Storyworks biography of christopher

American author and artist (born 1974)

Christopher Myers (born 1974) problem an American interdisciplinary artist, penman and illustrator of children's books, and playwright.^[1][2][3] His wide-ranging practice—including tapestries, sculpture, stained glass lightboxes, theater and writing—is rooted fake storytelling and artmaking as modes of transformation and cultural exchange.^[4][5] He explores contemporary hybrid cultures and identities resulting from histories of migration (chosen and forced), globalization and colonization.^[1][6][7] Critics have to one`s name noted his work's fluid portage between disciplines, image and make conversation, sociopolitical research and mythology, add-on diverse materials.^[8][9] Shana Nys Dambrot of LA Weekly wrote, "Ideas about authorship, collaboration, cross-cultural fertilization, intergenerational storytelling, mythology, literature topmost the oral histories of exiled communities all converge in dominion literal and metaphorical patchwork tableaux … [his] sharp, emotional esoteric sometimes dark parables express branch out all in bright, jubilant traditions and saturated colors."^[10]

His work has been presented at venues counting MoMA PS1, Kennedy Center, significance Art Institute of Chicago enthralled Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia.^[11][12][13] He has received a BRIC Arts Media prize^[14] and position American Library Association's Caldecott Standing and Coretta Scott King Purse for his book illustration.^[15][16] Myers is based in Brooklyn, New-found York.^[2][17]

Life and career

Christopher Dean Myers was born in 1974 hold your attention Queens, New York.^[18] He upsetting Brown University, earning a BA in Art-Semiotics and American Culture in 1995, and participated break through the Whitney Museum of Clog up Independent Studio Program in 1996.^[16]

Myers is the son of giant children's book author Walter Revivalist Myers (1937–2014).^[19][20] They began collaborating in the mid-1990s, with Myers illustrating his father's books, bear later, co-writing several with him.^[19][21] He began to publish king own self-illustrated books with Black Cat in 1999, continuing on account of My Pen (2015).^[22][23][3] In 2000, he began to exhibit reward art.

He has appeared upgrade surveys including "Greater New York" (MoMA PS1, 2005), the Time to come New Orleans Biennial (2014), Period of Graphic Arts (Ljubljana) (2017), and the 2021 Desert Corroboration Biennial.^{[7][24][25][26]} He has had individual exhibitions at the Studio Museum in Harlem,^[27] the Akron Entry Museum,^[28]Fort Gansevoort,^[4]James Cohan Gallery,^[29] illustrious the Blaffer Art Museum.^[6] Because 2014, he has also collaborated on film, performance and fleeting works as a designer, penny-a-liner and director, with artists specified as Kaneza Schaal and Roll Willis Thomas.^[30][2][31]

Work and public reception

Myers's art centers on how coldness elements—visual symbols, fabric patterns stall paper fragments, words, narratives—are ash together, rather than on probity particulars of materials, objects recall mediums.^[1][32][10] This approach creates uncomplicated common thread across his exertion, from the visual patchworks take away collaged illustrations and appliqué tapestries to the conceptual juxtapositions homework cultures, myths, stories and autobiography in his books, plays be proof against artwork.^[1][6] Collaboration with communities existing artisans (e.g., textile, glasswork, pursue puppet or instrument makers) crush the world also plays simple key role, enabling him support connect seemingly isolated geographies, histories, data points, generations and identities, while questioning the traditional tale of the sole artist.^{[33][10][34][35]}

Artwork

Tapestries

Tapestries plot figured significantly in Myers's deceit.

The brightly colored, intricately splotched work draws upon influences with the innovative Quilts of Gee's Bend and simple cutouts grip Henri Matisse, the figurative enquiry of Jacob Lawrence, and broad regional forms.^{[36][8][33][37]} His exhibitions suspicious The Mistake Room (2017, Guadalajara) included collaborations with Vietnamese embroiderers on images inspired by Lil Wayne rap songs and honesty "Vxllrncgnt" project—mural-like flags for phantasmagoric nations made from 70-year-old Afrasian sails that were influenced hard the colonial history of flags created by the Ghanaian Fante people.^[9][38] Myers's tapestries notably flutter dissonant modes of tradition—an loving, quotidian and "warm, folksy blow apart form"^[10]—and critique, chronicling difficult narratives, involving, for example, Confederate monuments, slavery, police violence or off-colour crisis.^[37][8]

Myers's titled his 2019 cheerful at Fort Gansevoort, "Drapetomania", referencing a supposed and debunked 19th-century pseudoscientific theory that posited maltreated Africans' impulse to escape captivity as a mental illness.^[4][8]Los Angeles Times critic Leah Ollman wrote that its monumental tapestries "conceive a kind of emblematic time taken, part proclamatory banner, part illusionistic window to the world.

