Rhythm-A-Ning: James Phillips, Charles Searles & Frank Smith

James Phillips, Charles Searles and Frank Smith have produced art that visually reflects the qualities and characteristics of jazz. Each artist - in his own way - has improvised with color, rhythm, patterns, and forms to abstractly produce work which can soar and challenge in the way listening to Thelonious Monk might do. Though Searles is no longer with us, Phillips and Smith still work as colleagues in the innovative art group, AfriCOBRA. This exhibition is filled with light, color and sound and is an abstraction emerging from cultural experiences and practices. It is a visual embodiment of the idea of improvisation.

Special thanks to Diggs Gallery at Winston-Salem State University, the G. R. N’Namdi Center for Contemporary Art and the Searles/Spicer Estate.