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Life of Agony is one of the most influential bands with one of the most distinctive sounds of the 90's era. A whole decade has gone by since their last album but now, LIFE OF AGONY are finally back!
Brooklyn's hard rock legends LIFE OF AGONY have signed a worldwide record deal with Napalm Records. LIFE OF AGONY returned to the stage and performed on multiple festival dates in Europe over the summer of 2014. The famed River Runs Red line-up, of vocalist Mina Caputo, guitarist Joey Z, bassist Alan Robert and drummer Sal Abruscato were excited to take the stage together once again after a three-year hiatus. And now the band has come back to stay, as they are about to continue touring the world and release their 5th studio album, the first in over a decade, since 2005's Broken Valley.
Now the band unveiled the first details as well as the cover artwork for their upcoming album, titled A Place Where There's No More Pain, set to be released on Napalm Records in 2016!
Bassist Alan Robert comments:
"I think our fans know that our music comes from a very real place of suffering, from all of us in the band. Many of our fans have told us over the years that sharing our personal struggles has been cathartic for them in healing the pain in their own lives. That uplifting energy we share at the shows, gives us hope that there's light at the end of the tunnel. And for us and hopefully our fans, that short time when we're all together is a place where there's no more pain."
"Life Of Agony is without a doubt one of the most exciting and energetic Rock bands of our times. It is an honour to work with such talent, we are excited to announce their signing to Napalm Records and release the band's first album after over a decade." states Thomas Caser, CEO of Napalm Records, about the recent signing with legendary LIFE OF AGONY.
Influential men in the community took time out of their day to read to the students of Hodge Elementary.
Influential men in the community took time out of their day to read to the students of Hodge Elementary.
Influential men in the community took time out of their day to read to the students of Hodge Elementary.
Influential men in the community took time out of their day to read to the students of Hodge Elementary.
Influential men in the community took time out of their day to read to the students of Hodge Elementary.
Influential men in the community took time out of their day to read to the students of Hodge Elementary.
BABYLON (UNESCO World Heritage Site):
Babylon was the ancient city where some of the most influential empires of the ancient world ruled. It was the capital of the Babylonian Empire and it was considered to be a center of commerce, art, and learning and is estimated to have been the largest early city in the world, perhaps the first to reach a population above 200,000
We visited the Ishtar Gate (see my previous post), procession street, Babylonian temples, the lion of Babylon, the maze, southern & northern palaces, Palace of Nebuchadnezzar II (the place where Alexander The Great passed away), the place were the Hanging Gardens were believed to be, the ruins of the Etemenanki ziggurat, Museum, Amphitheater (was closed) and we walked to the hill of the governmental palace for a good view.
Babylon, Iraq Nov 2021 #itravelanddance
PUEBLA, MEXICO - NOVEMBER 05: One of the most influential scientists of our era, Kip Thorne gives a press conference after his participation in the 18th International Festival of Brilliant Minds, on Thursday, November 5, 2015, in Puebla, Mexico. Kip Thorne is a renowned theoretical physicist, known for his many contributions in the field of gravitational physics and astrophysics. He and his students invented the technology to control the quantum behavior of human-sized objects and pioneered the modern theory of wormholes and time travel. To accompany the film Christopher Nolan wrote The Science of Interstellar, which explains the real science of the film. (Photo by Hugo Ortuño)
“…Roland Barthes’ influential conception of the nature of the photograph is that it is the result of an event in the world, evidence of the passing of a moment of time that once was and is no more, which left a kind of trace of the event on the photograph. It is this trace, which has been considered to give photographs their relationship to the real…”
Liz Wells, “Surveyors and Surveyed”. Photography: A Critical Introduction
Influential men in the community took time out of their day to read to the students of Hodge Elementary.
BABYLON (UNESCO World Heritage Site):
Babylon was the ancient city where some of the most influential empires of the ancient world ruled. It was the capital of the Babylonian Empire and it was considered to be a center of commerce, art, and learning and is estimated to have been the largest early city in the world, perhaps the first to reach a population above 200,000
We visited the Ishtar Gate (see my previous post), procession street, Babylonian temples, the lion of Babylon, the maze, southern & northern palaces, Palace of Nebuchadnezzar II (the place where Alexander The Great passed away), the place were the Hanging Gardens were believed to be, the ruins of the Etemenanki ziggurat, Museum, Amphitheater (was closed) and we walked to the hill of the governmental palace for a good view.