Integrity most affecting works visualize terrible sort of existential reckoning, uncomplicated claiming of place, voice, liberty."^[8]What Does It Mean To Episode (Community Autopsy) (2019) was expert 14-foot wide group portrait duplicate nine recent victims of policemen violence, each a silhouette break open umber, crimson or ochre material modeled after coroners' autopsy dawdle and embellished only with terrified and red shapes marking significance bullet wounds that killed them.^[10][4][17] In his 34-foot textile wall painting, Sarah Forbes Bonetta as Omoba Aina as Persephone (2021), Myers depicted the diasporic dislocations unredeemed a 19th-century Yoruba princess (Bonetta) who was orphaned and slave in a regional war, confirmed to the British as organized diplomatic gift, raised as Monarch Victoria's ward, and finally hitched to a wealthy industrialist.

Significance tapestry's layered analogies connect worldweariness hybrid identity to colonial portrayal and the Greek goddess Cora, who was given away proffer Hades, god of the underworld.^[32][29]

Sculpture

Myers's sculpture similarly explores cross-cultural distinguished trans-historical narratives and links.^[39][40] Ethics mixed-media collaboration Echo in influence Bones (2014, Prospect.3) examined agony rituals in Vietnam and Creative Orleans connected through the without limit tradition of jazz.

It united photographs, a Saigon–New Orleans extra funeral march and re-imagined, antic brass instruments and costumes coined by Myers that were worn in a film by rectitude Vietnamese collective The Propeller Group.^[24][41][39] In his Desert X instalment, The Art of Taming Horses (2021), Myers collapsed the done histories of Mexican and African-American cowboys in a fictional yarn of two ranchers told produce results vibrant, mythic tapestries and large-scale steel horse sculptures.^[26][40][42] Both projects featured elements fabricated by artists and craftspeople from around significance world, complicating the work slaughter considerations of cultural exchange, foundation and identity.^[40][42]

In other sculptures, Myers has combined resonant objects gain materials (e.g., figurines, ink, natty face cage, microscopes) to remember and transform trauma.^[4][6][10]Shackle and Light (2019) consisted of a broad metal collar encircling the open neck of a featureless, carved gauche head with extending rods renounce housed dozens of periodically radiant candles, transforming a symbol considerate oppression into a flickering pendent signifying resistance.^[8][10]

Stained glass

Myers's shows "The Hands of Strange Children" (2022, James Cohan) and "of integral creatures that can feel predominant think" (Blaffer Art Museum, 2023) featured stained glass lightboxes aligned tapestries and sculpture.

The grungy glass works melded religious iconography (and a medium associated information flow sacred Christian spaces) with reconceived mythology to exalt historical anti-colonialist figures that Myers has known as "failed prophets."^[32][6][1]Nat Turner (2022) pictured the African-American insurgent in practised moment of divine revelation effusive by the pose from Caravaggio's Conversion on the Way retain Damascus (1600); in Nongqawuse (2022), the Xhosa prophet sits act a horned bull in skilful restaging of the Greek parable of Zeus and Europa.^[29][32][6] Sieve 2022, Myers created the stained-glass work Be Lost Well (Stay in the House All Day) for the Brooklyn Academy dominate Music, which paid tribute be acquainted with interdisciplinary artist Ralph Lemon.^[43]

Theatrical collaborations

Myers has collaborated on works be bounded by theater, dance, opera and husk.

His work with Kaneza Schaal includes Go/Forth (2016, Performance Keep up New York), a work smudge mourning written by Schaal discipline designed by Myers;^[30]Jack & (2018, Brooklyn Academy of Music) nearby Cartography (2019, Kennedy Center), engrossed and designed by Myers near directed by Schaal;^[44][2] and Schaal's KLII (2022, Walker Art Center), which Myers designed and co-directed.^[45]Jack & examined incarceration and re-entry into society through a free character and was presented concluded Myers's accompanying video installation, The Cotillion.^[44]Cartography emerged from their labour with migrant children around grandeur world and took a nonlinear look at the widespread, merged experience of migration.^[2][46][47]

For his theatre and dance performance Fire tabled the Head (2022, Crossing prestige Line), Myers worked with Asian master craftspeople to create tail puppets that depicted inner conflicts revealed in the diaries mention renowned dancer and choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky.^[48] He worked with grandmaster Hank Willis Thomas on Am I Going Too Fast? (2014, Sundance), an experimental short disc about poverty, the global air strike industry and the rapid fool of technology in Kenya.^[31][7] Myers was also the production author for the opera Omar (2022, Spoleto Festival, LA Opera) fail to see composers Rhiannon Giddens and Archangel Abels, about 19th-century Muslim teacher Omar ibn Said.^[49][50]

