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Young Artist Finds Inspiration in Work of Artist D. Lammie-Hanson

https://www.facebook.com/100001086219479/videos/pcb.4137426202970213/4137425679636932

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South Venice Beach Articles - The "End Game" - Why we are doing the work.

An active member of South Venice, Fla. asked me this weekend, "What is your endgame?" for writing the Promise of a Forever Beach series and producing a forthcoming documentary.

The series itself is the endgame. The statement from my webpage intro sums up why I've written the stories and continue the work. My son is involved simply because that's how things work in our family.

"I am writing for my community, first, for you, whether or not you live here, and for the sole purpose of giving information. What is made of what is read here will vary.  That is a reasonable diversity of reactions. If these stories inform, educate, or add something new to the reader's understanding, then my work has succeeded."

More important to me is the real answer to "why" I took on this unsponsored, independent, time-consuming reporting about the South Venice beach and ferry properties. I heard the best answer this weekend from a relative while being honored by Columbia University. He said, roughly, "With privilege comes responsibility. We enjoyed a lot of privilege, which means we owe a lot to our communities. So, we just do the work that needs to be done."

Read the South Venice Beach Articles here:  South Venice Beach articles

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THE PROMISE OF A FOREVER BEACH, Part 3 - Barely A Beach or Possession By KyleeliseTHT

This is the final story of the series. Documentary coming August 2021 (hopefully). Follow the link to the story: Barely A Beach or Possession

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THE PROMISE OF A FOREVER BEACH, Part 2 - Who Are the Members? By KyleeliseTHT

Click here for the story:  Who Are the Members? appears after Part 1.

Thank you for reading. ~KyleeliseTHT

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THE PROMISE OF THE FOREVER BEACH Part I, “The Fencing How A Community Park Got Gated While its Beach Erodes into the Sea” by KyleeliseTHT

Click the title to be taken to Part 1 in the series  “The Fencing How A Community Park Got Gated While its Beach Erodes into the Sea”

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And, when I’m not writing, I’m taking care of art. ~ KyleeliseTHT

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AI is but ain’t.

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I keep envisioning myself as having finished the novel (left) and artist’s catalogue, survey or whatever - I’m not sure where it’s going. Still, I love what I do. Yup! ~KyleeliseTHT

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New Orleans Artist Ruth Owens’ Portrait of Rarely Sighted Side of Arts Advocacy. ~KyleeliseTHT

The Coronavirus has ravaged the already tenuous circumstances of millions – probably hundreds of millions when thinking globally.

Artists, devastated, too, by the weight of economic strain yet, conversely, buoyed by urgency welled-up from the onslaught of social injustice or pure and desperate creative animus, continue to create without the frail security of financial reward.

Concurrently, institutions and a near-anonymous league of arts workers have retooled to meet the challenges of quarantines and closures and declines in revenue supporting art and those who make it.

Toccarra A. H. Thomas is the director of the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans – an esteemed artists’ residency in the heart of Mardi Gras central, a close-quartered tourist hub – and a prime pandemic incubator. Ms. Thomas is also my daughter.

The boundaries are very clear when it comes to my daughter’s professional responsibilities. So, I don’t know the details of the Center’s necessary pivot. Nevertheless, her personal sacrifices and impossibly long days and hurried phone calls, and delayed visits with family are telling. 

Ms. Thomas and her team have worked hard. She has worked exhaustingly in her leadership role.

After a several-month-long closure, the Center reopened late fall and is near the end of a refashioned residency that temporarily focused on the needs of local artists from the New Orleans area. 

Ruth Owens, MD, MFA, a widely shown artist, who’d previously had a 25-year-long career as a plastic surgeon, recently completed a turn in residence. She is currently represented by the Jonathan Ferrara Gallery.

Near the end of her residency, Owens, a “figurative painter, and video artist,” snapped a photograph of Toccarra and rendered a watercolor study.

The initial rendition, however, evolved into the regal portrait shown at the top of the page. The final result will be exhibited as part of the artist’s upcoming show, Figurative and Narrative Paintings, April 1 - May 29, 2021.

The subject of the painting has a reputation for choosing to be an unassuming champion of artists and arts workers. Ms. Owens’ illustrious vision might appear to contradict. As a spectator, however, and without any confirmation from the artist, the painting is reminiscent of a much-regarded historical figure known for her humility and commitment to those she served - a fitting persona for the dedicated arts administrator.

Interestingly, in another masterful work of art, Toccarra’s feet were cast and reframed as those of Hermes, conceived by the artist Onyedika Chuke and placed on view at the Socrates Sculpture Park in New York City.

