Carolyn L. Mazloomi, Publisher
Paper Moon Publishing
5481 Oldgate Drive
West Chester, Ohio 45068
Paper Moon Publishing is a boutique publisher
of exhibitions, monographs & compilations
in fine fabric arts, painting, and photography.
To place an order for Textural Rhythms: Quilting the Jazz Tradition for $40.00 (plus $5.00 S&H) - you may send a check or money order to the address at left, or with your credit card using the PayPal link below. (You do not need a PayPal account.) Publication Date: March 2007
Jazz, like quilting, is a woven art form. Both genres produce textural harvests spun from the life fibers of masters of the imagination who create for our contemplation. Quiltmaking, as in jazz, evokes a host of complex rhythms and moods. Some quilt artists listen to jazz music while working on their quilts because the one form of artistic inspiration ignites in the other. When the two forms connect, the creative energy explodes exponentially. Textural Rhythms: Quilting the Jazz Tradition releases both the individual particles and the synergistic power of this explosion. The 83 quilts pictured include traditional, improvisational, and art quilts from some of the countries best known African American quilters. Textural Rhythms: Quilting the Jazz Tradition unite the two most well known, and popular artistic forms in African American culture jazz and quilts. These quilt artists have harnessed in cloth the spirit of jazz, and let us feel, hear, and see jazz music.
Quilting African American Women's History: Our Challenges Creativity, and Champions is available through Amazon.com by clicking here.
Each of us who has the privilege and the joy of seeing the stunning works in Quilting African American Women's History: Our Challenges, Creativity, and Champions must also listen carefully to what these works of art are saying to us. In the words of quilter Tina Brewer, "Listen closely, focus your eyes deeper." The one hundred-one quilts, created by fifty-three women and men, speak of challenges, creativity, and champions of African American women. For assembling this feast for our eyes and providing a narrative that helps us to clearly hear what these works of art are saying, we are indebted to Dr. Carolyn Mazloomi, the curator of the exhibition. Let us also acknowledge the contribution of Dr. Denise Campbell, Dr. Mazloomi's colleague in the world of quilting and scholarship about this art form. A striking reality about these quilts that is also true of African American women is this: If you have seen one, you have not seen them all. There are "common threads" in these quilts, just as there are in Black women's experiences with racial and gender oppression and in resistance, in efforts to cast us as "the other." There is also great diversity in how each artist unfolds her quilt--as a compelling narrative, as a statement of resistance, as creative expression--indeed as all of this and more. So too are there differences in how we Black women live through our race and gender, sometimes in communion with and sometimes in confrontation with our particular class, age, religion, sexual orientation, physical abilities and disabilities.
Cincinnati Snaps: Volume 1 is available through Amazon.com by clicking here.
Cartoons and photographs have a mission in common. Each takes familiar elements and helps the viewer see them with fresh eyes.
Nothing particularly funny about Michelangelo s David, for instance. But draw Simon Leis arresting David for parading around Cincinnati naked and you have a new perspective on your city. Nothing remarkable about photographing a man s two legs. But if one leg is white and one is black, now we have something to think about. The muddy Ohio River is ubiquitous in our local landscape. Why then is it so remarkable to see it pulverize into a powdery sky at dawn, reflect the downtown skyline in nighttime neon, or playfully escort a family aboard the Anderson Ferry? Listen up, people! a nervous Abe Lincoln is about to deliver his address before a laid back Juneteenth crowd.
Familiar elements, fresh eyes.
The thing that's exciting about Cincinnati Snaps is that it signals the arrival of a whole new batch of fresh eyes looking at Cincinnati. And fresh eyes are exactly what we've been needing. We're a city struggling to wrest our way out of some calcified ideas about who we are and what we're capable of, a rich and textured city, to be sure, but in need of reinvention and reimagining. And that takes fresh eyes. Fresh eyes that see the humor in a jumble of tawdry motel signs outside the American Sign Museum, the irony in the conflicting ethics of billboards, and the streetsmart beauty in urban alleyways and boarded-up pop art buildings. To borrow the words of a poet, there s something happening here what it is ain't exactly clear.
One thing is clear. Wherever our beloved town is headed, it will take fresh eyes to get us there. ---
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Jim Borgman, Editorial cartoonist for the Cincinnati Enquirer and co-creator of the comic strip Zits
Cincinnati Snaps: Volume 1 is the perfect coffee table photo compilation in celebration of us, by us, through our eyes. The astounding photos capture the global mosaic found throughout our corner of the world through fresh eyes. The photos were submitted by neighbors throughout the Greater Cincinnati metropolitan region over two summers as part of the Kroger Snap Your Neighborhood Photo Competition. Cincinnati Snaps: Volume 1 is a vivid example of the mission of Learning Through Art, Inc. - building community through art - one snapshot at a time. All proceeds from Cincinnati Snaps: Volume 1 benefit the arts and literacy programs of Learning Through Art, Inc. which serves more than 650,000 participants throughout the Midwest.