Illustration by LJ-Baptiste
LJ’s Comic Toontorials
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Using the attached image as an example, you’ll devise a comic strip that has a full beginning, middle, and end conveyed in one panel! This comic can be wordless or can contain words if desired, but it must contain at least two characters, a prop, an action, and a reaction within the singular panel. |
A partir de la imagen adjunta, concebirás una historieta con comienzo, nudo y desenlace, ¡presentada en una única viñeta! La historieta puede ser muda o contener palabras si lo deseas, pero debe incluir al menos dos personajes, un objeto, una acción y una reacción dentro de la viñeta. |
Materials/Materiales:
Instructions / Instrucciones:
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1. On a scrap piece of paper, sketch out a variety of different characters as a warm up. These could be humans, aliens, animals, monsters, or any combination. 2. As you draw, focus on making your characters take part in an action or activity of some kind. An example would be playing a video game, blowing a huge gum bubble, pulling a prank, drinking a giant cup of soda, or any other thing that comes to mind! 3. Pick out at least two of the characters you’ve created, and draw out a one-panel comic strip featuring at least two characters, a prop, an action, and reaction. As you think of the action, develop a reaction that can be unexpected and take you by surprise. The reaction can be a character’s body language or expression or even the face they make at what’s happening around them. 4. If desired, this one-panel strip can be expanded upon for a larger comic story, or colored, inked, and finalized as-is! |
1. En un papel borrador, realiza bocetos de una variedad de diferentes personajes, como precalentamiento. Pueden ser seres humanos, extraterrestres, animales, monstruos o cualquier combinación. 2. A medida que dibujas, céntrate en hacer que tus personajes participen en algún tipo de acción o actividad. Por ejemplo, pueden estar jugando un videojuego, haciendo un globo enorme con goma de mascar, haciendo una broma, tomando un vaso gigante de refresco, ¡o cualquier otra cosa que se te ocurra! 3. Escoge al menos dos de los personajes que has creado y dibuja una historieta de una viñeta que contenga al menos dos personajes, un objeto, una acción y una reacción. Al pensar en la acción, desarrolla una reacción que sea inesperada y te tome por sorpresa. La reacción puede expresarse a partir del lenguaje corporal de un personaje, una expresión, o incluso el gesto que hacen a lo que está sucediendo a su alrededor. 4. Si lo deseas, puedes expandir esta viñeta en una historieta más larga, o colorearla, entintarla y terminarla como está. |
Artist Bio / Biografía del Artista:
Photo by Sherline Heriveaux.
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LJ-Baptiste is an art educator and cartoonist from Boston. He is best known for his ongoing comic book series COMIXSCAPE, which features the adventures of a bright-eyed, perpetually preteen boy and his raccoon sidekick. Whether it’s work in animation, graphic apparel designs, or COMIXSCAPE, LJ’s art can be described as distinctive, masterful, and captivating. |
LJ-Baptiste es un profesor de arte e historietista de Boston. Es reconocido por su historieta en serie COMIXSCAPE, que sigue las aventuras de un eterno preadolescente muy astuto y su amigo mapache. El arte de LJ, ya sea de animación, diseño gráfico para indumentaria o en COMIXSCAPE, puede describirse como personal, magistral y cautivante. |
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Share your artwork on social media with #ICAartlab |
Comparte tu obra de arte en las redes sociales con la etiqueta #ICAartlab |
Artwork by Maya Erdelyi.
