Disney-Britton

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By  Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton Untitled #01/10 (after Caravaggio, 1602; featuring Francois Sagat) From $466.00 USD to $982.00 USD June was a  big month for more than one artist.

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By  Ernest Disney-Britton We went to see Montgomery, Alabama to see the acclaimed lynching memorial. Soon after arriving, I had the overwhelming urge to escape the South. It's an experience that tells the detailed and graphic story of the racial oppression from slavery to mass incarceration. The National Memorial to Peace & Justice recognizes the lynchings that took place in over 800 counties across America. While there, we also took the Civil Rights tour: MLK’s Dexter Baptist Church, Rosa Parks Memorial & Library, Freedom Riders Greyhound Bus station museum, and drove the 52 miles to Selma to walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the location for Bloody Sunday, March 1965. We also searched unsuccessfully for a Gay bar. However, we did find a small but colorful Gay Pride Festival hidden away in a nonprofit garden site. I'm glad we went.

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By  Ernest Disney-Britton In Montgomery, AL, we saw the White House of the Confederacy while driving to our destination, the National Memorial for Peace & Justice, aka the lynching memorial. It wasn't the plan, but I'm glad we went to the first White House for white supremacy before reaching the beautiful and horrific space that honored the African American victims of white supremacy. It was 90 degrees hot. We stayed over for two nights at the Marriott Renaissance Hotel in downtown. After showering that night, we drove to suburbs for the movie "John Wick" and had movie food for dinner. Afterward, we walked around downtown. Gosh, it was hot, and it was like that for the rest of the week.

GQ MAGAZINE By Benjy Hansen-Bundy The visual artist Nick Cave on the porous boundary between art and fashion and how clothing can be an agent of transformation. Two years ago I spent a long weekend in western Massachusetts and took a day trip to MASS MoCA, the colossal contemporary art museum in an old brick factory building in North Adams. Hanging from the ceiling was a shimmering forest of gossamer strings dangling what looked like 20,000 reflective wind chimes, all spinning. It was beautiful. Then I looked up close at one of the wind-chime things and realized it was a silvery cutout of a handgun. And for a little while, I forgot to breathe. That’s the thing. Cave’s sense of justice is contagious. And he has style. Earlier in June, he wore a leather kilt and some Margiela boots to Virgil Abloh’s first art show. When I asked him about the outfit, he said, “It's not a statement about anything. It's not about a queer point of view. It’s about: This is what I like to wear. ...

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By  Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton "GABRIEL" by Gabriel Garcia Román ( 2011);  Photogravure w/ Chine-Colle; 11in x 14in Gabriel Garcia Román's " Queer Icons " are marching in New York City's Pride Parade today. Román is a Mexican-American multimedia artist based in NYC, and this year the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art commissioned him to re-produce his powerful Icons portraits of LGBT people of color as a processional art installation to be carried by marchers during today's parade in Manhattan. We're in Washington, DC today (see pics below), but whishing we were in NYC too. That's why "Queer Icons" creator Gabriel Garcia Román is our artist of the week.

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By  Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton Martine Gutierrez's "Demons, Xochiquetzal ‘Flower Quetzal Feather,’ p95," (2018); C-print mounted on Sintra, hand-painted artist frame, 39 x 27 inches, Edition of 8 Do men get glamorous pedicures? What goddess told you that?  Martine Gutierrez , a trans-Latinx photographer, is the queen of glamorous creations that subvert conventional boundaries. Inspired by a Guatemalan goddess , her self-portrait, "Demons, Xochiquetzal 'Flower Quetzal Feather,' pg 85" is in an upcoming show " Be Seen: Portrait Photography Since Stonewall " at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art . We push boundaries by painting our toenails for Pride Month , but glamour makes Martine Gutierrez our artist of the week.

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By  Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton John Bankston's "At the Crossroads" (2006-2007) Oil on linen 54 x 48 in. (137.1 x 122 cm) John Bankston is a self-declared storyteller and visual novelist. Born in Benton Harbor, MI, 1963, the artist now lives and works in San Francisco where he is represented by Rena Bransten Gallery , San Francisco. Bankston uses the coloring book’s division of line and color to establish a basic rubric of oppositional meaning that extends to our culture’s major social divisions––adult and child, white and black, male and female, heterosexual and queer. In honor of Gay Pride Month , "Art of the Crossroads" artist John Bankston is our artist of the week.

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS By  Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton Luis González Palma "El Angel (The Angel)," 1991-1992 Hand-painted gelatin silver print Photography 19 5/8 x 19 3/4 in.  Luis González Palma  is a modernist photographer. Born in 1957, he draws symbolism from Catholicism and indigenous belief systems from Guatemala. Combining the visual language of these two religions, he explores the essence and culture of the Mayan people. The untinted whites of the eyes in Palma's sepia-tinted photograph "El Angel" on display at the 21c Museum Hotel had a haunting effect on us during this past week's stay in Kansas City. Although he is not a practicing Catholic, "El Angel" makes Luis González Palma our artist of the week.