The Bahamanian Print Contender: John Edward Cox

All my fine inked up friends who are enduring the winter in the globe's northern extremities, take a look to the small, yet tourist-popular Caribbean island group of nations called The Bahamas. It is there that our next artist profile will focus attention on the fine work being done by John Edward Cox; a young artist and teacher making big waves duking out his multi-media work, and who is rapidly paving the way for a new generation of Bahamian artists.

John Edward Cox (b. 1973, Nassau, The Bahamas) has been able to build an artistic/cultural bridge between the outside world and the relatively isolated place of his birth. Cox has pushed himself to transcend the oh so predictable Caribbean tourist-driven art markets to produce artwork which speaks beyond the historically isolated imagery of his Bahamian colleagues. His work is reaching beyond those water-bound confines to address current art/cultural sensational trends which is seen in Europe with the work of Damien Hirst(although Cox's work is far superior), and the United states with Warholian relish for graphically-universal images.

Cox was born in The Bahamas at the same time it achieved Commonwealth status from Great Britain. In the early 1990s, he attended the Rhode Island School of Design where he soon discovered his passion for illustration, receiving his BFA in Illustration, then an MAT in Art Education. Cox returned to the Bahamas to teach at the Art Department of The College of the Bahamas, where he still works today. In addition, Cox has worked at The National Art Gallery of the Bahamas in their Education Department.

He opened Popop Studios in Nassau, a place that is both studio and gallery where he creates mixed media pieces and abstract furniture design. Popopstudios International Center For The Visual Arts is a prolific gallery and has an Artists in Residence program with 8-10 artists participating at any given time. For more information about their program, or to apply for a residency, go to http://www.popopstudios.com

Cox has established himself as a distinguished printmaker, having exhibited and participated in several international exchanges in France, Italy, Germany, Hong Kong, the United States and the Caribbean. His works focus on taking ideas already existing in the mass media and bringing attention to them in the same manner as Andy Warhol or England's Ryan McGinnis, although he doesn't make these images symbolic of a condition a global symbol. They are, for the most part, uplifting works to encourage and inspire his fellow man in the lifelong game of one's survival. Some of the boxer series have an affinity with ancient Aegean boxer frescoes found in Crete(another island nation who enjoyed their sports), but his images are rooted in graphic illustrations of boxing promotional posters as found in the 20th century.

Cox is known for producing large-scale works, incorporating multiple media and non-traditional printmaking techniques, to achieve his goals. There is a flat, patterned look of his printed work, at once making the mythic struggle of two men engrossed in battle something timeless, but it also sneaks a punch into a microcosm of the Bahamas' participation in the slave industry of the 17th-18th c. Cox presents an undertone to us, via an updated and popular sport, of an eternal search for dominance and one's struggle to survive. This print contender is set to go the distance, my friends. Be sure to grab a ticket to his next [art]bout.

Exhibitions
The Central Bank of The Bahamas Gallery
Chasama Art Center, New York
Diaspora Vibe Gallery, Miami, for Art Basel
National Art Gallery of the Bahamas, Nassau, Bahamas
New Providence Community Centre Gallery, Nassau, Bahamas
Popop Studios/Gallery, Nassau, Bahamas
"Urban Life in the Caribbean" - Traveling Exhibition
Santa Domingo, Puerto Rico, Guyana & St. Kitts


Education
MAT Rhode Island School Of Design, Providence, RI
BFA Rhode Island School Of Design, Providence, RI

Contact
Tel: 242.322.7834
Email: iamjohncox@gmail.com
Web: www.popopstudios.com

Pumping the Pulse of the Voters: Political Campaign Prints

Oh yes, the time is at hand, my fellow inked up comrades, to cast a ballot for a person or party, and do as we Americans do every four years  - hope that the Best person gets elected to the highest job in the land. This time it’s been a pretty heavily media-blitzed contest, and the two main candidates are running the race neck and neck. 

What I wanted to share with you today were some of the more interesting examples of political campaign prints through the ages – for the most part consisting of lithographs and screen prints. As you will see they are fairly ‘descriptive’, almost painfully plain(as seen above). No nonsense with those guys. 

I personally like this one above that looks like a political roulette game board, but one can imagine in an earlier era, before the realm of social media, I-pads, computers or television, a campaign poster showing the candidates’ faces might have been the only time voters could have seen them. Now our world is blitzed ad infinitum with television ads and Youtube videos. We see them very clearly, but do we have any better a  sense who these people are athan before? Maybe yes, but probably not. 

For the most part, I find these posters quite accomplished artistically, and in some cases a downright sign of their times, i.e. the classically handsome face of actor-turned politician Ronald Reagan as seen below. 

The psychedelic poster of Bobby Kennedy was a little humorous but surely, we wouldn't ever have associated the same imagery with his elder brother, Prince JFK, heir of Camelot. 

I’ll let you scroll through a few of these beauties and you will see what I mean. The attention getters start to change with the times, developing complex color, and drama. The red white and blue is always a prerequisite, but that, too, will change.