Color, Shape & Shadow
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Explore color, shape and shadow by creating your own three-dimensional paper collage. Bend, twist, cut, weave and glue shapes from a variety of paper sources such as everyday magazines, colored paper, old books (like the ones you can find in free libraries on the street), or painted paper. Create a fun and wild collage that twists and turns and creates surprising shadows. Use complementary colors to make the colors pop and activate each other (Blue/Orange, Yellow/Purple, Red/Green). See what kind of paper engineering you can think of to get a three-dimensional feel. For inspiration, you can listen to your favorite song and make an abstract drawing based on the music. Work from this drawing as your guide for your collage. |
Explora el color, la forma y la sombra al crear tu propio collage de papel tridimensional. Pliega, tuerce, entrelaza y pega formas de una variedad de clases de papeles, como revistas, papel de color, libros viejos (como los que puedes encontrar en las bibliotecas gratuitas en la calle) o papel pintado. Crea un collage lleno de diversión y locura, que gire y cree sombras sorprendentes. Usa colores complementarios para hacer que estos resalten y para que se activen entre sí (azul/naranja, amarillo/violeta, rojo/verde). Piensa en qué clase de papel se te ocurre usar para crear una sensación tridimensional. Como inspiración, puedes escuchar tu canción favorita y crear un dibujo abstracto basado en la música. Trabaja a partir de este dibujo para crear tu collage. |
Materials/Materiales:
Instructions / Instrucciones:
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1. Using your scissors, cut out different images, textures or colors from magazines, old books and any other cool paper you might have around your house. Old encyclopedias or even National Geographic magazines are fun to use. Optional: If you have paint, make some textures using an old toothbrush or comb with the paint on the paper. 2. Lay out all your different paper pieces (think of this as your paper palette—the way a painter would lay out colors) and start drawing shapes with a pencil on the back of the paper. 3. Cut shapes into lots of different sizes. Try to make some that are long curling shapes, some smaller geometric shapes, and some wiggly ones so you have a nice variety. 4. Using small pieces of foam core or thin pieces of card stock, make a paper stem(s). Glue these to the back of your paper shapes to create depth. This will make shadows and interesting layers to look at. 5. Create your collage by gluing your shapes and pieces onto your “canvas.” “activate” each other—either by their shapes, or by the patterns, textures and colors interacting. Think about the whole composition of the collage. If you’re having fun, you’re doing it right—make something that delights you! Finish gluing your pieces down and you’re done! Take a picture and share it with friends and family. |
1. Con las tijeras, recorta diferentes imágenes, texturas o colores de revistas, libros viejos y cualquier otro papel divertido que puedas tener en casa. Desde enciclopedias viejas hasta los ejemplares de National Geographic, todo es divertido para usar. Opcional: si tienes pintura, crea algunas texturas con un cepillo de dientes o peine con la pintura en el papel. 2. Dispón todos los pedazos de papel que tengas (imagina que son una paleta de papel, como dispondría un pintor de los colores) y comienza a dibujar formas con un lápiz en el dorso del papel. 3. Recorta formas de muchos tamaños diferentes. Intenta crear algunas con formas largas y curvas, algunas formas geométricas más pequeñas y algunas formas caprichosas para tener una buena variedad. 4. Con pequeños trozos de cartón pluma o con piezas de cartón delgadas, crea uno o varios tallos de papel. Pégalos en el dorso de tus formas de papel para crear profundidad. Esto creará sombras y capas interesantes para mirar. 5. Crea tu collage pegando las formas y las piezas en tu «lienzo». Deja que se «activen» entre sí por su interacción, ya sea de formas, motivos, texturas o coloress. Piensa en la composición completa del collage. Si te estás divirtiendo, lo estás haciendo bien, ¡haz algo que te encante! Por último, pega las piezas y habrás terminado. Toma una fotografía y compártela con tus amigos y familia. |
Artist Bios / Biografía del Artista:
Photo by Allison Cekala.
