this is an excerpt from the original article...
Regular readers of this Notebook know that I am enamored of the outdated conceptual duo of nature and culture, which are not quite the opposite terms that the originators of that binary once thought. So this month’s survey is devoted to culture taking a look at nature (at Fernbank) and culture(s) in all their pluralized unity, in a variety of different art spaces (the about-to-open Take It Easy, and the other Edgewood Avenue galleries, the WADDI and whitespace; and MINT).
We are at the edge of fundamental redefinitions of cultural symbols, then. And that is, by coincidence, what the WADDI is doing when curator and gallerist Shawn Vinson presents seven immigrant artists in Here & Now, and the simple act of presenting under the same rubric artists who emigrated to the United States from China (Xie Caomin), Mexico (Hector Amador and Yehimi Cambrón) and England (Ruby Franklin, Ruth Franklin, Michael Jackson and Kosmo Vinyl) does much to illustrate the theme of their partner organization, Welcoming America — namely, that this is a country in which everyone is welcome.
Putting four very different types of English-born artists (none are from the three other parts of the United Kingdom) into a multicultural context in which all seven artists are now contributing differently to the United States’ cultural identity is, perhaps, as subtle an act of redefinition as can be imagined, defining the shape of diversity just a little differently.
Dr. Jerry Cullum’s reviews and essays have appeared in Art Papers magazine, Raw Vision, Art in America, ARTnews, International Journal of African-American Art and many other popular and scholarly journals. In 2020 he was awarded the Rabkin Prize for his outstanding contribution to arts journalism.