Artworks © Ruth Owens and Onyedika Chuke, respectively

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Artist/Activist John Sims Perpetually Recasts Valentines and Goes ‘Beyond the Divide’ in 2021. ~KyleeliseTHT

What happened on February 14, 2021, in this starkly divided nation when an artist brought to the dinner table a group of Republicans and Democrats amid a global pandemic? Forget politics. It was poetry night.

With verses in hand – one penned by an assumed unknown author, another by a Pakistani poet, an Irish bard buoyed by the ‘Bard of Avon’, a poem lamenting pandemic angst and political divide within a single household—there were no battle lines, just words steeped in pain, advocating coexistence, respect, and, as spoken by more than one presenter, appeals for civility.

Conservatives and Liberals have taken a stand

Families and couples have drawn lines in the sand

Never in history has politics mattered

To the point that our relationships

Have become torn and tattered. ~Hank Goldsby (2021)

So, how many times can one square the complex and multidimensional root of love and unleash it, even love between political opposites and ordinary citizens? As calculated by the artist John Sims, a Detroit-to-Sarasota, Fla. transplant—the infinite equation is primed to be reevaluated nearly every year.

Sims, who first hosted ‘The SquareRoot of Love’ on Valentine's 2010, organized his seventh, which commenced this year on February 12, 2021, and concluded on the event’s signature date – Valentine’s Day.

After the first two days of ‘SquareRoot’ festivities showcasing artisans of song, spoken word, and visual art – an overture, if you will, to ‘V-day,’ Sims gathered the bipartisan group of local elected officials, political supporters, and activists to shepherd an act of “civility and love, “ he said.

Among those in attendance were Hagen Brody, Marsha and Hank Goldsby, Scott Hopes, and Dee McFarland. Politics was not on the menu. Instead, guests had been asked to introduce an assigned course during the dinner by reading a favorite love poem.

The wordfest and five-course meal, complemented by champagne, wines, and what Sims deemed the quintessential American dessert—Apple Pie à la Mode was held at The Rosemary, a swanky Sarasota eatery, and set to music performed by the young but seasoned musicians of the Modern Jazz Ensemble. A single romantic verse about love and patience during a couple’s “building years” reminded the audience that it was, indeed, lover’s day, and was offered by the poet Melanie Lavender.

Known for work that challenges historical iconography held in place by sentiment, yet deeply rooted in racial oppression, and his across-interest collaborations undergone to promote mutual understanding, Sims, who is also a reputable figure among math artists, has organized ‘SquareRoot’ as part of his creative practice that is a wholly collaborative experience in which divergent voices bring their interpretation of how to solve or, at least, engage the equation of love. The contributions range from erudite to experiential.

Each of Sims’ ‘SquareRoot of Love’ rallies creatives of all disciplines, as well as socio-political operatives, journalists, and community thinkers to square the root of love in its many iterations within the context of the pressing questions of the day. In its debut year, Sims with performance artist Karen Finley delved into the notion of love as a trope, featuring responses in verse by poets JoAnne Growney and Regie Cabico. The annual event has since grown – twice occurring in the States and Paris, concurrently – to include a larger group of contributors, all vying to “square” love in all its most uncomfortable places.

In 2019, Sims asked artists to triangulate ‘love’ with the anniversary of seventeen and seventeen murdered and injured, respectively, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. As this writer was a contributing poet, I can share that no solution could be extrapolated from the reality of this tragedy.

In 2020, Florida’s Poet Laureate, Peter Meinke, and journalist/civil Rights activist Charlayne Hunter-Gault presented poems that spoke more traditionally to love as unpredictable yet sustaining. However, as Sims’ work is always tied to a complex unfurling of love within the difficulties of realities, this year’s theme comes in an era of what has been deemed an existential political, racial, and social reckoning anchored in the quagmires of 2020. In response: Sim’s organized ‘Beyond the Divide,’ the seventh and political edition of ‘The SquareRoot of Love’.

The 2021 affair came eleven months after the country became restrained by Coronavirus and was viscerally divided over race and politics. “Our differences in religion were much easier than our differences in politics,” said long-time resident and retired banker Hank Goldsby, a Conservative, who lamented the strain of it all on his thirty-year marriage to his wife Marsha, a healthcare provider and registered Democrat. The Goldsbys shared a “2020 retrospect” penned by Hank of the perils of being quasi-quarantined and under significant external pressure. Of it all, Hank concluded, “that there’s a lot more to life than politics.”

Dr. Scott Hopes read ‘Before You Came,’ a four stanza tome about unexpected change and a slow renewal written by Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz. Divergent political views, as Dr. Hopes explained, during his presentation, ushered a break from his beloved son of whom he is gushingly proud. “We all have to come back together,” he said. “Politics is not worth it.”

