Jerome’s new hardcover book, just out, is an absolute jewel. 88 pages of gorgeous images sewn-bound in a pop of red with beautiful black edge-painted pages in a book block format. Exquisitely designed by Andrea Hemmann and printed by Brilliant Graphics.
Jerome Washington’s “Birds” is $54 + Shipping. Send us an email by clicking HERE! and we will send you the secure PayPal link to pay for the book. Items ship out within a week of purchase.
©2023 Jerome Washington and The Drawing Room.
Philadelphia sludge outfit Quiet Man release their first single, Set to Boil is the New Standard, from their upcoming debut, The Starving Lesson.
CD edition preorder available from Cursed Monk Records
Ltd 100 baby pink w/white splatter available from the band
Ltd 100 random color variant available from Riff Merchant Records and Astralands
Quiet Man has been releasing eerie, esoteric bits of noise and drone via various social media platforms for years, but Set to Boil is their first proper studio release, tumbling onto the listener in deafening waves of thick riffs and tortured choir vocals. Previously monikered as God Root, the group manages to create a sonic soundscape that is at once vast and claustrophobic, pivoting between crashing walls of distortion and thundering percussion to yawning stretches of atmospheric tension, punctuated by dissonant electronics.
Though Philadelphia skies may finally be clear of smoke and smog, it’s hard to forget the apocalyptic, yellow-stained screen of clouds and burning red sun while listening to Set to Boil. The track could easily serve as soundtrack to the recent East Coast blanket of wildfire smoke, particularly when bellowed vocals belt out lyrics like “It hasn’t always been this way / Walled in and burning / The Earth is a crematorium.” One might feel prone to despair while listening, but an undercurrent of cautious hope seems to permeate through the softer moments; Quiet Man’s debut cover art, depicting a child’s crayon drawing of an anthropomorphic rabbit strolling beneath a bright yellow sun, might be viewed as sarcastic by a cynical viewer, but instead seems to signify that Quiet Man believe that, yes, a better world is out there.
Set to Boil is the New Standard is streaming on Spotify and Bandcamp. Quiet Man’s debut, The Starving Lesson, is out on July 14th, via Riff Merchant Records, Astralands, and Cursed Monk. Catch Quiet Man live at Ortlieb’s on July 6th.
-Elijah Bliss
Enjoy friends!
I have been working quietly over the last 2 years and focusing on narrative portraits dealing with public and personal atrocities.
I will be sharing selections here each month. More often when I’m not feeling insecure.
Yusef and I have been collaborating in call and response for many years with night animals paintings and poems. Think of this chapbook as an early excerpt of the completed works to be collected in their entirety. A publication of a hardcover volume that includes all of the poems and paintings from throughout our process is forthcoming.
If you’re planning on buying a copy you can hit me up HERE with your address and I’ll send you a PayPal link with a shipping price. The books are $15 + Shipping and should be in the mail within a few days of order.
In an interview with Michael Collins in the African diaspora arts journal Callaloo, Yusef had this to say about the collaboration:
”I saw the images from Rachel Bliss’s work before I met her, in a catalogue entitled A State of Bliss, curated by Dr. James Dickinson at the Rider University Gallery. I was struck by the originality in her work. Also, I kept returning to the following paragraph in the catalogue:
Many small works depict strange, demented, and surreal animals. However, to interpret them exclusively in a traditional manner, as evidence of an imaginary world of dreams and fantasy, would be a mistake, for an intense realism informs Bliss’s depiction of this menagerie. As Bliss recalls, a neighbor, Farmer Jim, began collecting exotic birds and animals, keeping them in an alley that connected with Bliss’s house. For a while, the collection made for an unbelievable sight, contradicting the grimness of surrounding conditions: “Here were these animals-which at the beginning were so wonderful and totally out of place- in the midst of drunks smashing bottles against factories the screams of sex workers being beaten up by men under the El, loud car stereos which set off car alarms all down our street, and all the empty crack vials, dirty needles, and used condoms that I swept up every morning off my front step”. The family enjoyed “waking up to the animals… the rooster cock-a-doodle-dooing, the pigs oinking, and the huge peacock staring at us through our bathroom window.” But abuse and neglect plagued the surviving animals. The surreal imagery of the animal paintings records a real situation. As Bliss puts it: “I use fantastic color to remember the beauty of the animals but if they look sad and somewhat demented it’s because they were.”
Night Animals has been a recurring title in my head for more than ten years, long before I saw an image by Rachel. I knew I wanted to write poems about nocturnal creatures, animals, and human beings. So, in this sense, we were already walking on a similar landscape before our paths crossed.
Most of Rachel’s works are portraits, which seem to me to be the most difficult, time-consuming avenues or approaches in creating visual art. Faces demand differences even if they are only slightly varied, such as identical twins. Each portrait is a concise study- an active meditation and/or approximation. Rachel is a natural surrealist. Authentic surprise is interfused into the character of each piece - a personality. It seems that her highly developed graphic skills give her the ability of a gifted psychologist who can capture the mental landscape through visual depiction: the mind made flesh through paint and texture. Some of her most provocative pieces appear as chimeras that have wandered out of a state of mind. But because of her technique and process, nothing is an accident. Everything’s deliberate, and intensely deliberated on. Intention bends to her control; a tough beauty emerges from the thoughtful hues. In this sense, Rachel’s ability to find beauty and celebrate it is what drew me to her work. For her, destiny is often a reality: the crippled songbird lands on her shoulder because she has the heart to help it. If one detects or glimpse violence in a piece of hers, it isn’t accidental or ornamental: it underlines the state of affairs in America- personal and public, urban and rural. Together, as collaborators we are interested in creating dialogue.”