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Maya Erdelyi is an award-winning animator, artist and educator. She creates intricate hand-made animations, collages and installations inspired by imaginary worlds, music, memories and dreams. Ingredients in her work include: printmaking, painting, puppetry, stop-motion, bold colors, patterns and found paper textures. |
Maya Erdelyi es una artista, educadora y animadora que ha recibido algunos premios. Crea elaboradas animaciones hechas a mano, collages e instalaciones inspiradas en mundos imaginarios, música, recuerdos y sueños. Los elementos de su obra incluyen grabado, pintura, títeres, stop-motion (animación en volumen), colores vivos, motivos y texturas de papeles encontrados. |
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Share your artwork on social media with #ICAartlab |
Comparte tu obra de arte en las redes sociales con la etiqueta #ICAartlab |
Bárbara Wagner and Benjamin de Burca, Swinguerra, 2019. Two-channel video (color, sound; 21:16 minutes), dimensions variable. General Acquisition Fund, Fotene Demoulas and Tom Coté Art Acquisition Fund, and Anonymous Art Acquisition Fund. Courtesy the artists and Fortes D’aloia & Gabriel, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. © Bárbara Wagner and Benjamin de Burca
ICA/Boston presents Barbara Wagner & Benjamin de Burca: Swinguerra
First solo presentation in a U.S. museum of the highly acclaimed video installation
(Boston, MA—February 8, 2022) On March 31, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) will open Bárbara Wagner & Benjamin de Burca: Swinguerra, a recent acquisition and room-filling, immersive video installation. Swinguerra (2019) is a 21-minute, two-channel video work that focuses on competitive dancers, including transgender and nonbinary performers, in queer communities of color on the outskirts of Recife, Brazil. This will be the first solo presentation of the installation in a U.S. museum since it premiered at the Brazil Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019. Organized by Anni Pullagura, Curatorial Assistant, Bárbara Wagner & Benjamin de Burca: Swinguerra will be on view through September 5, 2022, concurrent with A Place for Me: Figurative Painting Now, which celebrates a new generation of artists at the vanguard of contemporary painting.
“We are excited to present Swinguerra for the first time since we acquired it for the ICA Collection,” said Jill Medvedow, the ICA’s Ellen Matilda Poss Director. “The dance and music performance is both exhilarating and a necessary perspective on contemporary Brazilian culture during a time of substantial social and political tension.”
Swinguerra features three contemporary dance styles—swingueira, brega funk, and passinho da maloca—as performed by three competitive dance groups. These mixed dance styles recall Brazil’s colonial and slave trade history, where music and dance functioned as discreet methods of organizing politically under oppressive regimes and in the wake of ongoing social and gender-based violence. The film, whose title fuses two words: swingueira, the dance style, and guerra, the Portuguese word for war or struggle, exceeds genres of documentary and fiction to forward a fluid, narrative experience of movement, choreography, and ideas of self-expression. Fast-paced, athletic, sexy, dreamlike, and aggressive, these dance styles make Swinguerra an exhilarating and unforgettable viewing experience, illustrating how dance and music offer rich sources of agency, resistance, and community.
Collaborating since 2011, Bárbara Wagner and Benjamin de Burca create works in video and installation that explore contemporary histories of underground dance and musical genres. Frequently made in collaboration with cinematographer Pedro Sotero, these moving-image works, which they refer to as “documentary musicals,” often center on the South Atlantic diaspora, from the Franco-Indo creole musical genre maloya to frevo dancers and brega singers. Constructing their films collaboratively with the performers, their approach merges the cinematic with the fictional, documentary, and ethnographic to address questions of surveillance, visibility, and creativity in an increasingly connected, postcolonial world.
“Swinguerra explores how these performers use dance and music to create spaces of representation and resistance within larger political systems. The artists’ practice is rooted in a philosophy of collaboration: they frequently work over several years on a project with both the subjects of their films and with colleagues. The collaborative nature of their work means they are very intentional about letting people speak and perform for themselves, foregrounding a celebration of self-possessed knowledge and agency,” said Pullagura.
