{"id":5709,"date":"2018-02-04T22:14:25","date_gmt":"2018-02-05T03:14:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=5709"},"modified":"2018-02-06T20:58:29","modified_gmt":"2018-02-07T01:58:29","slug":"diversify-lowell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2018\/02\/04\/diversify-lowell\/","title":{"rendered":"Painter Calls For \u2018A Push To Diversify The Art Scene In Lowell\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThis is a push to diversify the art scene in Lowell,\u201d reads the Facebook event listing for \u201cShut Up\u2026And Listen,\u201d<\/a> a group exhibition featuring black and Hispanic artists on view at High Five Arts<\/a> in Lowell for the month of February.<\/p>\n

Derrick Jamison, the artist who curated the show, tells me, \u201cThere are a lot of big galleries here in Lowell and I don\u2019t see anything that\u2019s diversified.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Derrick<\/a>
Derrick Jamison’s painting “Don’t Touch My Hair.” (Courtesy of the artist)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The problem, as he sees it, \u201cIt\u2019s either outreach or interest in putting up your work. Some people just really go outside Lowell to find great artists. … Or they don\u2019t know where to go or where to look.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey don\u2019t see that Lowell can have a very vibrant artists community,\u201d he says. \u201cBut it does.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jamison grew up in Springfield, studied at Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, graduating in 2015, then moved to Lowell a couple years back. \u201cI\u2019ve always doodled. I was always doing it on the side of my papers in school,” he says. Jamison makes realistic paintings with social commentary\u2014about the \u201crobbing and stealing\u201d over sneakers, about \u201cPeople always want to touch my dreds.\u201d Without his permission. \u201cI have to tell them it\u2019s not a petting zoo.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some of the other artists in the exhibition include Nygel Jones, who paints Afro-punk utopias (detail pictured at top), and Michael Aghahowa, who Jamison says depicts his family in symbolic ways.<\/p>\n

\"Michael<\/a>
Michael Aghahowa painting. (Courtesy of the artist)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The title of the show comes from a 2012 Ted Talk by economic development consultant Ernesto Sirolli. \u201cHe just talks about how people just come into communities and they think they already know what people need,\u201d Jamison says. \u201cIf people would shut up and listen, you\u2019d find out what people need and want.\u201d<\/p>\n

If Jamison\u2019s push is successful, how might the Lowell art scene look different? \u201cI think I would see more young people of color putting up their work. So maybe representations of myself, darker skins, maybe something more modern, maybe graffiti. \u2026 More about social issues that are going on around Lowell and around America right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of fluff art,\u201d Jamison says of the Lowell art scene now. \u201cArt is a statement and I believe you can make a lot of difference when it comes down to a picture.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Help us keep producing our great coverage of local arts, cultures and activism by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThis is a push to diversify the art scene in Lowell,\u201d reads the Facebook event listing for \u201cShut Up\u2026And Listen,\u201d a group exhibition featuring black and Hispanic artists on view at High Five Arts in Lowell for the month of February. Derrick Jamison, the artist who curated the show, tells me, \u201cThere are a lot […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5712,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100],"tags":[263,261,262,188,189,87],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5709"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5709"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5728,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5709\/revisions\/5728"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}