Plume House of Prayer Series II
Plume House of Prayer Series II
Published Artists: Margrethe Aanestad, Adama Delphine Fawundu, Beau McCall, Adrienne Wheeler
Editor: Nick Kline and Anthony Alvarez
Designer: Chantal Fischzang
Printing and Binding by: Anthony Alvarez
Publisher: Shine Portrait Studio Press
City: Newark, NJ
Year: 2023
Pages: 236 p.
Dimensions: 10 in x 10 in x 1 in
Cover: Paperback
Binding: Perfect
Process: Risograph, Pigment Ink
Color & Black and White
Edition Size: 100
Margrethe Aanestad's TIDE: STORY OF LOGO weaves together Aanestad’s photographs in the SHINE studio, depicting found scraps of marble that embrace intuition, the impromptu, and accident, relating to her known Norwegian landscapes. Aanestad lovingly offers SHINE a sense of expanded time, and hints of eternity and the universe, from water tides and undersea mysteries, to sand and quartz, along with the protective qualities associated with this gem-like mineral. Aanestad’s STORY OF LOGO is a longing probe for connection, touch and radiating one’s personal light -- one’s own shine.
Aanestad’s minimal artwork is deeply influenced by the landscape of her youth in South West Coast of Norway and surrounded by the famously known Jærlyset*, the vast North Sea, with constant dramatic cloud formations, tough weather and a clarifying light. These qualities are in fact kindred to SHINE’S mission as a Newark-based community portrait studio, including openness as an invitation to infinite expressive possibility and self representation, as well as a space of fierce imagination, intimacy, messiness and finding one’s own sense of balance.
In 2017 artist Margrethe Aanestad was commissioned to design the inaugural logo for SHINE Portrait Studio. This trapezium shape -- painted on the immediate entrance wall -- has since welcomed visitors to the studio. The distinctive mark on the wall is a large-scale mural and has the flexibility inherent in all of Aanestad’s art. Initially painted silver, it functions not only as a practical background for photographers, but also as a framework for exhibiting featured photographs. More importantly the logo shape defines a reception area featuring a rattan throne chair, which intentionally references the iconic 1968 photograph “Hewey Newton, Black Panther Minister of Defense” by Blair Stapp.
Adama Delphine Fawundu's WHEN THE WATER SINGS. Undoing, peeling away the layers, transforming his-story into our story, stories of the past, present and future — the collective power of ancestral memory. I consider my body, our bodies, the earth’s body, the universe as a living and breathing archive of expansive intelligence — my visual expressions are an extension of this archive, another being, a performance of the communal energy that connects us to the perpetual circle of time.
This offering is a continuum of “In The Spirit of Àṣẹ” at the Newark Museum of Art curated by Henone Girma on view from April 21, 2023 - March, 2024.
Àṣẹ the living force that cannot be destroyed — it only transforms and shape shifts. The energy that connects I to we. It connects me, we, us to the lakes, the rivers, the trees, the oceans to humanity beyond nationalistic boundaries. Together we can create an entirely new and humane experience for future beings.
Beau McCall's REWIND: MEMORIES ON REPEAT, is a timely and heartfelt art book celebrating the Black LGBTQ+ community. McCall’s debut art book honors the legacy of ten of McCall’s deceased friends through collages composed of. archival photos and images from his button artwork. The collages capture the late 1970s to the mid-1980s, from Philadelphia to New York, during the LGBTQ+ rights movement, the height of disco music and the AIDS crisis.
“Since the 1970s we have lost so many individuals to AIDS, drugs, and anti-trans violence. So I wanted to tell some of these lost stories through images of my own friends who experienced these issues,” said McCall. “It is my way of honoring my friendship with them and bringing greater visibility and representation to the unsung everyday people of the Black LGBTQ+ community.”
McCall’s work as an artist is rooted in framing personal memories and experiences with historical and social contexts. As an extension, McCall’s new body of work is the story of the power of memories to keep bonds alive, the beauty of friendship to help us thrive, the power of love to help us heal and the indomitable spirit of the LGBTQ+ community.
- Souleo, Guest Editor
Adrienne Wheeler's MY SOUL LOOKS BACK AND WONDERS... In September 2022, Adrienne Wheeler’s “art-daughter,” artist, Adebunmi Adenike Gbadebo (Iyawo Sango) was included in the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition “Hear Me Now: The Black Potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina.” In preparation for the exhibition’s next stop, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Adebunmi took another trip back to South Carolina, this time to collect soil from True Blue Plantation where her ancestors were enslaved.
Adrienne had arranged to meet Adebunmi in Columbia, South Carolina, to assist with driving the bags of soil and two church pews to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Along the way they made a detour to a former plantation that was unexpected and unsettling, particularly one in private ownership that held so much physical and visible evidence of its past. This collection of photographs is the result of that day’s journey.
From the artist: “Sherds/shards/pieces of broken pottery, imperfect, unfit, discarded, tossed into piles. Who were their makers? Were they laid to rest? Where were they laid to rest? Were they too imperfect, unfit, discarded, tossed into piles? The potters, once known/unknown, once named/unnamed, children, men, women, the enslaved potters of the plantation, Stoney Bluff Manufactory in Old Edgefield, South Carolina. Will there be a collective memory of this history? Like the broken pieces, will it be discarded, tossed into piles? My Soul Looks Back and Wonders…”