Marking a Savannah Milestone
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

0 Comments

History and Erasure: Chronicling Legacies of Black Artists in Savannah (Pt. 1 of 3)

5/4/2022

0 Comments

"Luther and the Coming of Light" digital art by Aberjhani C2022)

Introduction

.he last thing I expected to find myself writing about as we moved deeper into the year 2022 was a 3-way war between Russia, Ukraine, and professed defenders of democracy around the world. But write about it I have on the LinkedIn website as well as here at Bright Skylark. Hopefully, the articles have made it clear one of my primary concerns regarding the war has been the brutal erasure of history and culture as well as that of human lives.

The Chronicling Legacies of Black Artists in Savannah series was first published in my AXS cultural arts column as an expression of that same concern. It is reposted at this time both to encourage unwavering support in their struggle for what Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called “the right to live,” and, in observation of the 14th anniversary of the publication of ELEMENTAL, the Power of Illuminated Love:

Contributors to Unique Traditions

Upon his passing on April 6, 2016, Luther E. Vann joined an illustrious group of brilliant contemporary African-American creative artists who, prior to their transitions, produced numerous celebrated works which have added tremendously to Savannah’s (Georgia, USA) reputation and value as a favorite travel destination for lovers of the cultural arts.

Vann (b. 1937) and Allen Fireall (1954-2014) bestowed upon the city a legacy of fine visual art that documented daily life in different communities throughout the Low Country in Georgia and South Carolina. Like artist William M. Pleasant Jr. (1928-1997) before them, they also contributed greatly to the unique traditions of Gullah art.

(Digital portrait of late Savannah Gullah artist Allen Fireall by Aberjhani)

In many cases, particularly where Fireall is concerned, their painted canvases depict scenes representative of historic cultural activities rarely practiced as part of everyday living in contemporary times. Making nets and sewing quilts by hand, for example, are more likely to be done for creative enjoyment [or to be sold as cultural artefacts] rather than, as they once were, out of simple necessity.

Similarly, men and women carrying bushels of crabs atop their heads, or gathering in parks or alongside roads to wait for job assignments are seen even less rarely (if ever). Nor are you as likely while driving or walking down a lane in the American South to see women in adjoining back yards laughing and talking as they hang freshly-washed laundry out to dry.

Restoring Erased History

The late world-renowned Rev. Dr. Ja A. Jahannes (1942 -2015) was something of a polymath whose exceptional talents included writing plays, poems, novels, and children’s books–– as well as publishing anthologies, producing fine-art photography, composing music, teaching, and delivering inspired sermons. Through his multiple positions as an educator at the HBCU Savannah State University, a minister at Savannah’s now 105-year-old Abyssinia Baptist Church, and a public intellectual, Jahannes empowered many others to pick up where he would leave off.

The names presented here are not done so to invite nostalgic reveries, though studied reflections are certainly appropriate for people familiar with them. They are offered (and a number of others could easily be included) to help prevent their consignment to discarded files marked “erased history, or being deleted, via guerrilla decontextualization by omission, from the more “official” channels of documented acknowledgements.

Whether using the term “erasure of history” or “history of erasure” the final definition points to the same legacy-destroying result: the removal of consequential names and events from their authentic historic context and thus from public awareness. An erasure of history indicates the active or conscious deletion of a subject from various official records. Histories of erasure, as it were, possess the paradoxical distinction of referring to accumulated instances of eradication. The first describes the act of omitting relevant events or biographies. The second describes accounts of such actions.

The late painter William M. Pleasant Jr. surrounded by some of his celebrated works.

Guerrilla decontextualization by omission tends to occur frequently when it comes to African-American cultural arts workers who have not been embraced by certain institutions. Whatever prominence they command stems more from the direct support of, and engagement with, appreciative audiences than from disinterested commercial outlets. Some, such as William M. Pleasant Jr., had the good fortune to produce heirs, like Jalal Pleasant, who also became accomplished artists and have labored to ensure their parent’s work is properly noted.