The poet is unknown to her, but the writer’s poem has hung in Delores McFarland’s home since the mid-eighties and has been a source of solace, especially in times of personal loss of family, she said. McFarland has survived her only child. 

A retired HR professional and the president of the Sarasota Black Democratic Caucus, McFarland’s mission, she said, “... is to engage and empower black voters in Sarasota.” And, she is deeply concerned about the lives of black men. “I believe that black men are an endangered species, and we should respect them no matter what their situation,” she said. And she has expectations of Black men, too. “Their responsibility is to go through a growth and self-actualization process to grow into the mature person that God intended them to be,” she said. 

When McFarland read from the lower stanza of her found poem, “And you learn that you really can endure/you really are strong/ you really do have worth/ and you learn/ and you learn/ with every goodbye, you learn...” she was, herself, empowered, once more, through the words of the writer whose name she’d never known – the Jamaican poet Lisa Goycochea.

“Civility is extremely important,” said thirty-eight-year-old Hagen Brody before he delivered the poem ‘Speak to Me with Civility’, written by the Ireland-born poet Francis Duggan. 

In this beautiful coastal city of social, political, and economic unevenness, where the difficulties of race and policing are as evident though not as fatal as in many cities across the country, and strife and accusations in all directions are uncomfortably common, Hagen plays a prominent role. He is the Mayor of Sarasota, Fla.

“We’re a resilient country,” Hagen said. “Our democracy is extremely strong.” And most of the nation’s citizens share similar values and dreams, he believes. Still, there’s trouble in America. There’s trouble even in his beautiful city.

Hagen said that a return to civility will open pathways for understanding and necessary change through cooperation. A return to civility is an unavoidable first step, he explained.

So committed to the possibility of civil discourse for change, Hagen, after he reads Duggan’s poem, added an arc of reconciliation with a verse from the consummate bard himself, William Shakespeare: “And do as adversaries do in law, Strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends.” (Taming of the Shrew)

So, how does one solve the equation of division? “Strive mightily” and, perhaps, try as one might solve the activist-artist John Sims’ SquareRoot of Love.

(February 2021)

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Pat and Lee are Getting Married

Toccarra Alexandria Holmes Thomas proudly announces the forthcoming nuptials between her grandmother, Ms. Sarah Lee Treadwell Holmes & Reverend Robert Scott Lee Patterson July 5, 2020, at 4PM in Ellenton, Florida. Reverend Charles Newsome is to officiate.

Ms. Treadwell Holmes, 80, retired, has enjoyed a long professional career as a registered nurse, vice president and healthcare administrator, and Co-founder and Executive Director of Community Children & Family Services (CCFS) of New Haven, Ct., an organization committed to bringing together adoptees of color with families of color. CCFS also provided mental health and family support services. She received her early nursing training from St. Vincent’s Medical Center in Bridgeport, Connecticut, earning the second-highest LPN Nursing Board exam score in the state, then went on to earn her RN after graduating from Essex County College in Newark, New Jersey and received a bachelor's degree from Southern Connecticut University in New Haven, Ct. and a master’s degree in social work from Fordham University in New York City. Ms. Treadwell Holmes is a dutiful servant in her church, and she still retains her professional licensures – just in case. She is the daughter of the late Gladys Treadwell Holmes Stephens and the late Robert Holmes.

Reverend Patterson, 82, retired, is the Local Elder of Greater Faith AME Church in Deltona, Florida. He was employed at Ford Motor Company for thirty-two and a half years, retiring as a general supervisor. He served in the U.S. Marine Corps and studied business and accounting at Essex County College in Newark, New Jersey. Notably, Reverend Patterson is the father of the late internationally renowned Artist TMNK aka NOBODY. He is the son of the late Isabel Thompson Patterson and the late Robert Scott Lee Patterson.

In-person attendance will be limited due to COVID-19.

The couple plans to stream their wedding.

Details are forthcoming.

“Don’t ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn’t fall in love, I rose in it.”  ~ Toni Morrison

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Follow the link. Read “Tomato” by KyleeliseTHT, free on Smashwords

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1021613

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Open letter to artists ~ KyleeliseTHT

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TOMATO: Turmoil Often Makes Arrogance Take Over A Short Coronavirus Tale by KyleeliseTHT

​Her name says it all. But KaNoah's houseguest just doesn't get it, even during the dim days of COVID-19.

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Before We Go Inside, or Coronavirus Retreat ~ KyleeliseTHT

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Keeping it moving no matter the matter!

Good day; bad day. I make sure I get something positive and productive done every single day. Because there's one thing certain...change is always gonna come. ~KyleeliseTHT