In the original 1957 lyrics to the song “America” from the Broadway musical West Side Story, Puerto Rican immigrants dance across a rooftop in the stifling heat of smog-filled Manhattan. “Immigrant goes to America, many ‘hellos’ in America, nobody knows in America,” the women sing.
Do you have to be a starving artist to be successful? Absolutely not! Jay Parnell not only works at UPS, but he is also a narrative painter. Parnell started out as a portrait photographer and then took those skills and taught himself how to paint. Parnell is now one of the most successful painters in the Midwest, and his work is sought after by collectors across the country. How do you take the world we are now living in with movements such as Black Lives Matter or the political divisions across this country?
What do a baby rhino, soldiers on stilts and humans dragging a whale mean to Iranian artist Avish Khebrehzadeh? Watch as she draws the figures for her video, “Seven Silent Songs” and her grand, wall-sized drawing, “Tree of Life in Blue,” temporarily installed at the National Gallery of Art.
