SYNCOPATE: Homage to Jazz
June 2 - July 2, 2022
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Donald Boudreaux
Boudreaux’s work has been featured in galleries and museums, including the Wadsworth Athenaeum Museum of Art in Hartford, CT; The New Britain Museum of American Art in New Britain, CT; and various galleries. He was represented by the U.S. Embassy in Lesotho, and was awarded an Arts International Residency by Augusta Savage Gallery at the University of Massachusetts Amherst for travel to South Africa and Germany. A Connecticut resident for most of his adult life, he earned a BFA from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
“Born in Lafayette, Louisiana in 1958, my parents had nine children. As a shy, painfully introverted kid, I observed my mother’s improvisational skills for provisions. She did everything from the heart: cooking, storytelling, interior decorating, and praying. I developed similar skills for drawing and music. I played the alto saxophone and kalimba in intervals like I drew ferocious lines with various widths, and those disciplines later became my creative orgy. The indigenous fusion of Creole language, cooking, voodoo, zydeco, and jazz music impacted my formative years.
My creative process is unplanned, and my work is inspired by waves of unseen sounds. I build shapes on top of shapes, then subtract shapes, then build again. Everything I put on the canvas has the potential to be removed, erased, and something else built on it. I’m telling stories, so you can still see the shape that was there. It’s like giving it a human quality. But, I’m not looking for perfection. I like that I’m fearless. I trust where I’m going, even though I don’t know where I’m going. It is a form of storytelling: constructions of emotional and metaphorical expressions. Using charcoals, pastels, materials, mixed-media assemblages, installations, and paints, the flat color areas, distortions, geometric forms, and spatial relationships are all present in my allegorical vistas. I am a visitor of material, and a manipulator of intuition, or anything my hand, not my mind, finds desirable in a continuous, transcendental composition. Ultimately, I work towards the incompletion of my personal evolution.”
Andres Chaparro
Andres Chaparro, born in 1963 in Hartford, Connecticut, is a mixed-media painter who makes use of oil pastels, acrylic paint, marker, crayon, pencil, pen, spray paint, and found objects. His expressive images capture the essence of jazz music and social justice. He began painting on canvas in the late 1980′s while completing his studies in New York City and the early paintings explored different mediums and subject matters, but he was always drawn back to jazz inspired topics and moments. His fluid style reflects more concern for spontaneous emotion than traditional conventions. Chaparro's work has served as the face of the Montclair Jazz Festival and has been featured at New York City’s Blue Note Jazz Club as well as Soul In The Horn and the National Jazz Museum in Harlem and has been exhibited at other US venues as well as Europe, Canada, and the Middle East. Andres paints out of his Windsor, CT studio.
“I have found purpose in creating artwork rooted in Jazz & Social Justice. While I have always possessed an awareness for the need to advocate for equality and justice my work initially gravitated to my passion and love for Jazz. I bring the layers and textures of the music to my work. It is very important to me that I honor the pioneers who carry the torch by keeping this music forging forward. My jazz inspired work. My approach to painting is entirely influenced and propelled by what I’m feeling. Totally improvised and free leading to paintings that are very fluid and in the tradition of Neo-Expressionism. Fueled by my personal relationships with some of the greatest practitioners of jazz my paintings take on a very intimate approach. In the past 12 years while working in this subject matter solely, I found myself creating work that speaks not only to jazz but also injustices in our society.”
Bobby Davis
Bobby Davis hails from Providence, RI, and currently lives in Northampton. His photographs of prominent musicians have positioned him as a highly valued documentary artist in the Pioneer Valley. Whether in color, or black and white, we always witness his impeccable timing, capturing for us, in case we weren’t in the audience, those magical moments when the musicians breathe, lift their arms, nod their heads, or simply wait for the next moment of inspiration.
