It’s one-o-two AM and I find myself again at the footsteps of “An Open Letter to Featured Artists“. Like some blasphemous golden statuette glaring down at me on my knees, it’s head just about piercing the sky. It was a piece we wrote nearly a year ago — July of ’09 — after an entanglement with a subsidy of Viacom straight from a computer sitting on a desk on the 38th floor of the company’s main New York skyscraper. No, that was the icing on the cake. Rewind. It started with a guy who has an account on Deviant Art: he saw that I had shared some of his photography on here, got moderately offended, and kindly asked me to take the photos down. I did, there was absolutely no reason for me not to. But the point of the “letter” (if it had one, often times these things of ours do not) was that there was also absolutely no reason for him to NOT want them on this pages growing archival box. Consider the following: I linked to his Deviant Art page (his only page), I named him in the post, and this generated more than 30 views of him in one day.
The latest artist to notice me featuring his or her work understands these fundamental Internet truths. Her name is Arlana Green. She’s a very gifted painter from Vancouver who’s work speaks to me; as if she wants to carry a conversation without words, or even physical forms. Her jazz pieces are “inspired by the music of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Nina Simone and others. Photos and documentaries of jazz clubs during that era influenced me to capture the unique spirit of jazz musicians.“ She’s responsible for the main avatar of this site now, the one up on your address bar to the left and also at the bottom-center of this page. We’d switched to it after seeing death first-hand, and starting anew in an already rebirthed life (yes, it’s all VERY confusing). It worked with the red/white theme and obviously the fact that Sonny dedicated his short life to Jazz almost 100 years ago. In this sense, Arlana is a kindred spirit — at least artist — and she’ll forever be a part of the Sonny Wilkins family. (ART AND LINKS after the jump.) I’m linking the said lower avatar to her. But just in case, here’s a couple samples of her other work and a couple links. ENJOY, I know Sonny did:
-SonnyW.
thanks, sonny! i didn’t expect the article on arlana. that was really generous of you.