Friday, February 18, 2011

Proceed and Be Bold


Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr.
showing now through May 10.

How far would you go for your one true love? Would you give up all of your earthly possessions, your job, and your family? What if your one true love was a printing press...


At 40 years of age, Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. abandoned the traditional American Dream to follow his own. Unsatisfied with his comfortable, middle-class life, Amos traded in his computer for a printing press and his white collar for a pair of overalls. Armed with life, liberty, peanuts, and a meager yearly income of $7,000, Amos cranked out a new, mutinous declaration of independence.

Today, Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr. is known as a force to be reckoned with. He is a printer with something to say and a bold, memorable way of saying it, through wood type, color overlays and chipboard. His work explores issues of race, gender, equality and artistic expression. He is a self-proclaimed "humble negro printer." In fact, one of the worst things you could do is call him an "African-American artist," so don't. But his work as a printer is unmistakable, powerful, strong... everything a great artist hopes to attain.

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