Granted, the candidates knew and approved of what these printed posters would look like,  but I hardly think Nixon would have approved of his change from the young, and almost handsome, man he started off being as a senate candidate, to the grotesque Andy Warhol-smudge faced ghoul he morphed itno.

Where these posters start to really get interesting is when they branch away from formality into humor and these are a real 'sign of the times'. Notice the colors and casual ensemble of Candidate James Carter from the Great state of Georgia pictured below.

Kudos to the artists that took a stab and jab at humor in these campaign posters. Lord, the candidates are  enormouslyly humorous fodder  for us anyway, so why not show a lighter side to the absurdity of this whole political process? These guys are human, as they claim, and we need to see how they'd fare if they actually understood the satire being shot their way.

At least below we get a little glove action, although I'm thinking Romney's pectorals may not be so 'developed'.

Mercifully, we were spared the nightmare of whether Ms. P would indeed have become leader of the free world (Whew!) but I bet she and Hilary would have given us a good match.:)

Not sure about these two above, but tomorrow will tell our future course for the next four years, so

all I can say is...

we have come a long way since the first President, trying out this new thing called a democracy, and Yes, We Can and will try to keep moving Forward to keep what is precious about this country. This  place, with all its faults and troubles IS something  special, and yes we all can make a difference as long as we vote. VOTE, my inked up friends. Cast your ballots and may the BEST candidate win. 

Ray Gloeckler's Gotcha Truth in Politics

When one looks at the the United States's political system, it is comparatively unique to other countries. At least that's how the rest of the world sees us, and they may be right. When we came to this place over two centuries ago, we looked at other civilizations' forms of government, discussed their merits and settled upon this Democratic methodology that we still deal with today. Working with a basic two political party system, (Yes, other parties can and do exist, but it's basically the Republican and Democratic parties that people gravitate toward in our elections) we manage to captivate the world with our candidates' quatri-annual noble and childish antics disguised as 'debates'. People from other countries marvel at our system and wonder how we can go through this parade of candidates every four years. We do, too, for better or for worse.

With our upcoming presidential elections in the fall, it seems appropriate to discuss the hard-hitting, scathing commentary that Raymond Gloeckler's astute artistic eye puts forth in his own satirical prints. I have known of Gloeckler's work for a long time. His printmaking program at University of Wisconsin, and I would say that because he and his colleagues created a really strong printmaking program in Madison, which continues to be one of this country's best. There, Gloeckler worked with the direct and unforgiving relief medium, building a body of prints over the years that he describes through his animal and character subjects as mostly a self-portrait. His no-holds-barred approach spreads over into politics as we look at a couple of his pieces that seem in tune with our current situation.

Gloeckler's charming portrait of President Obama speaks to his high idealism, and his optimism for America's future. With one finger pointed up, he addresses a point of government policy and looks like Socrates, asking his listeners to aspire to a  moralistic code of ethical life, truth and political practice, which we all know doesn't occur very often in the political arena. The other hand, also with a pointed finger, ready to be raised, or maybe more to illustrate the point at hand in 2008 and again in 2012, that what comes up, can also come down. There is no middle road to take. We are either going up or down, but if President Obama is smiling, then I hope it is up. There has been much commentary made about a young politician running a political system with naive idealism, but the country did elect this man to the presidency because they were tired of the old political system and the state of affairs the country had been brought to bear. Like it or not, Gloeckler's image shows, in the simplest of ways, the country's willingness to try out a new set of ideas and try to find its way through the muck it found itself in.

The image that got my attention moreso was Gloeckler's "Gotcha", where the US bald eagle hovers above the, for lack of better phrasing, Butt-Kicking, the Democratic and Republican animals seem eternally engaged in 'doing to the other'. Their animated gestures and the terrific glee and pain with which these two symbols of US political strength 'go at it', is humorous in the same manner other satirical artists have candidly spoken their opinions. Gloeckler give us this tour de force and we have to laugh. The crusade for domination is not always equal between these two parties, but you know it's gonna be as good as watching a Superbowl game, or a rock'em-sock'em "I'm gonna knock your block off" boxing match. They will never give up, and they will never stop tearing their opponent apart in the quest to be The Victor.  Unfortunately, they seem so entrenched in their own shenanigans that they forget the world watches this circus and must shake their heads wondering how such a political superpower can act no better than children tussling over a favorite playtoy.

While we can laugh when looking at Gloeckler's work,  the reality is he brutally points out this country's two party co-dependent system can't break away from each other. A friend of mine once asked me, why American politics are so limited to working with only two parties? He is from India, where there can be as many as forty political parties running or in office, in one administration! We'd probably feel that was pandemonium, but it does seem to work for them. What would be novel, is if we could ever really expand beyond the two parties to embrace more opinions and hope to reach more consensus. But that idealism threatens those in 'the power struggle'. I don't portend to want to be Socrates, but I can and do appreciate the light-hearted truth of Gloeckler's work.  Here's to the next time we watch the candidates going at each other in our 'campaign circus maximus', we can think on his work and enjoy our own 'Gotcha' moment.