BLACK ART NEWS TODAY

Featured Artists
Google

web PAINT
Featured Artists
• In Basquiat's Shadow: The Spook that Opened the Door
• Who are Glenda and Milton Boone?
• Frank Frazier:
Past, Present and Future
• Louis Jefferson III
• Mark G and the
Nude Expo
• Paula Whaley
• KBM Kreatrix
• Leroy X. Edney
• J. W. McPhail
• African Heritage Collection
• Cheryl Willis
• Cicely Tyson
• Frank Frazier
• Laurie Cooper
• Adrienne Mills
• Sheats Repousse
• Carolyn L. Mazloomi
• Frank Morrison
• Phyllis Stephens
• Jega International
• Jacob Arts
• Michele Wood
• Eugene Thomas
• Justin Bua
• Ernie Barnes
• Annie Lee
• Redfern Fine Art
• Woodrow Nash
• Faith Ringgold
• Mari Hall
• Burnett Curtis Grayson III
• CJ Fletcher
• Karen Y. Buster
• Kelvin W. Henderson
• LaShun Beal
• Romare Bearden
• Sidney Carter
• Tom Feelings
• Twin Hicks

Featured Artist: Adrienne Mills

By F. Lennox Campello

Adrienne Mills weaves a magical brush with her camera and her creative mind. And she manages to do that not only as a photographer, but also as a gallery director, a curator and an organizer of art events, such as the body painting events that she organizes to create the human canvas that yield her unique photography.

A graduate of the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, DC, her work has been widely exhibited in many galleries in Washington, DC including at the Fraser Gallery, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Market 5 Gallery and many others. She has also exhibited in the Mid Atlantic region, and has also built a secondary art market record through several sales via Sothebys.com.

Mills’ work deals with the human figure; her canvas is the body and her brush is her camera. For years now, she has gathered together artists and models and volunteers and curious people, and organized art events where the art of body painting is pushed to new limits by talented artists and gifted photographers. Mills paints and then photographs these creations and delivers photographs that abound with a raw sensuality that only the human figure, in the eyes of a master, can capture.
In Mills’ photographic creations the art of painting and photography are married and welded together so that we gaze at the photographs wondering if the attraction is because of the subtle sensuality of the image or the elegance of the photograph.

What is it about these works that makes us stop and study the designs painted on human skin, and the poses directed by the photographer? Is it the sensual magnetism of the work, or the intelligence of the photograph? And it is both!

In work such as the “Zeblin” series from 2001, a model is transformed into a human zebra of sorts. Mills has the model stare defiantly at the camera, as if challenging us to recognize that her nude, striped body is as ordinary as any other body.

In the “Javapolitan” series from 2002, the model pose is pushed even further, and in some images, her body is not only transformed into a magical animal, but the model herself crawls and roars as if some mythological monster suddenly alive.

Mills’ works deal with opening new avenues in the world of contemporary photography that include a powerful element of painting. Her models are her canvasses and her photographs are her powerful contributions to the dialogue of contemporary art – not just photography, but art!