The Example of Luther E. Vann

All of the people mentioned here have won some level of recognition in their own right. Vann earned his place beside the luminous talents he has joined through a lifetime of dedication to both the spirit and the forms of his craft. It was that dauntless commitment which prompted organizations like the Telfair Museum Friends of African-American Art to back the publication of the ekphratic book, Elemental the Power of Illuminated Love, in honor of his individual genius.

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

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

0 Comments

A Hidden American Treasure Comes to Revelatory Light (part 3 of 3): Sweating out a Poem

9/16/2019

0 Comments

Title art-graphic with Suzanne Jackson, Rachel Reese, and Alonzo Davis on stage at Telfair Museums Jepson Center for the Arts. The screen above them is showing archival images from the Suzanne Jackson Five Decades art exhibit. (photo by Aberjhani for Bright Skylark Literary Productions)

Having refrained for years from attending any kind of party at all, I relaxed my self-imposed tension by mixing in a little work with a lot of fun. In a room next to the kitchen (which itself resembled an art installation) I saw a stack of books and, being the bookaholic I am, could not resist their pull.

Picture my surprise when discovering in the pages of Daniel Widener's Black Arts West: Culture and Struggle in Postwar Los Angeles (2010), and Kellie Jones's South of Pico: African American Artists in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s (2017), extensive references to the woman of the hour. Also nearby was a copy of ELEMENTAL and seeing it made me feel like the spirit of our friend Luther had dropped in to support the launch with his blessings.

By the time of the party, I had already learned that as well as being a visual artist, Suzanne was a poet who had studied with the phenomenal Lucille Clifton (1936-2010). At least two volumes featuring poems by her had been published: What I Love: Paintings, Poetry, & a Drawing (1972), and Animals (1978). Her writing had also been included in notable anthologies like the Nikky Finney-edited The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South (2007). Maybe I was hoping to find those among the stacked books as well but, to avoid becoming self-absorbed to a point of rudeness, I forced myself to step away and began taking photographs of Suzanne, different guests, and the lush greenery outside the house.

The symbolic images seen in Suzanne Jackson's 12-foot award-winning canvas "Passages" (1978, above) are described in the FIVE DECADES exhibition catalog as "associated with love, childbirth, and women painted in expressive acrylic layers." It hangs here in front of 1 of 7 display vitrines and next to other compelling works included in the Five Decades retrospective debut at the Telfair Museums Jepson Center for the Arts. (Bright Skylark Literary Productions photograph by Aberjhani ©2019)

I tried to avoid cameras myself, not because I felt shy but because for some unknown reason I had begun to sweat--not daintily "perspire" but ferociously SWEAT, like somebody fully-clothed in a sauna--and my shirt was getting soaked. No one else appeared to be having this problem. Reluctantly, when informed that Suzanne wanted an assistant to take a black-and-white photo of me for potential use in a publication, I consented. Soon afterwards, the sweating became too ridiculous and I couldn't figure out why so I said my good-byes and started walking toward my residence, located at the time on the other side of town.

About halfway there, an energized psychic push-and-pull began stirring in my skull and words started to assemble themselves in flashes and clusters. Phrases such as "painted star-fire" and "unmapped territories" swirled and glowed like special effects in a movie. Is this, I wondered, what all the heat which had started flowing through me at the party and forced me to leave before I was ready was all about? A ball of winged language was preparing to reveal itself in one form or another and left me no choice but to stop walking, grab from my shoulder bag a pen and piece of paper, and write the fragments down.

Cover of Suzanne Jackson Five Decades retrospective catalog. For information on closing tour of the retrospective and book signing with artist Suzanne Jackson click the image. (Cover art courtesy of Telfair Books)

Such experiences were not new to me but the way they sometimes manifested could still come as an unsettling disruption. This was such an instant and every other block I had to stop walking and start scribbling. By the time I got home, I had written a rough draft which looked like it could be the beginnings of a poem. Okay, I thought, I'll just leave it in this folder and go back to it next week sometime.

Except that it refused to wait.

Polychromatic Inked Pages

Over the next few days I kept feeling drawn back to the folder and added to the lines already written in black ink, more lines composed in green, red, and purple ink. Sometimes I wondered: was I writing a poem or painting one?

