powerful....
The New BGOL Artwork Thread
- Thread starter TheBigOne
- Start date
powerful....
Unknown Artist
St. Benedict of Palermo
Portugal (c. 1650s)
Polychromed wood, 62 cm.
Chapel of Our Lady of Conception, Aradas, Portugal
Though monumental in conception, the robust figure of the black saint stands only about 2 feet high. It is carved of wood, then gilded and painted. Pupils of glass complete the effect of living faith. He stands on the altar of a chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary in Aradas, a small town located in the north-central coastal region of Portugal.
Read More at TheRoot.com
Haile Selassie and Joe Louis, 1935, by the phenomenal Mexican painter, caricaturist and illustrator Miguel Covarrubias (more here). Photo: Library of Congress via Art Knowledge News
http://vintageblackglamour.tumblr.com/archive
http://vintageblackglamour.tumblr.com/archive
The Big One had a great idea for a thread...I was inspired by the idea.
My thoughts exactly.
Nanny and the Pumpkin Seeds
This piece was inspired by the Jamaican Folktale of “Queen Nanny and the pumpkin seeds”. She is one of my favorite characters from Caribbean folklore and is Jamaica’s only female national hero. She was leader of the winward maroon tribe, a group africans who escaped slavery into the mountains of Jamaica and practiced guerrilla warfare on British plantations.
Queen Nanny or Nanny (1686 – 1733), is known as one of the earliest leaders of slave resistance in the Americas, and one of very few women. She is Jamaica’s only female National hero, and was a well-known leader of the Jamaican Maroons in the eighteenth century.The Maroons were defiant slaves who fled their oppressive existence on plantations and formed their own communities in the rugged, hilly interior of the islands. They were considered skilled fighters and hard to defeat. Nanny was a fierce military strategist who planned many attacks on british plantations and successfully defended the communities of the mountains so many times that the british finally decided to sign a treaty with her and the maroons that gave them their autonomy. Nanny was also an Obeah woman. She reached a kind of legendary status to Jamaicans as it was thought that she had supernatural powers.
The legend of Nanny and the Pumpkin Seeds recounts a time when the Maroons were at the brink of starvation and Queen Nanny was considering surrendering to the British. She heard a voice in her head tell her not yet, wait one more day.It was the voice of the ancestors. When she awoke the next morning, she found three pumpkin seeds in her apron pocket. The voice told her to plant them. She planted them on the side of a mountain now known as Pumpkin Hill, and in a very short time, the seeds grew to fruition with large pumpkins that saved the Maroons from starvation. This story is often cited when scholars refer to Nanny’s nurturing qualities, and her ability to care for her people like a mother earth deity.
Pumpkin Hill is located in Portland, Jamaica, near the blue mountains.
