CITY OF INK ANNIVERSARY

Man, Friday was a long yet eventful day. I didn't sleep much if at all from Wednesday to Friday trying to prepare for the City Of Ink's 2 Year Anniversary Art Exhibit, "Enough Iz Enough!: Artists United Against Police Brutality".






The day was very gloomy. It rained all day, literally! We were concerned about the turnout, but Miya said the show must go on! And boy did it! The house was packed to capacity! I almost missed the damn event by oversleeping on my 20 minute power nap that turned into almost an hour! I was so drained and had to take a quick rest before I got dressed. I ended up making it there close to 9ish and there was still a lotta love gathering.



I was excited to see some high school friends of mine who came to support the cause. Thanks to the twins Jamie and Jeff for coming out! And I hadn't seen my homegirl Terrilyn in YEARS!! We have a memorable moment in high school where we started a petition to get a Black author for our book of the month. See, it was February, Black History Month, and our goofy English teacher overlooked that fact by giving us ANOTHER European writer to study. We didn't see that as being adequate, since we only get one damn month out the year. He didn't budge, so we started a petition and ended up reading SULA by Toni Morrison! ;) We were born to Fight The Power!


After seeing the final display and presentation, I will say that I was a lot more accepting to the submissions. But when I walked in Thursday night to do the hanging, I was somewhat disappointed by them, as were my comrades. We didn't feel that the artists really "brought the pain". Not to say we were looking for angry, Fuck The Police pieces, but we were looking for people to convey that there has been a rash of injustices experienced from the police in the Black community this year, 2 or 3 of which have led to MURDER. So I/we were looking for work that was at least somewhat as aggressive as the tactics we're subjected to. Some people did pieces that were too abstract. Like, when you look at them, you almost couldn't tell if the piece was in the right show. But at the end of the day, it all panned out, as pieces from Torry Holmes, Just10, Corey Davis, Melvin, Craig "Flux" Singleton, Kermin Middleton as well as myself came in.

You can check out a few pics I took here. Oddly enough, I don't have pics of the actual pieces since by the time I got there it was a full house. But I'll update later today with pics of the display.

Thanks to all of you who came out to support our 2 years!! Please continue to do so as we have many great things on the horizon!

"You know who it is, you know what it is...peace out."