“I arrived in Amherst, MA in 1977 and navigated my way into the University Without Walls Program at the University of Massachusetts, quickly becoming active in student affairs with Nuumo News, a weekly section of The Collegian, the university’s [student] publication. Given my first assignment to cover a concert by nationally renowned guitarist, Michael Gregory, I was shaken by the fact that there were no photographers. I ran back to the office and without second-guessing myself, took a camera and ran back to the concert. The next morning, I was in the darkroom of The Collegian, excited to see what I was able to capture when a writer from The Amherst Record came in to ask me for one of my photos to include in his article. Later Michael Gregory himself came to me and offered me to do press work for him. And so, it came to be that I once lugged my Fender Rhodes by my side, and here I am now with a camera attached to my hip. Through the years I have taken many photos and lasting images of families and friends, performance artists in the streets, our family’s journey to the Philippines and the Far East but nothing compared to the moments I’ve spent with musicians. Many of them are long gone, but not so long ago, they came to our valley and shared with us their precious gifts.”
Terry Jenoure
Terry Jenoure was born and raised in the South Bronx, New York into a Puerto Rican and Jamaican family. A professional violinist, vocalist, and composer, she began music studies at the age of seven and was an early protégé of the Free Jazz Movement. A self-taught visual artist, her approach is carried over from her many years as a sculptor of sound. She has exhibited at the London Biennale, and in Germany, Cameroon, Italy, Brussels, the U.S., and her mixed-media figures were commissioned by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture’s Museum Store. Holding Masters and Doctoral degrees in Education, Terry was on the graduate faculty at Lesley University for 18 years and has trained community leaders in the field of arts for social change in Mexico, India, Colombia, Israel, and South Africa. For three decades, she served as the Director of Augusta Savage Art Gallery at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
“I’ve made things since I was a kid. I’ve always shut myself in my room, locked the door and gotten so excited about taking these journeys inward. I trust myself. Because I was raised to question authority and value my intuition, I work best when I don’t know where I’m going. I’m happiest then. And although I make all kinds of work for the public, secretly, I do it for my own health, my well-being. Creating things keeps me calm and centered. I’ve been an improvising musician and a composer all my life. Having recorded and toured with great musicians, I know that despite the common notion that improvising is done “off the cuff,” some of us see things differently. Some of us know that successful, masterful improvisation requires boundless preparation and nerves of steel.”
Rodney Madison
Born and raised on the south side of Chicago, Rodney’s childhood neighborhood bordered the University on one side and housing projects on the other. Madison grew up surrounded by art. His father Reggie Madison, a longtime professional and award-winning painter, influenced Rodney’s aesthetics in many ways. His father wanted Rodney to become an artist, taking him to the Art Institute of Chicago and introducing Rodney to his artist friends. But Rodney was more interested in sports, and he didn’t actually begin painting in full force until about eight years ago. Since then, his work has been sought after both within the Pioneer Valley and in the wider art world. As he says, “It’s the magic of art! I had a storefront in Turners Falls. We were doing Black Lives Matter work and I was painting on my floor, then, on my neighbor’s wall. And it just grew. But that’s something I believe in. The magic of art. Sometimes ‘alchemy’ is an overused term, but that’s how I see it. With art, when you open up to your creative mind, you have to believe that it’s there, no matter if you change something, or which way you go, it’s going to go the right way.”
About his connection to music, Madison says:
“I grew up listening to the Motown sounds. Earth, Wind, and Fire. The Ohio Players. And I love The Staple Singers’ ‘I’ll Take You There.’ When I paint, I’ll play that song over and over again. It never fails me! My father listened to Ornette Coleman, Miles, Coltrane. I was young and considered that noise at the time. Now, I love Ornette Coleman! I relate to the freedom. In Ornette, there’s an organized chaos that I relate to. I don’t know what it means to be free when I paint. People say the hardest thing is starting. Whether with painting or music. It’s blank and you’ve got to fill it in. It’s important to know you have options to fill it in. There are no rules if you really let yourself go with it. I think Ornette believed what I believe.”