Babylon, Iraq Nov 2021 #itravelanddance
An influential small club where many bands including the "Go-Go's", "The Blasters" and "The Knack" played before they hit the big time.
Horace Greeley Seated Statue - 02/03/1811 to 11/29/1872 - American editor of a leading newspaper and founder of the Republican party - reformer politician - His New York Tribune newspaper was the most influential from 1840 to 1870 - Besides having a creepy neck beard Greeley used it to promote the Whig and Republican parties - Greeley Square Park in Manhattan near Macys Herald Square Midtown NYC 2018 New York City 09/03/2018
BABYLON (UNESCO World Heritage Site):
Babylon was the ancient city where some of the most influential empires of the ancient world ruled. It was the capital of the Babylonian Empire and it was considered to be a center of commerce, art, and learning and is estimated to have been the largest early city in the world, perhaps the first to reach a population above 200,000
We visited the Ishtar Gate (see my previous post), procession street, Babylonian temples, the lion of Babylon, the maze, southern & northern palaces, Palace of Nebuchadnezzar II (the place where Alexander The Great passed away), the place were the Hanging Gardens were believed to be, the ruins of the Etemenanki ziggurat, Museum, Amphitheater (was closed) and we walked to the hill of the governmental palace for a good view.
Babylon, Iraq Nov 2021 #itravelanddance
An evening of celebration in honor of the 25 Most Influential Asian Americans in Georgia on Sept 17, 2015 at Sonesta Gwinnett Place. Keynote speaker was Mr Douglas Hooker, Executive Director, Atlanta Regional Commission.
An evening of celebration in honor of the 25 Most Influential Asian Americans in Georgia on Sept 17, 2015 at Sonesta Gwinnett Place. Keynote speaker was Mr Douglas Hooker, Executive Director, Atlanta Regional Commission.
An evening of celebration in honor of the 25 Most Influential Asian Americans in Georgia on Sept 17, 2015 at Sonesta Gwinnett Place. Keynote speaker was Mr Douglas Hooker, Executive Director, Atlanta Regional Commission.
Resurrection Story with Patrons - 2017
Kara Walker - born 1969
In Resurrection Story with Patrons, Kara Walker reimagines a genre of Medieval and Renaissance altarpieces in which a central panel is flanked on either side by portraits of the work’s commissioners, who were often powerful and influential patrons of the arts. Unlike their historical predecessors, the couple in Walker’s three-part composition appear to be African American and are visually similar to the black residents of the antebellum South that populate the artist’s large-scale installations, films, and other works on paper. Here, the central image is also unusual: as opposed to the traditional gathering of saints or a biblical scene, it depicts the raising of a colossal statue of a naked black woman by the sea. The triptych’s title, Resurrection Story with Patrons, further confounds the narrative: Is the figure here one that has fallen and is being resurrected in front of our eyes, or is it being newly erected, only to require resurrection in the future? Ultimately, the many ambiguities and contradictions inherent in this work convey the complex lived reality and cultural representation of African Americans today, “alternating between captor and redeemer,” as Walker has said in her own words.
Resurrection Story with Patrons expands on Kara Walker’s celebrated repertoire of cut-paper silhouettes of the antebellum South with a narrative triptych, a pictorial format common to the Christian altarpiece tradition. Though best known for her uncompromising depictions of the horrors of slavery in the United States, here Walker presents a message of hope and redemption, albeit within an ambiguous and contradictory narrative that poses as many questions as it answers. The central panel depicts a seaside scene in which several small, silhouetted figures use ropes to raise an excavated colossal statue of a naked Black woman. In the side panels, a male and a female figure wearing 18th-century attire appear in reverse silhouette, signifying patrons who would typically appear in a traditional altarpiece commission. Walker unifies the scenes with slanting timbers that traverse the triptych and may reference the carried cross, the wrecked frames of a ship, and architectural beams. With references to Christian iconography and martyrdom, Walker encourages reflection on the relevance of memorials and monuments, particularly those honoring the Confederacy, and how such objects shape experience and contribute to the persistence of racism in the United States.
collections.artsmia.org/art/128393/resurrection-story-wit...
