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For Immediate Release
Betty Gabrielli
CLEVELAND HIP HOP ARTIST TO SHOW HIS WORK FEB. 16 & 17 AT OBERLIN COLLEGE
Guest Lecture & reception: "Towards the New Millennium - Speaking from the Community."
7:30 p.m. Wed., Feb. 16 Lord Lounge: Afrikan Heritage House, 126 Forest St.
Talk & reception 4:45 p.m. Thurs., Feb. 17 Fisher Hall Allen Art Building (rear) Presented by the Ellen Johnson Fund.
Free and open to the public
For more information, contact Johnny Coleman 440/775-6908
OBERLIN-- Michaelangelo Lovelace, an artist embedded in the hip hop culture of Cleveland, will continue Oberlin College's celebration of Black History Month Feb. 16 and 17 with two public talks and a showing of his work. He also will meet with senior studio art majors.
Many of his paintings are from a series "Growing Up In The 'Hood" that explores concerns about cultural, racial and economic tensions--the raw power of his imagery is reminiscent of the work of both folk art and outsider art.
Lovelace explains: "The paintings . . . look at what it's really like growing up in a community that is looked upon as a war-zone, a community where anything can happen at any time. The series deals with crime, drugs, street corner drunks, sex-hustlers, and many other happenings in the 'hood, and it depicts the very essence of growing up in a community where life is fast, cheap and sometimes short."
Plain Dealer art critic Steven Litt says "His vividly colored paintings . . . are filled with storefront churches and street corner drunks, children at play and prostitutes at work. They possess the childlike innocence of folk art and the razor sharp knowledge of city life."
Lovelace studied at Cuyahoga Community College and the Cleveland Institute of Art, and his work has been widely exhibited in such venues as SPACES, the Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art, Karamu House, Kent State University, and the Progressive Insurance Corporate Headquarters as well as in the 1997 Oberlin exhibition "Of People, Time, and Place" at the Firelands Association for the Visual Arts.
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