Exhibition | The Power of Color
January 30 — March 31, 2018
Kevin Cole, “Spiritual Celebration with Miles, Dizzy and Coltrane”
This exhibition highlights the work of three contemporary artists working in the Southeast. Keven Cole, Sisavanh Phouthavong-Houghton, and Carl Joe Williams. Kevin Cole is one of the most renowned mid-career artists in Atlanta, Georgia. His vibrant acrylics applied to twisting and curling canvases show the relationship between color and music, especially music as it relates to the African-American community. Tennessee artist Sisavanh Phouthavong-Houghton is one of the first professional Lao-American visual artists and educators of her generation. Through the rhythmic fragmentations and strong color contrasts in her powerful acrylic work, she explores the process of connecting and disconnecting with a place or community as an immigrant. Carl Joe Williams grabs abandoned televisions and other materials from the streets of his New Orleans neighborhood and then paints complex color combinations directly on the surfaces of these found forms. He also appropriates visual media and music clips to play on the television sets to address the physiological and historical concerns of everyday people.
Carl Joe Williams, ” You Know I Don’t Like Everybody Potato Salad”
Art professor and mixed media artist Kevin E. Cole was born in Pine Bluff, Arkansas in 1960. He received a bachelor of science degree in art education from the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff in 1982; his master of arts degree in art education a year later, and his master of fine arts degree in drawing from Northern Illinois University in 1984. Cole began his career as an art teacher at Camp Creek Middle School in College Park, Georgia in 1985. At the same time, he became an adjunct professor at Georgia State University’s School of Art and Design where he remained until 1998. In 1990, Cole was chairperson of the visual and performing arts magnet program of Tri-Cities High School in East Point, Georgia until 1994. In 2003, he became the chairman of the Fine Arts Department at Westlake High School where he created the school’s first arts program. He has been featured in Who’s Who in Education and received the Award of Excellence for Public Art by the Atlanta urban Design Commission. In 1994, Cole was commissioned by the Coca-Cola Company to create a 15-story mural celebrating the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia. The mural took two years to create and measures more than 800 square feet. Soul Ties That Matter, a 55-foot long installation, was recently installed in the Hartsfield-Jackson International Atlanta Airport.
