GO ‘HEAD, FIX YOU A PLATE

An exhibition of new work by Jazzmen Lee-Johnson, featuring artists Becci Davis, Jordan Seaberry, & Dominique Sindayiganza. Curated by Persephone Allen and Jazzmen Lee-Johnson

GO ‘HEAD, FIX YOU A PLATE brings together new work by Jazzmen Lee-Johnson inspired by questions of memory, history, grief, and family. In this exhibition, Lee-Johnson invites artists Becci Davis, Jordan Seaberry, and Dominique Sindayiganza to join her in exploring the universal need for spaces of self expression, cultural tradition, pleasure, rest, and dreaming, while reckoning with the complexity of how to be at home in the United States amidst inherited and lived experiences of racism, violence, oppression, and incarceration. Together their work transforms AS220’s Aborn Gallery into a domestic space of rest, reckoning, and resistance.

Each place is set with an original stoneware plate that is part of a unique set of three created by Jazzmen Lee-Johnson named Baltimore Blue Crabs, Pop-N-Lock Party, Remedy Flowers. Plates are each set here with a screenprinted Wallflowers napkin. Notice how the plates depict scenes of families spending time together that could have taken place around a table like this.

Welcome to the Dining Room

Take a look around, notice the dining table’s shiny copper edges, smooth rounded form, and dark, variegated wood. The table takes its name, Penny Pinchin’, from the act of saving up and the machine age materials that artist Jazzmen Lee-Johnson used to create it.

Six colorful chairs in shades of deep purple, bright neon green, emerald green and pink stand around the table. The screen-printed upholstery fabric is a remix of the 18th-century French toile textile “Le Ballon de Gonesse”, which features early imagery of the invention of the hot air balloon. Lee-Johnson’s BALLOON MANIA references the corner memorials and gatherings made to honor those we’ve lost soon to gun violence, terminal illness, substance use disorder, fatal accidents, and police brutality. 

Jazzmen Lee-Johnson’s linocut relief print The Slave Gun Cycle hangs at the head of the table. Above the table hangs Jordan Seaberry’s painting A Key Into the Language of America. At the other end, are Becci Davis’ new sculpture inheritance archive and print One to Sustain. Together, these works recall familial and collective histories and memories  intermingled and intertwined with complicated legacies of love, violence, oppression, and care.

Find a Seat in the Living Room Make yourself at home. The Living Room is a space to relax and unwind, pick up a book or play a record. Be careful with that couch though! There’s no plastic covering this time on Jazzmen Lee-Johnson’s beautifully screenprinted and quilted Mama’s Flowers. Notice how those are the same echinacea flowers printed on napkins, plates, and coasters in the Dining Room? These were the artist’s mother’s favorite flowers.