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With Passion and Purpose
Gifts from the Collection of Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson
June 7 - October 5, 2025
Locations East Building, Mezzanine — Gallery 214
See standout works by Black artists from the past century, newly gifted to the Nation.
For over four decades, Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson have championed the work of Black artists. They have supported exhibitions and scholarship as they built a remarkable collection that spans 100 years of Black creativity in America.
This exhibition celebrates the recent and promised gifts of 175 works from the Thompsons to the National Gallery—the largest group of objects by Black artists to enter our collection at one time. Explore more than 60 paintings, sculpture, drawings, and prints organized in sections around themes of music and abstraction, figuration and portraiture, civil rights and social politics, as well as landscape and transcultural connections and influences.
Works range from a captivating portrait by Beauford Delaney and lyrical abstractions by Mildred Thompson to a towering allegorical woodcut by Alison Saar and an intricate sculpture of found objects by vanessa german. Enjoy works by renowned artists—Jacob Lawrence, Archibald Motley, and Kara Walker—and discover artists you may not yet know, such as Camille Billops, Vivian Browne, Moe Brooker, and Alonzo Davis.
www.nga.gov/exhibitions/passion-and-purpose
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"In April of this year, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC announced that it received a substantial gift of more than one hundred seventy artworks by Black American artists from art collectors Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson. “The breadth of artistic achievement across media and styles in this transformative gift enriches the story of American art that we can share with our visitors,” Kaywin Feldman, director of the National Gallery of Art, stated in the press release. The National Gallery of Art collection includes one hundred sixty thousand artworks that span the history of Western art from the Middle Ages to the contemporary moment, but although the collection covers a huge period of time, its holdings are not as diverse as the people who live and work in the Western world. The Thompsons’ gift is the largest gift of Black art the museum has ever received, and because Western art is so heavily Eurocentric, the Thompsons’ gift is, indeed, “transformative”—and vital.
The exhibition With Passion and Purpose: Gifts from the Collection of Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson, on view at the museum until October 5, features sixty paintings and sculptures from the collection. The donation spans one hundred years and features works by well-known artists, including Jacob Lawrence and Kara Walker, and more obscure artists like Moe Booker and Alonzo Davis. The collection is diverse in style, subject matter, and genre, featuring representational portraits to abstract paintings.
The four galleries that make up With Passion and Purpose are curated by Kanitra Fletcher, associate curator of African American and Afro-Diasporic Art; Shelley Langdale, curator and head of the department of modern prints and drawings; Claudia Watts, research assistant; and Emily Wehby, curatorial assistant, all of the National Gallery of Art. Vibrant abstract works greet the viewer upon arrival, setting up for a dynamic exhibition of varied artistic styles and subjects. While many artworks express narratives about Black America, not all of them take on such an arduous task; others celebrate beauty and joy. Artworks like Mento, 1968 by Mavis Pusey and Untitled, 1971 by Daniel LaRue Johnson exude the transformative nature of the post-civil rights moment they were created in. Other artworks like Sweeping Beauty, 1997 by Alison Saar and New York Rail, 1993 by Radcliffe Bailey illustrate Black life by expressing narratives that speak to harsh historical realities.
Sweeping Beauty, a woodcut on Okawara Natural Paper, depicts the figure of a pregnant nude woman positioned upside down, rendered in yellow pigment against a red and black background. The play on the classic children’s story Sleeping Beauty is evident, but Saar subverts the stereotypical female figure who is required to be chaste and dainty. The bold colors defy misogynist desires for women to be demure. For Black women, being modest was not always a choice, as from the time African women stepped onto American soil in the 1600s, they were relegated to chattel, and poked, prodded, and examined as such. Saar’s artwork of the nude figure might be also reckoning with the reality that Black women for so long were domestics made to clean and sweep. In these roles, Black women were not respected for their full humanity, and they were often forced to succumb to unwanted advances from their enslavers and bosses. Saar’s artwork is layered: her depiction of a fertility goddess highlights the notion that Black women birthed a workforce, and the figure’s hair sweeping the floor alludes to domestic servitude.
