Experimental Mississippi Photographer to Appear in the Peninsula Fine Arts Center Biennial 2004

(Reston, Va.) James W. Bailey, a native of Columbus, Mississippi, and resident of Reston, Virginia, has been announced as one of the juried finalists to participate in the Peninsula Fine Arts Center Biennial 2004. Organized by the Peninsula Fine Arts Center in Newport News, Virginia, this biennial exhibition of emerging national artists is considered by many visual artists and arts professionals in the state to be one of the most competitive and important surveys of contemporary art in Virginia.

Bailey’s experimental “Rough Edge Photography” piece, “Angel of Death”, was juried for inclusion in the exhibition by Carrie Przybilla, a curator since 1998 with the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia. Przybilla reviewed 972 entries by 338 artists and selected 123 works by 113 artists for the Biennial 2004. “I am thrilled to have to been invited to be in the Biennial 2004,” says Bailey. “To have my experimental style of film photography acknowledged by a curator of the stature of Ms. Przybilla and to have it presented in one of the premier contemporary art events in Virginia provide a further incentive to keep producing what I hope is meaningful and relevant new work.”

Being juried into the Biennial 2004 continues an impressive trend of national recognition of Bailey’s unique brand of photography by heavily credentialed curators and art critics. Earlier this year he was given an Honorable Mention Award for his “Rough Edge Photography” piece, “Circle Theatre - New Orleans,” at the Bethesda International Photography Competition, by William F. Stapp, the National Portrait Gallery’s first Curator of Photography.

In July Bailey was awarded the prestigious Albert J. Turbessi Award at the 47th Chautauqua National Exhibition of American Art for another of his “Rough Edge Photography” pieces, “Woman at the Tomb”, by the internationally renowned American art critic and art historian, Dr. Donald Kuspit.

Bailey explains that his “Rough Edge Photography” method results in the creation of one-of-a-kind images that cannot be duplicated or reprinted like a standard photograph from a negative. “In the case of ‘Angel of Death’, for example, I actually melted my original black and white negative and let the residue drip onto the burned print. The result is that this composite image of a cemetery angel I shot in St. Louis Number II Cemetery and its surrounding brick wall in New Orleans will be the only one that will ever exist.”

Bailey continues and explains the inspiration for and meaning of his creation selected for the Biennial 2004: “Well off the safe and beaten tourist path, St. Louis Number II Cemetery is located in an impoverished neighborhood bordered by the Iberville Housing Project to the south and the elevated I-10 Expressway on the north, and is less well known than its more famous older sister cemetery, St. Louis Number I Cemetery, the cemetery of legendary voodoo queen, Marie Leveau. Because of the isolation of the cemetery in a high crime neighborhood, and the fact that the police don’t patrol it as closely as the more popular St. Louis Number I, there is a very credible danger of visiting St. Louis Number II. You pretty much take your life in your own hands when you do so. St. Louis Number II has long held a fascination for me because it is so easily overlooked by the tourists and ignored by the locals. The dramatic irony of it being surrounded by an unimaginable level of poverty, crime, neglect and apathy has always interested me artistically. As an artist, I am interested in using my art to express a creative point of view on the subject of violence and crime in the inner city and how these issues affect the lives of innocent people.”

“The image of the wall surrounding St. Louis Number II was shot during a driving rain storm from inside my car. I burned a hole in the photo of the wall and layered this image over the burned, scratched and physically distressed image of the angel. I wanted to symbolize the mythological destructive power that the Biblical Angel of Death can bring forth if called upon. When you walk inside the walls of this cemetery located in this potentially dangerous neighborhood, you see these wonderfully peaceful and poetic statues, shrines and burial vaults. The view from outside the wall of the cemetery looks like a late 19th century prison located within a modern day drug-infested and crime-ridden neighborhood. You can’t help but feel your adrenaline level rise with the fear when walking in this wonderfully decayed, yet beautiful cemetery. It’s overwhelming. I wanted to create with this work a simultaneous sense of beauty and fear.”

Bailey believes that art has the potential, as well as the obligation, to stimulate a conversation about pressing social issues. He is particularly concerned about the issue of inner city crime and its affects on the lives of its victims in New Orleans, a place that he called home for more than twenty years, and a city that only a few years ago was known at the Murder Capital of the United States.

“This piece was meant to be a comment on the horrific nature of random brutal street crime and how far too often the worst of violence is isolated in neighborhoods that tourists don’t know about, or want to know about, and that locals know too much about and dare not visit. ‘Angel of Death’ is also a fantasy piece. The idea being that if the angels inside that cemetery were called upon, they could melt the prison like walls that surround them like butter and fan out across the city of New Orleans and deliver their death sentences with impunity against those who deserve it, the perpetrators of violent crime against the innocent, especially the innocent children who are all too frequently the victims of untimely and undeserved death. ‘Angel of Death’ is a work of art that offers the prayerful hope that peace and justice, which sometimes involves the defensive use of violence, will in the end, triumph.”

