|
|
|
“My work as an artist is based on both public and a private narrative. The public narrative has led to a commentary on issues that impact society in general including race, poverty, political concerns, isolation and class. My private narrative pushes me further and presents my personal negotiation of these same issues and frequently confronts ramifications that are more intimate in their nature. My sense of humanity and my consciousness as a thinking and feeling being, have led me to explore topics that are painful, personal, and that at times show man’s indifference to others. As an artist I have attempted to communicate this awareness in an intellectual and sensual manner.”
|
|
Curlee Raven Holton is a printmaker and painter whose work has been exhibited professionally for over 25 years in more than 30 one-person shows and more than 80 groups shows. His exhibitions have included prestigious national and international venues such as Egypt’s 7th International Biennale, Taller de arts Plasticas Rufino Tamayo in Oaxaca, Mexico, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Holton earned his M.F.A. with honors from Kent State University and his B.F.A. from the Cleveland Institute of Fine Arts in Drawing and Printmaking. Since 1991 he has taught printmaking and African American art history at Lafayette Collage in Easton, Pennsylvania and is also the founding director of the Experimental Printmaking Institute. Holton’s work is in many private and public collections including the Cleveland Museum of Art, Yale University Art Gallery, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and the Library of Congress. He has presented more than 70 public lectures on the subjects of his work, African American art, and contemporary printmaking. Articles and reviews of his work have appeared in more than forty different publications. He has lectured and presented demonstrations throughout the United States and Mexico, the West Indies, and Costa Rica, and has been an artist-in-residence at museums, collages and universities. In Holton’s own words, “My work as an artist is based on both public and a private narrative. The public narrative has led to a commentary on issues that impact society in general including race, poverty, political concerns, isolation and class. It has also led me to explore intrapersonal relationships based on traditional roles and archetypes. I try to capture people and sometimes things in their most private or solitary moments, even when these moments are in public view. My private narrative pushes me further and presents my personal negotiation of these same issues and frequently confronts ramifications that are more intimate in their nature. My narratives can be both objective and subjective. My work overtly considers the forces that have developed my point of view and as a result there are frequently messages on multiple levels for the discerning viewer.”
|
|
B.F.A. Cleveland Institute of Art Cleveland, Ohio M.F.A. Kent State University (Honors College) Kent, Ohio
|
|
Telling It Like It Is: Image conscious Printmaker Curlee Raven Holton examines the myth of appearances- (Creative Loafing Website) Published 08.13.08 By Cinque Hicks IDENTITY CRISIS: Holton's "God Don't Like Ugly" (1995) Telling It Like It Is Through Sept. 9. $2-$4. Tues.-Fri., 10 a.m.-6 p.m.; Sat.-Sun., 1-5 p.m. Hammonds House Museum, 503 Peeples St. 404-612-0500. hammondshouse.org. Curlee Raven Holton intends to burrow beneath the skin. In his current exhibition at Hammonds House Museum, Telling It Like It Is, Holton's works flay the myth of appearances from the inside out. "The X's and the Y's" (1992) is a case in point. The small cut-plate etching hangs inconspicuously at the foot of the stairs. Its eccentric composition features a row of identically clad, black-draped figures throwing up what might be crudely rendered gang signs. Their faces are covered save for barely visible eyeholes, and each wears a cap marked with the letter X. They might be the Crips of L.A., or they could be the Bloods. Or maybe a row of burqa-wearing Iraqi women, or radical environmentalists. They're anything and everything – as generic as the letter X – and together, they elegantly stand in for any fearsome, ineffable group who "all look alike" to us. Holton's a master printmaker who founded the Experimental Printmaking Institute at Easton, Pa.'s Lafayette College in 1996. Most of the show's two dozen prints reveal not only Holton's command of an astonishing array of printmaking methods – monoprint, etching, lithography, serigraphy – but also his finely tuned eye for the contradictions of culture, history and constructed identities. For a pair of triptychs titled "Man Mask Meaning" (1993), Holton juxtaposes a Klan mask and a black cutout face with monochromatic fields of subtle off-black and off-white. He makes obvious what's often overlooked: that "black" and "white" are convenient masks and labels that hide as much as they reveal. If the show's early prints are philosophical atom bombs, the three most recent works from 2002--2004 are mere firecrackers. Drenched in color, the compositions are less taut. Holton's earlier evocative lines and brush strokes, as well as specific, charged imagery, are all but lost in a profusion of mechanical marks and symbols of a generic multiculturalism. Fortunately, the rest of the show more than makes up for the weak patch. Telling It Like It Is is concerned with so much more than naming victims and perpetrators in the ongoing American drama of race. Instead of focusing on the tribulations of a culture, Holton focuses on the dangers of perceiving cultures. He gives voice to the tragedy of being misseen and misconstrued. And that corrodes us all, black, white and everything in between.
|