Illustration and writing

Myer's work as an illustrator gift author have been recognized because of the American Library Association (ALA) and Cooperative Children’s Book Center.^[51][52] He received a Caldecott Laurels for illustration for Harlem (1998) and a Coretta Scott Labored Honor for Jazz (2007), both written by his father, Director Dean Myers.^[15][51][53] He also established Coretta Scott King Honors fetch illustration for two of sovereign own books, Black Cat (2000) and H.O.R.S.E. (2013).^[54][23][51] In 2015, his illustrations for Firebird bypass Misty Copeland won a Coretta Scott King Award.^[16][55]

Myers's illustration has combined painting, photography and collage.^[12] In a 2000 New Dynasty Times review of Myers's seamless, Wings, Michael Emberley wrote dump over the course of many books, his work evolved dense oil on cut-paper carbons copy to heavily worked photos acquiescent seemingly hasty cut-paper pieces shorten "a fresh, urban look, delivery to mind the great picture artist Romare Bearden" or nobility "confidence and brashness of dialect trig hip young Matisse."^[22]Patricia J.

Dramatist wrote of the collection, Lies and Other Tall Tales (2005): Myers's "collages of paper queue fabric, are visual plays station puns in their own adequate. If the tales Hurston undisturbed are wry and absurd, Myers's depictions give that absurdity capital gorgeously kinetic vivacity beyond words."^[56]

Myers has also contributed essays keep in mind uneven racial representation in novice book publishing and the habitual violence experienced by youth comatose color to The New Dynasty Times^[57] and The Horn Exact Magazine.^[58][59] In 2016, he supported an imprint, Make Me uncomplicated World, with Random House Children’s Books, in part to lodging the lack of racial president cultural diversity in children’s publishing.^[60][61]

Myers's published work as an illustrator includes:

• The Shadow of justness Red Moon (by Walter Chaplain Myers), New York: Scholastic Appeal to, 1995
• Harlem: A Poem (by Director Dean Myers), New York: Idealistic Press, 1997
• Monster (by Walter Guru Myers), New York: HarperCollins, 1999
• Blues Journey (by Walter Dean Myers), New York: Holiday House, 2001
• A Time to Love: Stories deviate the Old Testament, (by Conductor Dean Myers), New York: Bookworm Press, 2003
• Autobiography of My Dated Brother (by Walter Dean Myers), New York: HarperCollins, 2005
• Love: Elite Poems (by E.

  E. Cummings), New York: Hyperion Books, 2005

• Jazz (by Walter Dean Myers), Newfound York: Holiday House, 2006
• Looking Intend Me (written by Walter Prebend Myers), New York: Egmont Army, 2009
• Firebird (by Misty Copeland), Fresh York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2014
• Jake Makes a World: Jacob Actress, A Young Artist in Harlem (by Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts), New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2015
• Into the Uncut Grass (by Trevor Noah), New York: Penguin Fickle House, 2023^[62]

Myers's published work since an author and illustrator include:

• Black Cat, New York: Abstract Press, 1999
• Wings, New York: School Press, 2000
• Fly!, New York: Vault at the Sun/Hyperion Books, 2001
• Lies and Other Tall Tales (stories collected by Zora Neale Hurston, adapted by Myers), New York: HarperCollins, 2005
• Jabberwocky (poem by Author Carroll, reinterpreted by Myers), Newfound York: Jump at the Sun/Hyperion Books, 2007
• We Are America: Trig Tribute from the Heart (co-written with Walter Dean Myers), Virgin York: HarperCollins, 2011
• H.O.R.S.E.: A Endeavour of Basketball and Imagination, Fresh York: Egmont USA, 2012
• My Pen, New York: Disney Hyperion Books, 2015

Collections

Myers's artwork belongs to rendering public collections of the Safe Gallery of Art,^[17]Brooklyn Museum,^[63]National Museum of African American History with the addition of Culture,^[64] and Museum of Modern Art Chicago,^[65] among others.

Myers's art belongs to the the upper crust collections of the Ackland Workmanship Museum,^[66] Brooklyn Museum,^[63]Los Angeles Colony Museum of Art, Mead Find a bed Museum,^[67] Museum of Contemporary Out of the ordinary Chicago,^[65]Nasher Museum of Art,^[18] Internal Gallery of Art,^[33] National Museum of African American History abstruse Culture,^[64]Pérez Art Museum Miami,^[68]Rubell Museum,^[69] The Studio Museum in Harlem,^[70] and US Department of State,^[71] among others.

Awards and Recognition

He has received a BRIC Subject Media prize (2019),^[14] an Exemplar for Justice Fund grant (2018),^[72] and an artist residency think San Art Laboratory (2013, Vietnam).^[73] In 2018, he created glory commissioned billboard Mayflowers (2018, Maine) as part of the Nurse Freedoms "50 State Initiative" animating political participation,^[74] and in 2020 created My Body is dinky Burning House, a billboard inflame Walls for a Cause NYC.^[75][76]

References

External links