“Angel of Death” will be on exhibit at the Peninsula Fine Arts Center Biennial 2004 from September 4 through October 31. An opening reception will take place on September 11. The Biennial 2004 will be held at the Peninsula Fine Arts Center in Newport New, Virginia. For more information, see the Peninsula Fine Arts Center’s web site at http://www.pfac-va.org/.

Bailey’s “Rough Edge Photography” works, “Elysian Fields Avenue”, “Buddy Bolden Memorial”, “The Death of K & B” and “Cemetery Angel VI” will be on view through September 10 at the League of Reston Artists Contemporary Art Exhibition being held at the University of Phoenix Northern Virginia Campus in Reston. For directions, see the League of Reston Artists web sit at http://leagueofrestonartists.org.

Bailey’s first metro Washington, D.C. regional solo exhibition, titled, “The Death of Film”, will open August 30 through October 1 at the Rachel M. Schlesinger Concert Hall and Arts Center on the campus of the Northern Virginia Community College in Arlington, Virginia. An opening reception will take place on Saturday, September 11 from 1:00 - 3:00 pm. For directions, see the Rachel M. Schlesinger Concert Hall and Arts Center’s web site at: http://www.nvcc.edu/alexandria/schlesingercenter/.


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Digital Photos Attached:
1.File name: ANGEL OF DEATH.jpg

For more information about the artist, please see the following web sites: www.jameswbailey.artroof.com or www.leagueofrestonartists.org/bailey.htm

Current and Future exhibitions featuring the “Rough Edge Photography” of James W. Bailey:

September 2004 - Group Exhibition - League of Reston Artists Contemporary Art Exhibition - University of Phoenix Northern Virginia Campus, Reston, Virginia.

September 2004 - Solo Exhibition - “The Death of Film” - Margaret W. and Joseph L. Fisher Art Gallery/Rachel M. Schlesinger Concert Hall and Arts Center, Arlington, Virginia.

January 2005 - Solo Exhibition - “Burnversions” - Reston Community Center at Hunters Woods, Reston, Virginia.

ARTIST BIO:

James W. Bailey
(American, 1959 - )

James W. Bailey’s small scale “Rough Edge Photography” images evoke the accidental decayed beauty of blistered film stills projected on a theatre screen when the movie reel stops and the film begins to burn. Known for his deeply personal narrative series that explore the forbidding depths of the inner city of New Orleans, many of his black and white source photographs are shot from the driver’s seat of his automobile as he drives the dangerous streets through brutally impoverished neighborhoods that most of the tourists on Bourbon Street never see. His burned, slashed and violently manipulated chemically developed negatives and prints provocatively capture the transitional movements of disposed people and mythical events through time. Reflecting a cinematic sensibility with his approach, his body of work resonates with an experimental energy and quality reminiscent of the avant-garde films of Stan Brakhage.

Born in Columbus, Mississippi, in 1959, Bailey is a self-taught artist/photographer and an experimental imagist writer. His art focus also includes Littoral Art projects that explore the fleeting moments of cross-cultural communicative intersections; film projects, including the short film, Talking Smack; “Wind Painting”, a unique naturalistic art practice inspired by the vanishing Southern African-American cultural tradition of the Bottle Tree; and street photography centered on the hidden cultural edges of inner city New Orleans life. Bailey’s experimental imagist literary works include, The Black Velvet Smash and the Missing Gospel of William S. Burroughs, Cold Dark Matters, Eastern 304, Killing Film Noir, and, two books of poetry, The Despised American Edition and Southern Standard Time, all published by Force Majeure Press. He has also written a full-length feature film screenplay, The Cold, a crime drama based on a true story set in New Orleans, which is currently in pre-production development.

“Rough Edge Photography” - About the Technique

On September 11, 2001, artist James W. Bailey began experimenting with a creative photographic style he has named, “Rough Edge Photography”. He refers to it as “Rough Edge” because his photographic work, unlike traditional photographs, literally has rough edges, surface abrasions and other caustic protrusions discernable to the eye and touch.

Bailey’s experimental technique involves exploring the “death of chemically developed negatives and prints” through the use of found 35mm source cameras he purchases in thrift stores. His process incorporates the violent manipulation of unexposed film, developed negatives and prints. Undeveloped film may be subjected to intense heat or pin pricks through the film canister. Developed negatives are burned, scratched, slashed or cut, as are the prints. In some cases, the original negative is melted onto the final print. The found camera that is used to shoot a particular series of source photographs is frequently smashed upon completion of the series.

The subjection of Bailey’s film negatives and prints to his process, combined with the destruction of the source camera, results in a unique image that can not be duplicated: each “Rough Edge Photography” piece is an original work of art. The artist does not produce prints of his images.