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EXHIBITION HISTORY
2021 — PASSIONATE FOCUS, Second Sense (formerly the Catholic Guild for the Blind), virtual event and exhibition
2018 — CORE, Long Beach Arts Center, Long Beach, CA
2013 — SHARED VISIONS, Marshall B. Ketchum University
2012–13 — ART ABILITY, Bryn Mawr Rehabilitation Hospital, Malvern, PA
2011 — BLIND ARTISTS SOCIETY 3RD ANNUAL EXHIBITION, RPI Chapel & Cultural Center, Troy, NY (January 10 – February 25, 2011)
2009 — CORE 5, Second City Gallery, Long Beach, CA
Day of the Drum
Acrylic on canvas · 36x24 in · 2005
An Italian construction worker spent more than thirty years building a cluster of spires in his back yard in Watts, out of steel rod, mortar and broken tile. Every year since, drummers have gathered at the foot of them.
That gathering is the Day of the Drum Festival, and Barbara Romain painted it as a poem. Twenty-six words, A to Z: Ancient Beat. Conga. Drums. Erupt From. Graceful. Hi Hands. Inspired. Jazz. Kings. Lay. Mambo. Numbers. On. Percussion. Quake. Rock. Steady. Tom Toms. Under. Vaulting. Watts. X-static. Yearning. Zeal.
They are scattered across a crowd of drummers and dancers, with Simon Rodia's towers rising behind. “I am inspired less by what I see,” she wrote, “and more by what I hear, remember and imagine.” She wrote alphabet poems the way other painters keep sketchbooks. This one is a festival transcribed by ear.
It is a poem you have to find, and a picture of the festival, and the two are the same object.
Acrylic on canvas, 2005. Shown at CORE 5, Second City Gallery, Long Beach, 2009; Art Ability, Bryn Mawr Rehabilitation Hospital, 2012–13; Shared Visions, Marshall B. Ketchum University, 2013; and Passionate Focus, Second Sense, 2021.
IN POSSESSION OF
Estate of Barbara Romain.