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With Passion and Purpose: Black Collectors Complicate Western Art Culture
on artessay
Shantay Robinson
Alison Saar
Sweeping Beauty,1997
3-color woodcut on Okawara Natural Paper
overall: 193.04 × 83.82 cm (76 × 33 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Promised Gift of Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson
© Alison Saar. Courtesy of L.A. Louver, Venice, CA
In April of this year, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC announced that it received a substantial gift of more than one hundred seventy artworks by Black American artists from art collectors Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson. “The breadth of artistic achievement across media and styles in this transformative gift enriches the story of American art that we can share with our visitors,” Kaywin Feldman, director of the National Gallery of Art, stated in the press release. The National Gallery of Art collection includes one hundred sixty thousand artworks that span the history of Western art from the Middle Ages to the contemporary moment, but although the collection covers a huge period of time, its holdings are not as diverse as the people who live and work in the Western world. The Thompsons’ gift is the largest gift of Black art the museum has ever received, and because Western art is so heavily Eurocentric, the Thompsons’ gift is, indeed, “transformative”—and vital.
The exhibition With Passion and Purpose: Gifts from the Collection of Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson, on view at the museum until October 5, features sixty paintings and sculptures from the collection. The donation spans one hundred years and features works by well-known artists, including Jacob Lawrence and Kara Walker, and more obscure artists like Moe Booker and Alonzo Davis. The collection is diverse in style, subject matter, and genre, featuring representational portraits to abstract paintings.
The four galleries that make up With Passion and Purpose are curated by Kanitra Fletcher, associate curator of African American and Afro-Diasporic Art; Shelley Langdale, curator and head of the department of modern prints and drawings; Claudia Watts, research assistant; and Emily Wehby, curatorial assistant, all of the National Gallery of Art. Vibrant abstract works greet the viewer upon arrival, setting up for a dynamic exhibition of varied artistic styles and subjects. While many artworks express narratives about Black America, not all of them take on such an arduous task; others celebrate beauty and joy. Artworks like Mento, 1968 by Mavis Pusey and Untitled, 1971 by Daniel LaRue Johnson exude the transformative nature of the post-civil rights moment they were created in. Other artworks like Sweeping Beauty, 1997 by Alison Saar and New York Rail, 1993 by Radcliffe Bailey illustrate Black life by expressing narratives that speak to harsh historical realities.
Sweeping Beauty, a woodcut on Okawara Natural Paper, depicts the figure of a pregnant nude woman positioned upside down, rendered in yellow pigment against a red and black background. The play on the classic children’s story Sleeping Beauty is evident, but Saar subverts the stereotypical female figure who is required to be chaste and dainty. The bold colors defy misogynist desires for women to be demure. For Black women, being modest was not always a choice, as from the time African women stepped onto American soil in the 1600s, they were relegated to chattel, and poked, prodded, and examined as such. Saar’s artwork of the nude figure might be also reckoning with the reality that Black women for so long were domestics made to clean and sweep. In these roles, Black women were not respected for their full humanity, and they were often forced to succumb to unwanted advances from their enslavers and bosses. Saar’s artwork is layered: her depiction of a fertility goddess highlights the notion that Black women birthed a workforce, and the figure’s hair sweeping the floor alludes to domestic servitude.
