Intuit presents Black Barbers and the Artistry of the Barbershops

Black Barbers and the Artistry of the Barbershop

Saturday, March 13, 11 am
Free and open to the public
(This notification is from the group called Intuit in Chicago. I highly recommend membership here!)

In conjunction with the exhibition The Treasure of Ulysses Davis, Quincy Mills, Assistant Professor of History at Vassar College, will give a presentation on the social and political culture of African American barbershops in the mid Twentieth-Century. Black barbershops have historically been places where commerce, culture and community intersect to inform African Americans' individual and collective freedom.

Ulysses Davis cut hair and created sculptures inside his barbershop in Savannah, Georgia, as an expression of his economic and artistic freedom. Barbering provided him the skill to maintain control of his economic life and the barbershop provided him the space to exercise his artistic creativity.

Jammin' at the Cotton Club.....

These life sized sculptures by Dirk Dahl have to be seen to be believed. He has lovingly captured the feel, the sound, and the spirit of Jazz greats, when Jazz was great. When I was a teen, my cousin, Fred, took me under his wing and brought me to the famous nightclub, Storyville, in Boston in the late.....forget it..... I'm not going to tell you the decade! There, and at the Worcester Auditorium, and at the Newport Jazz Festival we saw Ella Fitzgerald, Woody Herman and his Thundering Herd, Louis Armstrong, and so many more of the top musicians in the new world order called Jazz. Years later my friend Dirk was hearing about these same musicians and their performances at the Cotton Club in Florida. He started on a quest to honor each of his favorites and here are images of a couple more of his truly amazing sculptures. I can hear the music.....