June 2 - July 2, 2022
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Donald Boudreaux
Boudreaux’s work has been featured in galleries and museums, including the Wadsworth Athenaeum Museum of Art in Hartford, CT; The New Britain Museum of American Art in New Britain, CT; and various galleries. He was represented by the U.S. Embassy in Lesotho, and was awarded an Arts International Residency by Augusta Savage Gallery at the University of Massachusetts Amherst for travel to South Africa and Germany. A Connecticut resident for most of his adult life, he earned a BFA from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
“Born in Lafayette, Louisiana in 1958, my parents had nine children. As a shy, painfully introverted kid, I observed my mother’s improvisational skills for provisions. She did everything from the heart: cooking, storytelling, interior decorating, and praying. I developed similar skills for drawing and music. I played the alto saxophone and kalimba in intervals like I drew ferocious lines with various widths, and those disciplines later became my creative orgy. The indigenous fusion of Creole language, cooking, voodoo, zydeco, and jazz music impacted my formative years.
My creative process is unplanned, and my work is inspired by waves of unseen sounds. I build shapes on top of shapes, then subtract shapes, then build again. Everything I put on the canvas has the potential to be removed, erased, and something else built on it. I’m telling stories, so you can still see the shape that was there. It’s like giving it a human quality. But, I’m not looking for perfection. I like that I’m fearless. I trust where I’m going, even though I don’t know where I’m going. It is a form of storytelling: constructions of emotional and metaphorical expressions. Using charcoals, pastels, materials, mixed-media assemblages, installations, and paints, the flat color areas, distortions, geometric forms, and spatial relationships are all present in my allegorical vistas. I am a visitor of material, and a manipulator of intuition, or anything my hand, not my mind, finds desirable in a continuous, transcendental composition. Ultimately, I work towards the incompletion of my personal evolution.”
Andres Chaparro
Andres Chaparro, born in 1963 in Hartford, Connecticut, is a mixed-media painter who makes use of oil pastels, acrylic paint, marker, crayon, pencil, pen, spray paint, and found objects. His expressive images capture the essence of jazz music and social justice. He began painting on canvas in the late 1980′s while completing his studies in New York City and the early paintings explored different mediums and subject matters, but he was always drawn back to jazz inspired topics and moments. His fluid style reflects more concern for spontaneous emotion than traditional conventions. Chaparro's work has served as the face of the Montclair Jazz Festival and has been featured at New York City’s Blue Note Jazz Club as well as Soul In The Horn and the National Jazz Museum in Harlem and has been exhibited at other US venues as well as Europe, Canada, and the Middle East. Andres paints out of his Windsor, CT studio.
“I have found purpose in creating artwork rooted in Jazz & Social Justice. While I have always possessed an awareness for the need to advocate for equality and justice my work initially gravitated to my passion and love for Jazz. I bring the layers and textures of the music to my work. It is very important to me that I honor the pioneers who carry the torch by keeping this music forging forward. My jazz inspired work. My approach to painting is entirely influenced and propelled by what I’m feeling. Totally improvised and free leading to paintings that are very fluid and in the tradition of Neo-Expressionism. Fueled by my personal relationships with some of the greatest practitioners of jazz my paintings take on a very intimate approach. In the past 12 years while working in this subject matter solely, I found myself creating work that speaks not only to jazz but also injustices in our society.”
Bobby Davis
Bobby Davis hails from Providence, RI, and currently lives in Northampton. His photographs of prominent musicians have positioned him as a highly valued documentary artist in the Pioneer Valley. Whether in color, or black and white, we always witness his impeccable timing, capturing for us, in case we weren’t in the audience, those magical moments when the musicians breathe, lift their arms, nod their heads, or simply wait for the next moment of inspiration.