Radcliffe Bailey
NY Rail (Transportation), 1993
cut-and-pasted offset printed paper and painted paper, acrylic paint, and blue crayon on wove paper
sheet: 45.8 x 58.9 cm (18 1/16 x 23 3/16 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Gift of Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson
2023.145.14
Radcliffe Bailey, who passed away in 2023 and is known for telling Black American narratives through his artwork, is represented here by the six separate paintings that make up his NY Rail. Like Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series, this artwork depicts the migration of Black people from the south and the Caribbean to parts of the United States. For NY Rail (Transportation), Bailey uses an archival photograph of Black people boarding a train, overlayed with a grid of colorful acrylic paint and a depiction of tree limbs with leaves. In NY Rail (Boats Arriving), he paints three and a half row boats, with the word “Mississippi,” “Jamaica,” and “Cuba” written on the sides of them, telling where and how Black people migrated. The background is in coordination with the other paintings in the series, as they incorporate the orange, blue, yellow, and green painted horizontal stripes depicting water and the landscape. In other artworks, NY Rail (Bird of Death) and NY Rail (Death of Infant), the artist illustrates the unfortunate trials faced during the migration. Though optimism drove the migrants, they still faced challenges that led to death in Northern cities, from mob violence to unhealthy environments in ghettos.
Without the stewardship of Black art collectors from the beginning of the early twentieth century when Black art burgeoned due to the New Negro Movement, commonly known as the Harlem Renaissance, the preservation of Black art would not have happened, and the art would be lost. During the early twentieth century, instead of exhibiting in downtown New York museums and galleries, Black artists exhibited their work in libraries, churches, and private homes. In 1921, the 135th Street Branch of the New York Public Library in Harlem held its first exhibition by African American artists. The library became a focal point for the Harlem Renaissance. Today, the library is known as the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, after Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, who was fundamental to the movement and in 1926 contributed his collection of more than four thousand books to the library for $10,000 furnished by the Carnegie Corporation. Black American artists were excluded from the art establishment largely until the mid to late twentieth century when postmodern conceptual art started to become popular. Because of this exclusion, museum collections around the country lack art that represents historical Black narratives. But today, museums are beginning to acquire art that fills the historical gaps in their collections through the generosity of collectors like the Thompsons, University of Georgia emeritus trustees, who have been collecting art since 1980. In 2011, they donated one hundred artworks to the Georgia Museum of Art, and in 2008, they gifted thirty nine artworks to the David C. Driskell Center at the University of Maryland, College Park. Collectors Walter O. and Linda Evans, who hold one of the largest collections of Black art, gifted the Telfair Museums thirty artworks; Seteria and Najee Dorsey, founders of Black Art in America, gifted the Columbus Museum fifteen artworks; and Constance E. Clayton, an educator and civic leader who collected Black art over fifty years, gifted the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art more than seventy artworks.
Without Black art collectors, so much of the artwork by Black artists would be forgotten. With the loss of the physical art, the impalpable sensibilities of Black life throughout varied stages of history would not be preserved. Black collectors have cared for their collections and also contributed to the dissemination of the art and ideas through gifts to institutions that benefit from the inclusion of Black history. These Black collectors who steward Black art are making judgments on what should be preserved in a field that is dominated by western culture’s Eurocentric gaze. And though Black collectors have gifted historically Black institutions, including Clark Atlanta University, Hampton Unviersity, and Howard University, with artworks throughout African American art’s history, it is notable that the Thompsons are Black collectors making a profound contribution to one of the most highly regarded collections in the United States—the National Gallery of Art.
Shantay Robinson, educator and art writer, lives in Northern Virginia. Her work has appeared regularly in ARTnews, Smithsonian Magazine, Black Art in America, and other notable publications where she primarily writes about Black Art. She holds a PhD in Writing and Rhetoric from George Mason University."
hopkinsreview.com/features/with-passion-and-purpose-shant...
First Lady of Maryland Yumi Hogan by Anthony DePanise at The Grand Lodge, 304 International Circle, Cockeysville, Maryland 21030
An annual celebration honoring 25 Most Influential Asian Americans in Georgia and Asian American Spirit at Sonesta Gwinnett Place on July 12, 2016.
An annual celebration honoring 25 Most Influential Asian Americans in Georgia and Asian American Spirit at Sonesta Gwinnett Place on July 12, 2016.
An annual celebration honoring 25 Most Influential Asian Americans in Georgia and Asian American Spirit at Sonesta Gwinnett Place on July 12, 2016.
Cellphone: Strangely influential for me, is this tiled bathroom at a local restaurant that I have been visiting since I was a small child. This perspective, has made me reflect on why I have always liked this colorful Spanish influenced decor. I love this particular brilliant blue in any kind of glazed tile or pottery.