About the Artists
Working collaboratively since 2011, Wagner & de Burca have shown in exhibitions, biennials and film festivals, including: the 33rd, 35th Panorama de Arte Brasileira, the 32nd São Paulo Biennial, the 20th Festival de Arte Contemporânea Sesc VideoBrasil (São Paulo, Brazil); the 36th EVA International (Limerick, Ireland); the 5th Skulptur Projekte (Münster, Germany); the 67th, 68th, 69th Berlin International Film Festival (Germany); and the 72nd Locarno International Film Festival (Switzerland). In 2020 they took part in Manifesta, the European Nomadic Biennial. In 2019, Wagner & de Burca represented Brazil at the 58th Venice Biennial and unveiled solo presentations at Jumex Museum (Mexico City, Mexico) and the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam, Holland). Their work can be found in collections such as: ICA/Boston (Boston, USA), Kadist Art Foundation (France), Museu de Arte de São Paulo (Masp) and Museu de Arte Moderna (MAM) (São Paulo, Brazil), Pérez Art Museum, (Miami, USA), and Arts Council of Ireland, among others. The artists are represented by Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
About the ICA
Since its founding in 1936, the ICA has shared the pleasures of reflection, inspiration, imagination, and provocation that contemporary art offers with its audiences. A museum at the intersection of contemporary art and civic life, the ICA has advanced a bold vision for amplifying the artist’s voice and expanding the museum’s role as educator, incubator, and convener. Its exhibitions, performances, and educational programs provide access to the breadth and diversity of contemporary art, artists, and the creative process, inviting audiences of all ages and backgrounds to participate in the excitement of new art and ideas. The ICA is located at 25 Harbor Shore Drive, Boston, MA, 02210. The Watershed is located at 256 Marginal Street, East Boston, MA 02128. For more information, call 617-478-3100 or visit our website at icaboston.org. Follow the ICA on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Credit
Swinguerra was acquired through the generosity of the General Acquisition Fund, Fotene and Tom Coté Art Acquisition Fund, and Anonymous Art Acquisition Fund.
Arcmanoro Niles, I Look Just Like My Mama With My Father’s Eyes (Can Time Heal The Guilty), 2021. Oil, acrylic, and glitter on canvas, 74 1/2 × 54 1/2 inches (189.2 × 138.4 cm). Promised gift of Fotene Demoulas and Tom Coté. Image courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, and London. Photo by Elisabeth Bernstein. © Arcmanoro Niles
David Antonio Cruz, canyoustaywithmetonight_causeyouarehere,youarehere,andweareherewithyou, 2021. Oil and latex on wood panels, 72 × 96 inches (182.9 × 243.8 cm) (overall). Courtesy the artist and Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago. © David Antonio Cru
Louis Fratino, My Meal, 2019. Oil on canvas, 43 × 47 inches (109.2 × 119.4 cm). Collection of Deborah and James Kern. Image courtesy Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York. © Louis Fratino
Doron Langberg, Bather, 2021. Oil on canvas, 80 × 96 inches (203.2 × 243.8 cm). Gift of the Wilks Family. Courtesy the artist and Victoria Miro, London. Photo by Mel Taing. © Doron Langberg
Aubrey Levinthal, Egg Breakfast, 2020. Oil on panel, 24 × 18 inches (61 × 45.7 cm). Collection of Jill Porter and Stephen Larson. Image courtesy Monya Rowe Gallery, New York. © Aubrey Levinthal
Gisela McDaniel, Created for Such a Time as This, 2020. Oil on panel, plant and shell from subjects, resin, found object, and sound, 50 × 60 × 5 1/2 inches (127 × 152.4 × 14 cm). Courtesy the artist and Pilar Corrias, London. Photo by Clare Gatto. © Gisela McDaniel
Celeste Rapone, Pack Animals, 2021. Oil on canvas, 78 × 89 inches (198.1 × 226.1 cm). Courtesy the artist; Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago; Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York and Aspen; and Josh Lilley, London. Image courtesy Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago. Photo by Nathan Keay. © Celeste Rapone
Ambera Wellmann, Strobe, 2021. Oil and mixed media on linen, 108 × 360 inches (274.3 × 914.4 cm). Courtesy the artist and Company Gallery, New York. © Ambera Wellmann
ICA/Boston opens A Place for Me: Figurative Painting Now on March 31
(Boston, MA—February 8, 2022) The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) presents A Place for Me: Figurative Painting Now, an exhibition that celebrates a new generation of artists at the vanguard of contemporary painting. David Antonio Cruz, Louis Fratino, Doron Langberg, Aubrey Levinthal, Gisela McDaniel, Arcmanoro Niles, Celeste Rapone, and Ambera Wellmann are leading figurative painting’s recent revival by depicting what they love—their friends, lovers, and family; studio spaces and homes; and the scenes that make up their everyday. Organized by Ruth Erickson, Mannion Family Curator, with Anni Pullagura, Curatorial Assistant, A Place for Me: Figurative Painting Now will be on view March 31 through September 5, 2022, concurrent with Bárbara Wagner & Benjamin de Burca: Swinguerra.