Eventually, the evolving draft was complete enough to take on the title Syllables Painted on a Suzannian Canvas. It was enough to type up and print a second, then later third and fourth drafts before finally settling on: Suzannian Algorithm Finger-Painted on an Abstract Wall. It fit, I thought, the words which had sweated themselves out, the polychromatic inked pages, and the artist in whose honor the work had been composed.

Table of contents from Suzanne Jackson Five Decades retrospective art exhibition catalog. In addition to artist Jackson and editor Rachel Reese, catalog contributors include: Betye Saar, Aberjhani, Melanee C. Harvey, julia elizabeth neal, & Tiffany E. Barber. (Page image courtesy of Telfair Books)

My hope to come up with an idea for an essay or poem for the planned catalog in a couple of months appeared instead to have become an accomplished mission in a few weeks. It seemed the poem, which in time would be accepted for the pages of the catalog, had started writing itself the moment I read the words HATE HAS NO HOME HERE on the sign in Suzanne's window. Or it may have started long before then, upon that first meeting during my 2004 Harlem Renaissance lecture and book signing at the Carnegie Branch Library.

Contemplating how the poem had unveiled itself, I considered it a direct response to the dynamic creative presences gathered that day in Suzanne's home, and to my observances of the current Harlem Renaissance Centennial. This was appropriate enough given the way Harlem Renaissance artists, musicians, writers, educators, and leaders often inspired and empowered each other's creative efforts and political agendas.

Countering Toxic Bigotries & Heinous Practices

The unprecedented advancements of the Harlem Renaissance on multiple cultural fronts helped counter the toxic bigotries and heinous practices of a time when many Americans, if not most, were still entrenched in unyielding mindsets forged during the death-throes of slavery as it was practiced in the 19th century. They remained so even as social, legislative, and technological progressions in the 20th century indicated those who insisted on holding onto delusions of white supremacy were doomed to agonizing personal and collective implosions.

Our present 21st-century hour bears a lot of similarities to the previous time-frame. Works by black artists supportive of progressive change mattered then as they do now because often found within them were/are important ingredients for remedies to what ails our bleeding and burning world the most. Ingredients like symbols of life-sustaining values and language encouraging actions motivated by compassion and mindfulness.

The recognition and celebration of Suzanne Jackson's achievements in this modern era when chaos and enmity command so much attention on a daily basis is a recognition and celebration of some of our better options for moving toward the next century. Her painted, poemized, and otherwise choreographed meditations offer us touchstones of remembrance and awareness. Those touchstones inspire individuals and communities to consider more deeply and more efficiently the choices which have brought humanity to this 2019 moment of quivering uncertainties, and, the options most likely to help us regain the advantages of higher ground and hopes now seemingly lost.

Aberjhani
author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
and co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance

0 Comments

Elemental's 10th anniversary inspires mindful reflections & renewed hopes (part 2 of 2): illumination

5/4/2018

0 Comments

That Elemental, the Power of Illuminated Love, would prove a challenge to get published had always been known. Potential traditional publishers had no problems admiring its bold creativity and uninhibited spiritual intensity. What most could not accept was something traditionally troublesome when it comes to artists and the marketplace: the financial risks involved.

With all respect to healthy doubts and sensible reservations, so far as Luther and I were concerned the years of energy, labor, and determination already invested in Elemental by the time 2006 rolled around equated to something more than a calculated transactional value. From the perspectives of our deepest meditations and intentions, the completion of Elemental meant contributing to the cultural legacies established by creative artists like those who made possible such movements as Impressionism, Cubism, Surrealism, and the Harlem Renaissance. This last, especially, was one which had already stamped our destinies as Luther had studied with artists of the Harlem Renaissance and I had already co-authored Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance.

The center image for this art graphic features the first two stanzas of a poem by Aberjhani from ELEMENTAL (p. 22) titled "Past, Present & Future Are One" based on a Luther E. Vann painting of the same title. The third-eye illustration seen above was drawn by Jason Maurer when the poem was published in the former SCAD newspaper The Georgia Guardian in 1993, 15 years prior to the publication of ELEMENTAL. The combined creative synergy demonstrates how ELEMENTAL has helped to inspire and empower others from the beginning.

