Overton Loyd and Two Others
Overton Loyd
It was great to see an Overton Loyd painting of Sir Nose Devoid of Funk on a messenger bag from The Crewest Man—in the crew with Alma Villegas and Gustavo Alberto Garcia Vaca. Sir Nose Devoid of Funk went off like a sleeper-cell time bomb when I came of age. It provided the psychological cushioning to absorb the impact of the Negro Sellout—even in the year 2007. Look at the detail of the painting. See the face with strong African features covered with the slick, pink nose—a very hip cyborg attachment to European consciousness. When Sir Nose declares that he will never dance this would be a social death sentence to the party people of my childhood neighborhood. When I was a freshman at UC Santa Barbara in the late 1980s, I discovered what a party meant in this campus culture: no dancing, just drinking. The bomb went off… “You have overcome for I am here…” Now, as I grow older, the meaning of dancing has broadened—and declaring that one will never dance is to proudly declare one’s self suppression and one’s intellectual (“spiritual”) self-destruction.
Barbara Chase-Riboud
A brutal but simple Google search for “Barbara Chase-Riboud” brings up “Barbara Chase-Riboud, World Class Bullshit Artist.” This article of Internet stuff clearly comes from a personal vendetta that falling in love with a Black woman can inspire. It does not matter that anything is true or not. My point is that when you make the effort to post something like this you are passionate about something—and my first suspect is unrequited love. Now me: when I wrote the poem “the art of kara walker” it was for the same passion—even though Kara Walker hardly knows me her work and her personal social choices clearly shows a rejection of me—but I would never stoop to call Kara Walker a “bullshit” artist as this is too, too often a redundant term to me.
Jon Kessler
I can’t hate on lurkers here in the kinté space because I do very little to promote what vernissage.tv is doing for the Internet, yet I’m checking their news feed almost daily. I should do a picks collection eventually—especially to highlight the work they cover by people from Asia and Russia (these people are ‘more fresh’ to me than the largely uninteresting, unoriginal work from Western “artists”—especially the “established” ones of the United States).
Just to “contradict” myself, my vernissage.tv pick for today is Jon Kessler. He has an interesting video clockwork thing set up on YouTube.com. Check “The Palace at 4 A.M.”