Colorful, surprising, and full of life, A Place for Me is a testament to the vitality of contemporary figurative art, reflecting a multitude of styles and approaches to painting through a cross-section of contemporary painting today. Evoking intimacy, community, and the personal in the power to represent oneself in painting, these eight artists claim space for Black, Indigenous, brown, and queer life. Through their work, they consider the politics of seeing and being seen and how painting might register care, tenderness, empathy, and resilience. The exhibition features nearly 40 works arranged by artist.
“Portraiture has historically been a way that people in positions of power represent and memorialize their authority and positions within society,” said Jill Medvedow the ICA’s Ellen Matilda Poss Director. “A Place for Me presents an exuberant selection of paintings by an emerging generation of queer, female, and BIPOC artists and a multiplicity of perspectives on art and identity.”
“Over the last five to 10 years, there has been a remarkable reemergence of figurative painting with a new attention on who is depicted and who is being seen, and a desire through figurative painting to connect with contemporary experience,” said Erickson. “Shedding light on this, A Place for Me considers questions of identity and community and the diverse ways artists are addressing and exploring these themes through painting.”
About the Artists
David Antonio Cruz
David Antonio Cruz (b. 1974 in Philadelphia) is a Boston-based painter and mixed media performance artist who centers the experiences and agency of the Black, brown, and queer sitters who feature in his work. Drawn from life studies made of friends and acquaintances presented in richly varied compositions and palettes, Cruz’s paintings honor what he calls “the celebration of life, of being. Living in the moment and full of life.”
Louis Fratino
Louis Fratino (b. 1993 in Annapolis, MD) is a New York-based artist whose work fuses personal memories with art historical references to explore queerness in the gestures of everyday life. The subject matter of his paintings, sculptures, and prints ranges from nude figures to landscapes and still-lifes, through which he searches to represent visually the emotions and expressions of what he has called the “mysticism around painting, where you can manifest something through it, [whether] it’s something as simple as doing the dishes, or being in love with someone, or feeling close to your family.”
Doron Langberg
Doron Langberg (b. 1985 in Yokneam Moshava, Israel) is a New York-based painter invested in the relationship between queer lived experiences and emotional states that are universal across social categories. Touch, physicality, and movement are significant areas of focus in his vivid paintings, which include portraits of family and friends in his social circle. “I see my work as an aspirational space where queer experiences can embody more than just what they depict,” explains Langberg. “So, my paintings are both a ‘real’ reflection of my everyday experiences, and an alternate reality where queerness is allowed to be expansive and generative.”
Aubrey Levinthal
Aubrey Levinthal (b. 1986 in Philadelphia) is a Philadelphia-based painter whose work attends to the quotidian register of experience, what she calls the “uncanny in our everyday lives.” Her abstract figurative portraits are charged with an almost melancholic atmosphere, rendered in muted yet vibrant colors and a close attention to detail, evoking less a portrait of her subjects – which range from herself to those in her familial and social circles – than of their emotional states. As Levinthal explains, “I hope my work is a real, tender accounting of my particular visual life. The paintings can be inventive and distorted, as I often work from memory and through process, but I want them to carry resonance of my experience, which happens to be as a painter, woman, and mother.”