“I arrived in Amherst, MA in 1977 and navigated my way into the University Without Walls Program at the University of Massachusetts, quickly becoming active in student affairs with Nuumo News, a weekly section of The Collegian, the university’s [student] publication. Given my first assignment to cover a concert by nationally renowned guitarist, Michael Gregory, I was shaken by the fact that there were no photographers. I ran back to the office and without second-guessing myself, took a camera and ran back to the concert. The next morning, I was in the darkroom of The Collegian, excited to see what I was able to capture when a writer from The Amherst Record came in to ask me for one of my photos to include in his article. Later Michael Gregory himself came to me and offered me to do press work for him. And so, it came to be that I once lugged my Fender Rhodes by my side, and here I am now with a camera attached to my hip. Through the years I have taken many photos and lasting images of families and friends, performance artists in the streets, our family’s journey to the Philippines and the Far East but nothing compared to the moments I’ve spent with musicians. Many of them are long gone, but not so long ago, they came to our valley and shared with us their precious gifts.”
Terry Jenoure
Terry Jenoure was born and raised in the South Bronx, New York into a Puerto Rican and Jamaican family. A professional violinist, vocalist, and composer, she began music studies at the age of seven and was an early protégé of the Free Jazz Movement. A self-taught visual artist, her approach is carried over from her many years as a sculptor of sound. She has exhibited at the London Biennale, and in Germany, Cameroon, Italy, Brussels, the U.S., and her mixed-media figures were commissioned by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture’s Museum Store. Holding Masters and Doctoral degrees in Education, Terry was on the graduate faculty at Lesley University for 18 years and has trained community leaders in the field of arts for social change in Mexico, India, Colombia, Israel, and South Africa. For three decades, she served as the Director of Augusta Savage Art Gallery at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
“I’ve made things since I was a kid. I’ve always shut myself in my room, locked the door and gotten so excited about taking these journeys inward. I trust myself. Because I was raised to question authority and value my intuition, I work best when I don’t know where I’m going. I’m happiest then. And although I make all kinds of work for the public, secretly, I do it for my own health, my well-being. Creating things keeps me calm and centered. I’ve been an improvising musician and a composer all my life. Having recorded and toured with great musicians, I know that despite the common notion that improvising is done “off the cuff,” some of us see things differently. Some of us know that successful, masterful improvisation requires boundless preparation and nerves of steel.”
Rodney Madison
Born and raised on the south side of Chicago, Rodney’s childhood neighborhood bordered the University on one side and housing projects on the other. Madison grew up surrounded by art. His father Reggie Madison, a longtime professional and award-winning painter, influenced Rodney’s aesthetics in many ways. His father wanted Rodney to become an artist, taking him to the Art Institute of Chicago and introducing Rodney to his artist friends. But Rodney was more interested in sports, and he didn’t actually begin painting in full force until about eight years ago. Since then, his work has been sought after both within the Pioneer Valley and in the wider art world. As he says, “It’s the magic of art! I had a storefront in Turners Falls. We were doing Black Lives Matter work and I was painting on my floor, then, on my neighbor’s wall. And it just grew. But that’s something I believe in. The magic of art. Sometimes ‘alchemy’ is an overused term, but that’s how I see it. With art, when you open up to your creative mind, you have to believe that it’s there, no matter if you change something, or which way you go, it’s going to go the right way.”
About his connection to music, Madison says:
“I grew up listening to the Motown sounds. Earth, Wind, and Fire. The Ohio Players. And I love The Staple Singers’ ‘I’ll Take You There.’ When I paint, I’ll play that song over and over again. It never fails me! My father listened to Ornette Coleman, Miles, Coltrane. I was young and considered that noise at the time. Now, I love Ornette Coleman! I relate to the freedom. In Ornette, there’s an organized chaos that I relate to. I don’t know what it means to be free when I paint. People say the hardest thing is starting. Whether with painting or music. It’s blank and you’ve got to fill it in. It’s important to know you have options to fill it in. There are no rules if you really let yourself go with it. I think Ornette believed what I believe.”