On June 7th, Rachel Bliss’ independent exhibition space, The Drawing Room will celebrate its grand opening with a showing from artist Gabriel Romeu. Monoprints from the collections “Apologues” and “Invasive Species” will be on display, the first time any of Romeu’s works will be shown to the public.
Romeu states that no more than a small handful of people have seen these works in person, and those that have seem to interpret them quite apocalyptically. The “Apologues” monoprint series feature nude hairless figures drifting through desolate urban landscapes, withered physiques besieged by, sometimes tethered to talon-brandishing birds that fly above the stark topography. Human figures fall from building tops, wade through ebon pools or soberly stand with vacuous eyes cast upward, sometimes from behind black bars staring past the viewer into an unseen void beyond.
The mind swirls with explanations for the somber tone of “Apologues,” to bring meaning to the perceived woe and anguish. Perhaps the images make a statement upon economic antagonism and the waging of class warfare. Perhaps they envision a counter reality wherein the human subjects populate a monolithic plantation operated by avian overseers, a declaration on the state of factory farming. Perhaps they function as simple documentation of the urban decay seen in rural communities, the deindustrialization of metropolises and their transformations to ghost towns.
While the dizzying interpretations mount in the viewers’ brain, Romeu himself claims to have no answers, considering himself no better an interpreter or expert on his work than anyone else.
“I think the notion of art being self expression, it’s a little self indulgent. I’m interested in investigation,” Romeu says matter of factly.
Romeu went on to say that not only did he avoid establishing narrative and protagonist, but actively tried to eliminate both, being more intrigued by audience interpretation than a singular statement.
“I love when people develop stories,” Romeu says gleefully.
Romeu was born in the Netherlands to a Dutch mother and WWII era 82nd Airborne infantrymen Puerto Rican father. As a child he lived all across Europe, in Germany, Turkey and France before ending up in the Western suburbs of Philadelphia. Romeu now lives unassumingly in Chesterfield, New Jersey caring for several rescue animals, among them his horse, Chomsky.
When I asked him what prompted the decision to have his work on display for the first time, Romeu’s answer was similarly modest.
“Because Rachel offered. I couldn’t give them to a better person.”
Romeu was a fan of Bliss’ work before meeting her while she was the Community Outreach and Educational Coordinator at the Center for Art and Wood in 2012. In 2017, Bliss became what Romeu says was the third or fourth person to see his monoprints.
It may seem somewhat antithetical at first thought to Romeu’s lack of statement within his work to have them displayed in an exhibitive space. Sequencing and sharing works that so intently seek to avoid and eliminate both narrative and protagonist might seem like a clash of concepts, but to hear Romeu tell it, having others interpret his work is what continues to drive him to create.
“I get to see something through someone else’s eyes. I don’t need that control, I had control of trying to eliminate the narrative. The are representative of me, but everything I make invokes questions rather than statements.”
With this lack of pretense in mind, the former narratives conjured by the viewer in Romeu’s work can’t help but begin to crumble and waver, forcing oneself to reexamine their anecdotal deductions. Perhaps Romeu’s human subjects are not falling to the earth, but ascending to the firmament. Perhaps they are not besieged by or tethered to their avian counterparts, but rather are being lead to an elevated echelon, to help populate an idyllic existence. Perhaps the towering edifices are not in decrepitude, but in mid transformation to a yet unknown aspiration.
“It’s your work now,” says Romeu, a mischievously satisfactory look upon his face.
“You’re looking at it, what do you think? What do you see? That’s what I’m interested in.”
It may well be the first and only time Romeu’s “Apologues” will be viewed as a set, before it potentially splinters forever across an audience that will endlessly reinterpret and reevaluate the works in the years to come. And in many ways, this indefinite and impermanent destination could be considered the very apotheosis of Romeu’s nebulous anti-narrative.
The Drawing Room will open its doors at 7 PM on Friday, June 7th, until 11 PM, displaying works from Gabriel Romeu’s series “Apologues” and “Invasive Species.” Visit https://www.thedrawingroom.gallery for more details.
- Elijah Bliss, 2019
The opening event for "Night Animals: Divine King After Dust, in Honor of Tyrone" was a huge success! Tyrone's family was there and all of the guests and the Edison poetry team had a beautiful time!
Special thanks to Rachel Bliss, Yusef Komunyakaa, Freda Anderson, Sydney Coffin, Bruce Hoffman, Juan Green, Dante Rivera, Taisha Castillo, Christopher Febus, Zaire Douglas, Brandon Melendez, Alexander Fernandez, Nila-Ne Gonzalez-Ortiz, Christian Cherry, Nahja Martinez, Angelito Figueroa, Gabriel Mendez, Shante Forson, Zaihya Vangas, Nashalie Squires, Katherin Castillo, Naila Martinez, and Ben Colker.
Come by and see the work!! The show will be up at Graver's Lane Gallery through June 16th! I promise you will be memorably moved!
Graver's Lane Gallery: 8405 Germantown Ave. Philadelphia, PA 19118