Gisela McDaniel
Gisela McDaniel (b. 1995 in Bellevue, NE) is a Detroit-based diasporic, Indigenous CHamoru artist. Her work, which engages primarily with processes of healing for womxn and non-binary people of color who have survived personal and historical trauma, is composed as mixed-media assemblages based in oil painting and found objects (often donated by her sitters) and accompanied by audio recordings she makes with her sitters during the painting process. “As survivors, we deal with the aftermath of events that remain with us for years and even lifetimes,” reflects the artist. “By recording the stories of these [womxn], I ensure that history hears their voices and recognizes them as having saved themselves.”
Arcmanoro Niles
Arcmanoro Niles (b. 1989 in Washington, D.C.) is a New York-based artist whose brightly hued paintings offer views of daily life, drawn from his own personal life and featuring characters as “seekers” who reflect subliminal urges and desires. Often incorporating reflective paints and glitter to enliven the surface of his canvases and those depicted, Niles’s intensely rendered compositions feature himself, friends, and family. “A lot of it is pretty intuitive, especially when it comes to the color, the construction of the composition, and how I want it to feel,” shares the artist. “But I think that, at the end of the day, I am a painter who is interested in color and stories that talk about who we are. Little moments that give us a glimpse into what life feels like.”
Celeste Rapone
Celeste Rapone (b. 1985 in Glen Ridge, NJ) is a Chicago-based abstract figurative painter known for illustrations of mostly women subjects—usually the artist herself—in outlandish, impossible, and even humorous compositions. Her style exceeds the traditional expectations and perspectival grounds of her canvas, drawing attention to the dynamic movement, colors, and details layered into her images meant to evoke a range of feelings from anxiety and restriction to vulnerable freedom and potential. “There’s something about the idea of the women contained, occupying these impossible positions anatomically, but also in terms of expectations, ambition, defeat and self-awareness,” shares the artist. “But even if there are sub-narratives occurring in [my] paintings, inherently they are all about trying. That notion of effort or expectation that goes into trying, which tries to counter failure. But failure is always one aspect of a larger cycle, in life and in painting.”
Ambera Wellmann
Ambera Wellmann (b. 1982 in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, Canada), a New York-based artist, explores themes of absurdity, familiarity, and uncertain intimacy in her paintings. Portraying human and, on occasion, animal bodies, commingled into numberless, genderless figures, Wellman’s paintings forgo a dominant, heteronormative Western figurative canon in favor of a distinctly feminist and queered perspective. Interested in visualizing the fluidity of gender and identity expression, Wellmann notes, “There’s this urge sometimes when you’re painting to answer things. I try to avoid that, actually. A painting should end with a question; it helps lead you to the next one.”
About the ICA
Since its founding in 1936, the ICA has shared the pleasures of reflection, inspiration, imagination, and provocation that contemporary art offers with its audiences. A museum at the intersection of contemporary art and civic life, the ICA has advanced a bold vision for amplifying the artist’s voice and expanding the museum’s role as educator, incubator, and convener. Its exhibitions, performances, and educational programs provide access to the breadth and diversity of contemporary art, artists, and the creative process, inviting audiences of all ages and backgrounds to participate in the excitement of new art and ideas. The ICA is located at 25 Harbor Shore Drive, Boston, MA, 02210. The Watershed is located at 256 Marginal Street, East Boston, MA 02128. For more information, call 617-478-3100 or visit our website at icaboston.org. Follow the ICA on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Credit
Support for A Place for Me: Figurative Painting Now is generously provided by Katie and Paul Buttenwieser, Ellen Poss, Stephen Baker and Gavin Kennedy, Patrick Planeta and Santiago Varela, and an anonymous donor.
