SOLO EXHIBITION PRESS DOSSIER · PHILADELPHIA· 2005
BAD EYE ON THE GOOD FOOT
Philadelphia mattered twice. In 2004 Barbara showed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and at the VSA International Arts Festival in Washington, D.C. The following year Art Around Gallery invited her back for her first solo exhibition in a commercial gallery. The surviving papers let us see the show from both sides: the gallery describing the work, and Barbara explaining what she was trying to do.
There is no review on file. What survives instead is better than most reviews: the gallery’s letter, the press release, the postcard, her three statements, and more than forty photographs of the walls and the opening—her brother Elliott Levin reading, the paintings named on the back of the prints in her own hand.
THE VENUE
Art Around Gallery
2011 Chestnut Street, Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia. Established 2003; a converted town house whose primary focus was African American art—Romare Bearden among them—with room for emerging Latino and “outsider” artists. Director William Dodd.
THE DATES
May 2005
Featured exhibition for the month of May. Opening reception Friday, May 6, 2005, 6–9 pm, with a poetry reading and performance by Elliott Levin, her brother.
THE TITLE PAINTING
Made to James Brown
“Bad Eye on the Good Foot (2002)—the title painting in the exhibit—was created as a performance of gestures in the process of listening to the music of James Brown.” The same canvas travelled to Cologne for Art Blind in 2013.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Barbara on the show
When I was diagnosed with a retinal degenerative disease in 1984, I’d been creating realistic oil paintings for more than 15 years. As I became legally blind, I questioned my ability to continue painting. I slowly transformed my thinking and techniques to incorporate my limitations as an integral part of my work.
As a result, I’ve been increasingly inspired by aural influences—language and music. Using vivid colors, stenciled icons, and texts, I create patterns, weavings and layers of information—a form of “visual music”. Particular paintings are inspired by particular songs.
The series of “visual music” paintings began in 1991, with an interpretation of my brother (Philadelphia-based jazz musician and poet) Elliott Levin’s composition, “Whose Myth Are Youse With?”
Bad Eye on the Good Foot—the title painting in my recent solo exhibit at the Art Around Gallery in Philadelphia—was created as a performance of gestures in the process of listening to the music of James Brown.
Other paintings have been created in a similar manner to the music of various artists such as T-Rex, Ice-T, Donna Summer and Jimi Hendrix.
Movements of my body replace the precision of my eyes as the vehicle for placing marks. Improvisation in the moment has been inspired by collaborations with experimental theater artists, jazz musicians, and poets. Inspiration has also come from working with inner-city teenagers in the Art Options program which I co-founded in 1992.
“Movements of my body replace the precision of my eyes as the vehicle for placing marks. Improvisation in the moment has been inspired by collaborations with experimental theater artists, jazz musicians, and poets.”
— Barbara Romain, “Visual Music” statement, August 2005
“Due in part to this exposure, I have been invited to exhibit my paintings in a one-person show at the Art Around Gallery… This show, ‘Bad Eye on the Good Foot,’ will feature several paintings inspired by music and language—texts used as gestural elements to create patterns, weavings, and layers of information. The viewer is invited to form meanings and associations.”
— Barbara Romain, Statement of Purpose to the ARC / Durfee Foundation, 2005
THE PRESS RECORD
What was written, printed and photographed
Every press release below states two facts: whether Barbara is named, and whether her artwork is highlighted.