But once creative passion and committed partners empowered us to finally produce a physical book, we reached two important conclusions. First: we recognized the need to articulate, both for potential buyers and booksellers, as definitively as we could, the goals and values inherent in Elemental. Secondly: it seemed obvious the work could be adapted for different mediums. These considerations resulted in the following statements:

ILLUMINATED LOVE

1) The vision behind ILLUMINATED LOVE is that human beings and the environments we inhabit are inherently multidimensional in ways that are typically ignored but which can make our lives richer and more fulfilling than generally recognized or consciously experienced.

2) The mission of ILLUMINATED LOVE is to express through visual art, poetry, and music the creative and spiritual harmony that connects shared public spaces with individual need and existence; and, to demonstrate the multidimensional nature of the same.

3) The objective and/or goal of ILLUMINATED LOVE is to provide a product that functions as a source of entertainment, as inspiration, and as an enhanced tool for the study of employing complementary creative genres within an appealing multi-media format.

When envisioning Elemental as a staged musical or as a video production, I described it thus:

...An exploration and documentation of the way human beings occupy public spaces in interpretative contrast to how they experience inner spaces... It illustrates the way collective intention makes communal interaction possible while individual need and impulse maintain the integrity of a person's separate being.

For example, the Luther E. Vann painting "Christ Listening to Stereo" (p. 27) is of a youth on a bus in New York City (please see image below). The image reveals how the youth is at once physically part of a larger setting while remaining, via his personal stereo, completely apart from it. Immersed in his music, he claims a connection to the artist who made the music and who allows him to not only share in the expressed creative passion, but to utilize the same as a kind of soundtrack for his own anticipations, memories, desires, needs, or fears of the moment. Very similar and yet very different scenes are enacted in such public spaces as parks, malls, back yards, office buildings, clubs, and street corners. They all make the individual part of a larger whole even while many individuals continue to exist primarily as isolated fragments of that whole.

The image used for the cover of the novel Songs from the Black Skylark zPed Music Player is from a section of Vann's painting "Christ Listening to Stereo."

From One President and Generation to the Next

Some might consider the timelessness of the project a good thing in regard to aesthetics but then questionable for the way Elemental's implied commentaries on social and political conditions of a decade ago remain relevant today. In this sense, it continues to illuminate how our least and most desirable practices impact humanity's quest for mutually-advantageous coexistence.

Another example: the ebb and flow of dismay and inspiration from the time of publication until now might be seen in criticisms of former President George Bush's administration as the book was heading to the printer in early 2008. Likewise: less that a year later, after its publication, came Barack H. Obama's unprecedented election to the White House followed by eight years of spectacular innovations and shifts in public consensus regarding everything from race relations and gender equality to environmentalism and economic reforms. And now: current POTUS Donald Trump continues to implement policies resulting in a tug of war between the Oval Office and American citizens committed to resistance.

From one president to the next and one generation the next, Elemental has always proposed for leaders and followers alike a path of informed awareness built on common ground:

The states of interaction with one another and estrangement from each other represent states of being, or levels of reality, that the artist seeks to capture and identify in order to understand their possible implications and consequences in the modern world. Social conditions and activities indicate different outcomes. Some appear to thrive in powerful socially rewarding ways—such as economic advancement or political prestige––while others seem to quietly wither away, turning into the infamous "damned souls" of the world existing in states of perpetual despair leading to the destruction of self and others.

In its essence, Elemental, the Power of Illuminated Love, maintains we are all on a quest to experience qualities of compassion and acceptance capable of helping to sustain both the individual and the larger society. Because such a journey tends to take place even more within than without, the visual imagery, words, and music of ILLUMINATED LOVE incorporates both levels of that reality.

Admittedly, those words might sound a bit more grandiloquent than intended. That does not mean they are any less sincere or applicable.

Powerful and Cherished Allie

This celebration of the 10th anniversary of a book of art and poetry is not to suggest that such a volume holds the key to solving all the world's very serious problems. It is, however, to suggest that humanity for too long has remained too comfortable investing faith in fear and violence. Student walk-outs in protest against gun violence in their schools, calls for police policy and training reform, the #MeToo movement, and resistance to government policies which threaten to widen even further the gap between "haves and have-nots" prove the need and desire for something more healing and beneficial than relentlessly suffocating trauma.