Portal Pop-Up Card
Inspired by Deana Lawson’s interest in portals and future-building, create a portal to your dream future inside a pop-up card. Craft a magical portal with reflective sticky paper, and let your true self shine through. Open your portal each time you need a reminder of where you’re going and who you want to be.
Materials:
Instructions:
1. Open the greeting card and lay it flat on a work surface. Using drawing materials, decorate the inside of the card with personal reflections and inspiring messages or drawings. Fill up the entire inside of the card top to bottom, above and below the fold. This will be the background to your portal. Consider these questions for inspiration:
- Who are you?
- Who do you want to become?
- What do you love about yourself?
- Where are you now?
- Where do you want to be in the future?
- What are your hopes for the future?
- What are you worried or scared about?
- How do you care for those you love?
- If you could change anything about your world, what would it be?
2. On the pop-up template, fold carefully along the dashed fold lines. Check both sides of the template for fold lines. Check out the Folding Tips! for visual instructions.
3. Apply glue to the folded pop-up template only where it says “GLUE”. Place the pop-up template into the inner fold of the card. Press and hold the glued areas for 10 seconds. Allow to dry. Once dried, slowly open and close your card to ensure the pop-up is folded how you would like.
4. Cut reflective paper into shapes that will go inside your pop-up card. Once cut into pieces, remove the white backing to reveal the sticky side. Open your pop-up card and stick your pieces of reflective paper onto the pop-up template however you would like. Avoid sticking reflective paper over the fold lines so that your card will fold and pop-up easily. ;Lastly, remove the blue protective film to reveal the shiny side of the reflective paper.
5. Close your card. Decorate the front and back of the card. Consider a short message or image for the front of the card that will make you feel joyful. Include your name and date on the back of the card.
Download and print the pop-up template. Don’t have a printer? Make your own template with a paper bag! Measure and cut a 6” x 6” square piece of paper (could be from a brown paper bag like pictured). With a pencil, lightly label one side “BACK.”
Whether you printed or made your own template, here’s how to fold your pop-up template: Start by laying the square flat on your work surface with the “BACK” side facing up. Fold the square in half so the top edge meets the bottom edge. Fold your crease firmly.
Open the square. Flip it over so the “BACK” side is against the work surface. Fold diagonally so the top left corner meets the bottom right corner. Open the square and fold diagonally in the opposite direction, so the top right corner meets the bottom left corner. Fold your creases firmly.
Open the square. Bring the middle of each outside edge up and towards each other to create a folded triangle. This will create the pop-up effect in your card.
This activity was designed by Brooke Scibelli, Family & Art Lab Programs Coordinator.
Napoleon Jones-Henderson, TCB, 1970. Wool. 72 x 48 inches (182.9 x 121.9 cm). Courtesy the artist. © Napoleon Jones-Henderson
Napoleon Jones-Henderson: I Am As I Am – A Man opens at the ICA/Boston on February 17
First major Boston survey of the artist’s works celebrates his influential, 50-year artistic practice
(Boston, MA—January 25, 2022) On February 17, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) will open a solo museum presentation of the work of Napoleon Jones-Henderson (b. 1943, Chicago), the most comprehensive exhibition of the artist’s work in Boston to date. For more than 50 years, Jones-Henderson has created works that strive to highlight, celebrate, and empower the communities where he lives. The artist has been based since 1974 in Roxbury, Massachusetts, where he is an influential community member, educator, and mentor.
Organized by Jeffrey De Blois, the ICA’s Assistant Curator and Publications Manager, in close collaboration with the artist, Napoleon Jones-Henderson: I Am As I Am – A Man will be on view through July 24, 2022 and feature more than 20 works from the artist’s career, including a new work created for the exhibition. This shrine-like devotional sculpture from the artist’s series “Requiem for Our Ancestors” is dedicated to writer James Baldwin. As in other shrines by Jones-Henderson, it is inspired by vernacular architecture in the American South—specifically the modest one-room shacks he photographs in his travels throughout the South—and grounded in spiritual traditions of ancestor reverence.
