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Beyond the Classroom: Faculty Exploration
... more >> "Beyond the Classroom: Faculty Exploration" takes you on a journey to places that stimulate the inquisitive nature of a guide. In this exhibition we embrace very different stories, but the richness of each one is all of the same. These works become extentions of our teaching pedogogy; serving as a foundation that may be taken back into the studio or classroom to be used as student support.
~Dr. Myrah Brown Green, Curator
The Mass Comm Art Gallery at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, New York has shown works by students, faculty and community artists throughout the past decade. During these challenging times, like most institutions, our trajectory has changed. However, we are afforded the opportunity to now expand our artist reach and touch a wider audience across the globe through a virtual platform.
Our BFA Program in The Department of Mass Communications, Creative and Performing Arts & Speech's faculty exhibition features the masterful work of Professors Azi Amiri, Vivian Babuts, Clinton Crawford, Myrah Brown Green, Jimmy Jenkins Jr., Roman Mitchell, Moses Phillips and Jade Charon Robertson, . In this magnificent exhibition entitled, “Beyond the Classroom: Faculty Exploration”, curated by Dr. Myrah Brown Green, the works show how these masterful artists spread their wings across the globe; recharging their inner creativity. This creativity shows up in ways that support the students in their classrooms.
Upon entering the exhibition, media productions are presented by three of our talented professors, Jimmy Jenkins Jr., Roman Mitchell and Jade Charon Robertson edited by Donna Acti. These works show our BFA Program's connection to technology through annimation, film, music and other forms of motion imaging.
About Our Faculty:
Azi Amiri
Immigration was an extraordinary experience that made me more aware of my identity; a fluid concept that was not defined by me but cast upon me by the outside world based on their definition of a woman, immigrant, Muslim, Iranian, artist, and anything else they see
in me.
Artmaking assists me in investigating identity and its social and cultural formation. Layers of drawings or hand-printed images combined with old photographs create a conversation that embraces the ongoing interaction between the past and the present. My drawings echo the current moment and the old photos are windows to history. The history that exists through what has survived from then; people, things, and the impact they had on me, on my current day-to-day life.
Myrah Brown Green
"Quilt making takes me through a wonderfully, breathtaking Rite of Passage. The experience is so beautiful; I continue to overflow with ideas, patterns, symbols and colorful visions that can be shared with family, friends and the world. My indigenous ancestors stay with me the whole time that I work. It is as if they are continuously reminding me of the responsibilities that I have to those who came before and those yet to come. I view myself as an instrument that continues the cycle of traditional art through wall covers, quilts and wearable art. "
Vivian Babuts is an artist and photographer based in Brooklyn, NY. They draw on a background in performance, dance, and somatic therapeutic practices to inform their creative process for their work in the visual arts.
In my current portraiture and self-portraiture work, my interest is in creating a spatial container for my photographic subjects to inhabit their bodies, and to experience their own physicality and the forms they create in relation to the camera. vivianbabutsphotography.com @vivimagemoves
Clinton Crawford’s work subscribes to the literary and artistic genre of Magical Realism which positions itself as a conduit by juxta positioning the lived world, imagination and hyper reality.
Jimmy Jenkins Jr. is a Brooklyn NY / NJ based educator, artist, designer and storyteller. Throughout Jimmy’s life (who also goes by his Creative moniker “JIMTWICE”), he has always used art as an escape and a voice for his creativity through many disciplines such as painting, drawing, graffiti, fashion, graphics, sculpture, filmmaking, literature and music. JIMTWICE (one word all caps) became Jimmy’s creative alter ego from his family’s childhood nickname for him; which is Jim. Jimmy has won several awards throughout his artistic career and has exhibited all over the country including The Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC. Jimmy has collaborated with major designer labels and sneaker brands and has had his own signature kids line sold in major retail markets.
With-all-that-said, Jimmy loves teaching and the journey he gets to take with his students, every semester exploring the world of art from ancient to modern, all-the-while examining how art is intertwined with and affects everything.
Roman G Mitchell, Educator, Composer, Pianist and Visual Artist.
Born in Seattle Washington, lives in Brooklyn, New York, he works in a variety of mediums such as music, drawing, illustration, visual design, computer programming, animation, cultural identity and performance. This 2022 collection is a celebration of spring and the richness of colors, textures, the botany of renewal and the beauty of sound.
Moses Phillips
“Three Images in Transposition”
My work in visual imagery is based on travel experiences that have allowed me to view the people of the African diaspora within a transdisciplinary paradigm. These photographic images are a result of the aesthetic similarities observed at different nodes of transitory existences. I am encouraged to find an endless supply of joy and happiness that is presented as artistic beauty and is exhibited by the people who are most representative of these shifting contexts. Music provided the original framework to think through a continuum of linkages presented here by this small group of images that reflect aesthetic, social, and economic endeavors.
Jade Charon Robertson
As a choreographer and filmmaker, I am interested in the process of creating culturally relevant work that brings awareness to the human conditions across the world through my Black, female lens. My interdisciplinary process of creating site-specific dance films and pairing them with live dance performances provides accessibility and inclusion to underrepresented communities in performance spaces. My work is meant to be a catalyst for social change and be self-valuing to my community. By using movement vocabulary that merges African American Social Dances, Ballet, Modern, and West African dance, with an internal emphasis on Spirituality in performance, my works often provides opportunities of reflection and education for the participating performers and audiences while taking them on a spiritual journey.
Film Statement: With social media being the catalyst for free viewership of death, calamity, and despair, many people are unable to process what they see. Recharge, the second dance film I created while at UCLA continues the conversation on the racial dialogue happening in Black America within the last 5 years. This film shows the transformation of a young black woman, who is diligently seeking the presence of God but until she faces herself she cannot escape the trauma of her past.