We celebrate Elemental because it identifies not just a potential but a capability already within our reach. It helps take the edge off the impulse to destroy what we fear to understand and allows sufficient time to remind ourselves of this: Love, Knowledge, and Beauty are not our enemies. Whether dressed up as art, poetry, or a simple smile, they have always been among our most powerful life-sustaining allies.

Aberjhani
© May 2018

0 Comments

Elemental's 10th anniversary inspires mindful reflections and renewed hopes (part 1 of 2): remembrance

5/2/2018

0 Comments

May is Elemental the Power of Illuminated Love Month at Bright Skylark Literary Productions. (Title art graphic collage by Aberjhani)

"He used the word 'nourishing' to refer to Vann's work. And the more I looked through the work seriously, and took my time, that term [seemed] quite apropos. The art and poetry of Elemental nourishes the soul, the mind, and the aesthetic."
--Ja A. Jahannes (from remarks delivered May 29, 2008 at Celebration of Release of Elemental: The The Power of Illuminated Love)

Every now and then I get a good sense of what it might feel like to be a phoenix waking up as a pile of ash and bones which suddenly burst into new flaming life. It was kind of like that recently while continuing my ongoing recovery from the hurricanes of 2016 (Matthew) and 2017 (Irma) to prepare for the 2018 stormy-weather season.

In the course of going through yet another pile of unsorted thumb drives, DVDs, CDs, and mini cassettes, I discovered a lost treasure: a DVD filmed by the gifted polymath Benjamin Bacon (known to friends and colleagues as BeBe) labeled "Elemental, Early Morning Light Productions, by Luther E. Vann, Final Cut, Jepson Gallery, Savannah, GA, May 29, 2008." It is not something which will ever challenge the global impact of director Ryan Coogler's game-changing Black Panther film, but it has added immeasurably to the 2018 10th Anniversary Celebration of the publication of Elemental, the Power of Illuminated Love (ISBN 9780972114271).

The video, shot just as YouTube and social media were developing their considerable digital muscles, captures in raw fashion a singular moment in the history of cultural arts in the United States. The program that evening included my friend Luther's debut effort as a videographer, a short bio-documentary titled Coming Home, in which he recorded me reciting the poem from which the video took its title, and chronicled his days in New York City pursuing his craft while living in the basement of a friend's apartment on Washington Square.

Artist Luther E. Vann honing his skills in the basement of a friends apartment in NYC circa 1973. (Photo by Chris Torres. Bright Skylark Literary Productions Collection)

In addition to Luther, program participants included: Dr. Ja A. Jahannes, musician Travis Biggs, The Telfair's Friends of African-American Art (who did so much to make the evening possible), its then director Steven High, curator Harry DeLorme, and many patrons, supporters, and fans. They all combined intentions and resources to demonstrate art's ability to endow a diverse community with a single beautiful purpose. That potential is one which has eluded too many in 2018 as educational institutions and organizations like the National Endowment for the Arts have seen their budgets butchered at a time when what creatives gift to society possibly has never been more needed.

The current political assaults on freedom of the press and individual expression make it even more important to savor the kind of rarity represented by Elemental's launch ten years ago. Moreover, the event takes on greater and greater significance because some of the key geniuses who made it happen are no longer with us on the physical plane and others have taken on new missions in different cities or countries. Vann died April 6, 2016, and Jahannes on July 5, 2015. (I last communicated with violinist Travis Biggs a few months before Luther passed but since then have not received any responses to phone messages or emails).

Sensory Brilliance

Dr. Jahannes' contribution to the celebration remains particularly memorable because with his eloquent, insightful, and often humorous comments on the art and poetry of Elemental he both "stole the show" and gave it back to the audience as a perfect gift. He had been asked to introduce the Coming Home video precisely because of his familiarity with our work both as individuals and as a team. In his words:

"Aberjhani and Luther Vann have dynamic synergism in their poetry and their paintings...'Luther Vann's paintings will enrich our community for years to come,' said Steven High in a preface to Elemental. So will the poetry of Aberjhani..."