Jones-Henderson is a longstanding founding member of African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists (AfriCOBRA), an artist collective that came together in Chicago in 1968. His work translates AfriCOBRA’s aesthetic principles—to create images inspired by the lived experience and cultures of people of the African diaspora in an accessible graphic style—into woven tapestries, mosaic tile works, shrine-like sculptures, varied works on paper, and wearable art made in collaboration with fellow AfriCOBRA artist Barbara Jones-Hogu. His kaleidoscopic works, often focused on themes of Pan-Africanism and racial justice, aim to be self-affirming and reflective, with an eye toward both a fraught past and a liberated future.
“The ICA’s presentation of Jones-Henderson’s work is an overdue opportunity for audiences to encounter influential works from the artist’s extensive career. AfriCOBRA is a critically important artist collective that helped shape the Black Arts Movement, and Jones-Henderson is one of the group’s most significant proponents. He has exhibited his artworks widely across the country and we are honored to present them here in Boston,” said Jill Medvedow, the ICA’s Ellen Matilda Poss Director.
Napoleon Jones-Henderson brings together a suite of major works from across the artist’s career—centered around his magisterial woven textiles—displaying the breadth of his practice and the singularity of his vision. In his work, the artist alludes to African and African American culture, integrating forms from African ritual sculpture and vernacular architecture from the American South, as well as reverential references to jazz musician Duke Ellington’s ‘Sacred Concerts,’ musicians Stevie Wonder and The Blind Boys of Alabama, and writers June Jordan and James Baldwin, among others. The exhibition includes a range of influential and rarely seen tapestries and enamel on copper works alongside drawings, prints, and collages on a variety of themes both personal and cultural, and a gallery dedicated to Jones-Henderson’s Requiem shrine works, encompassing altar-like sculptures dedicated to memorializing impactful events and cultural luminaries.
“Living and working in Boston since 1974, Jones-Henderson has had a longstanding influence on the city’s cultural landscape and beyond. The exhibition at the ICA is a great opportunity for audiences to explore and learn more about the work of this important artist, who has put his practice in service of themes of Black self-determination,” said De Blois.
The Artist’s Voice: Napoleon Jones-Henderson
Thursday, March 3, 7 PM
Jones-Henderson will be in conversation with De Blois. More information will be available soon on icaboston.org.
Artist Biography
Born in 1943 in Chicago, Jones-Henderson attended the Sorbonne, Paris, holds a B.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a M.F.A. from Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. As a member of AfriCOBRA, he was included in the collective’s first exhibition Ten in Search of a Nation at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1970, which was later presented at the Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists in Roxbury and the University Art Gallery at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. More recently, his work was included in AfriCOBRA: Messages to the People at Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami in 2018, a portion of which traveled to Venice, Italy, as AfriCOBRA: Nation Time, an official Collateral Event of the 2019 Venice Biennale. Jones-Henderson has been awarded several public art commissions, including at the Bruce C. Bolling Municipal Building in Roxbury and Roxbury Community College. He is Executive Director of the Research Institute of African and African Diaspora Arts in Roxbury, Massachusetts, where he lives and works.
About the ICA
Since its founding in 1936, the ICA has shared the pleasures of reflection, inspiration, imagination, and provocation that contemporary art offers with its audiences. A museum at the intersection of contemporary art and civic life, the ICA has advanced a bold vision for amplifying the artist’s voice and expanding the museum’s role as educator, incubator, and convener. Its exhibitions, performances, and educational programs provide access to the breadth and diversity of contemporary art, artists, and the creative process, inviting audiences of all ages and backgrounds to participate in the excitement of new art and ideas. The ICA is located at 25 Harbor Shore Drive, Boston, MA, 02210. The Watershed is located at 256 Marginal Street, East Boston, MA 02128. For more information, call 617-478-3100 or visit our website at icaboston.org. Follow the ICA on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.