He spoke with infectious ease when comparing Luther's work to that of painters as diverse as the Norwegian master Edvard Munch and the iconic Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh. He did the same when pointing out parallels between it and musicians such as the classical composer Antonin Dvorchak and giants of jazz John Coltrane and Miles Davis. An accomplished photographer himself, Jahannes further described as Vann as "a remarkable storyteller" and "a sensory artist" whose images engage viewers' attention on multiple levels:

"He's a master of sensory brilliance. His work is visual, captivating, and viscerally engaging... If you look at these paintings, you can almost hear them. They are auditory. There are voices emitted by color and arrangement. They're kinesthetic. Energy [is] generated by the arrangement of pulsating hues... They are tactile. You can almost feel the texture by the way he layers and juxtaposes color and arranges symbols and images..."

These observations have since helped various scholars and art lovers to more fully understand what they are viewing when going through the pages of the book, or standing in front of Luther's work at the Telfair Museum of Art or elsewhere.

The Deep Road to Infinity

Long before Elemental made cultural arts history in Savannah, I had become an admirer of Dr. Jahannes's poetry and essay collection, Truthfeasting. For that reason, I felt more than a little honored by his generous comments on the body of my published works and was thrilled to hear him recite the following passage:

We take the deep road to infinity.
From the silence to the sound
to the cross to the mosque
we bleed through the hidden tunnels of history
tapping the jingle of empires and chains
to the beat of memory gone astray.

We take the deep road to infinity...

(from the poem "More Than You Know," Elemental, p. 16)

His willingness to lend his voice in service to something greater than either of our individual ambitions was a large part of what defined Elemental's thematic substance. It brought to mind the great Lucille Clifton’s famous dictum that when it comes to identifying yourself as a poet and actually writing poetry, "One should wish to celebrate more than one wishes to be celebrated."

The celebratory evening of May 29, 2008, marked the culmination of an almost two-decade campaign to breathe life into a project which had survived, and in part been shaped by, the turbulence born of two creative individuals' private, social, political, and professional lives. The luxury of having finally reached a point of relief nearly overshadowed the excitement of having achieved a long-sought triumph. We soon realized we had completed only one more stage of a perpetually interactive process which would, much like the book, continue to unfold in layers of color and sparks of revelation.

NEXT: Elemental's 10th anniversary inspires mindful reflections & renewed hopes (part 2): illumination
Aberjhani
©May 2018

0 Comments

<<Previous

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

History and Erasure: Chronicling Legacies of Black Artists in Savannah (Pt. 1 of 3)

Introduction

Contributors to Unique Traditions

Restoring Erased History

The Example of Luther E. Vann

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

Contact Author-Artist Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

A Hidden American Treasure Comes to Revelatory Light (part 3 of 3): Sweating out a Poem

Polychromatic Inked Pages

Countering Toxic Bigotries & Heinous Practices

Elemental's 10th anniversary inspires mindful reflections & renewed hopes (part 2 of 2): illumination

From One President and Generation to the Next

Powerful and Cherished Allie

Elemental's 10th anniversary inspires mindful reflections and renewed hopes (part 1 of 2): remembrance

Sensory Brilliance

The Deep Road to Infinity

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

History and Erasure: Chronicling Legacies of Black Artists in Savannah (Pt. 1 of 3)

​Introduction

​Contributors to Unique Traditions

Restoring Erased History

The Example of Luther E. Vann

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

Contact Author-Artist Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

A Hidden American Treasure Comes to Revelatory Light (part 3 of 3): Sweating out a Poem

Polychromatic Inked Pages

Countering Toxic Bigotries & Heinous Practices

Elemental's 10th anniversary inspires mindful reflections & renewed hopes (part 2 of 2): illumination

​From One President and Generation to the Next

Powerful and Cherished Allie

Elemental's 10th anniversary inspires mindful reflections and renewed hopes (part 1 of 2): remembrance

Sensory Brilliance

The Deep Road to Infinity

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

Introduction

Contributors to Unique Traditions

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

From One President and Generation to the Next