Middleman Productions describes the artwork as “spiritual, captivating and haunting” in style and tone.

Hyannis, MA (PRWEB) February 27, 2013

Middleman Productions announces that the thought-provoking exhibit, Icons of the Civil Rights Movement, is now on display at Zion Union Heritage Museum in Hyannis, Massachusetts.

Martin Luther King. Rosa Parks. Emmett Till. The Freedom Riders. Reverend James Reeb. These and dozens of other activists who gave their passion and their lives for the Civil Rights Movement are immortalized by artist Pamela Chatterton-Purdy of Harwich Port, Massachusetts in the Icons of the Civil Rights Movement exhibit

Artist Pamela Chatterton-Purdy with Little Rock 9, one of the Icons in the series.

With 26 pieces in total, Icons of the Civil Rights Movement depicts persons and events that were crucial to this transformative period in American history. Each Icon is represented in gold leaf on wood panel to suggest the sacred nature of the movement and the sacrifices made by so many in the cause of social justice. Pamela uses found objects, oil painted collage papers, locks, keys and chains, and other objects that best symbolize the person or event represented.

The Icons have been exhibited at more than 25 colleges and universities, galleries, libraries and churches in the US Northeast and Eastern Shore, including Boston University, the State House in Boston and the Methodist Center in Washington, DC for the first inauguration of President Barack Obama. When the show is not traveling, it is on display at Zion Union Heritage Museum in Hyannis, Massachusetts.

“The series emerged out of my own concerns during the Civil Rights era when my husband, David, and I were first married and living in Chicago in the early 1960s,” Pamela comments. “I was hired as an art director by John Johnson, publisher of Ebony and Jet magazines, and was one of two whites working in a company of 150 employees. So many events were happening at the time: the murder of Medgar Evers, the March on Washington, the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist in Birmingham, and the assassination of President John Kennedy. I couldn’t help but get involved in the Civil Rights Movement in some way.”

Pamela and David, a Methodist minister, raised a family of four children: two biological daughters and two adopted sons (one African-American, the other Vietnamese/African-American). Over the years, they experienced the sting of racism. Along with this personal history and having taught art in colleges and public schools, Pamela decided to put her passion about the Civil Rights Movement into her art.

This decision gelled after a trip in 2004 to pivotal places and meeting heroic figures of the Civil Rights Movement. Pamela completed the first 16 of the series in time for the 40th anniversary of Dr. King’s assassination in 2008. Originally 16 Icons comprised the first exhibit, but as Pamela and her husband became immersed in research about the era, she discovered more and more individuals who deserved to be honored. The Icons collection has grown to its current 26.

Public response to the Icons has been encouraging, with reviewers commenting: “It is an amazing, moving history in art and narrative about the Civil Rights Movement,” “This exhibit will touch you to the depths of your soul,” and “This socially conscious artist is so impassioned about her work, you could say that racism gets under her skin.”
A full-color, coffee-table-style book of the same name is also available for purchase for $29.95 plus tax and shipping. The book is available through Amazon.com or on the artist’s website, http://www.chatterton-purdyart.com.

If you would like the exhibit to travel to your locale, contact Mark Person, Middleman Productions at 774.487.1427 or Mark@dreamproducer.com.
Pamela is also available for commissioned work. To learn more, visit http://www.chatterton-purdyart.com.

About Middleman Productions: 
Mark Person, founder of Middleman Productions, is a publicist, photojournalist, music promoter, artist manager, event planner and author/publishing consultant. The company’s focus is on “artists helping other artists” achieve success. To learn more, visit Dreamproducer.com, where “everyone has a story to tell.”
Pamela Chatterton-Purdy is available for media interviews. To schedule an interview, contact Mark Person at 774.487.1427 or Mark(at)dreamproducer(dot)com
E-photos of Pamela, the Icons and her other work are also available.

Written by Pru Sowers | Provincetown Banner | June 7, 2012 | Printable Version: click here to download

Mark Person can still recall the day he met Sandy Turner 28 years ago. Both were living in Columbus, Ga., and it was an unusual pairing. Person was a 20-yearold African-American man attending college. Turner was white, slightly older and working as an Army secretary stationed at nearby Fort Benning.

But they hit it off. And when Turner moved to Provincetown about two years later, she invited Person to come up for a visit. That trip changed his life. He ended up moving to Provincetown and a short time later began dating Turner, eventually moving in with her. She helped him find his place in town — including various jobs such as coaching basketball at Provincetown High School for five years.“Everyone was so good to me in Provincetown. And Sandy really helped me. Even after we stopped living together, we always were very good friends. Once she loved you, she loved you. She was such a special person,” Person said.

While the two gradually went their separate ways — Person eventually into music production and Turner rising to become assistant director of the Provincetown Dept. of Public Works — that affection remained. They reconnected recently and had dinner at Napi’s, where he gave her a CD of a musician he manages, Gary Foote.

“She loved the music,” Person remembered. “She especially loved track 3, ‘Real Life.’”

Ten days later, Turner was dead, the result of unexpected complications following hip surgery. Person is having a hard time wrapping his head around the loss of his friend. So he decided to dedicate a night of music to Turner and her family, coming full circle, he said, by connecting the past to the present.

The concert will feature Foote, a composer, producer and bass player, and four other accomplished musicians who appear on his album, “HarlemWorks.” One of them is his wife, Jenny Douglas, a singer who has worked with a plethora of artists from very diverse music genres, including Pink, Cher, Janet Jackson, Mick Jagger, as well as singing back-up for Lenny Kravitz when he opened for U2 before a crowd of over 60,000 in San Francisco. Douglas has also provided back-up vocals for Elton John, Tina Turner, Madonna and Snoop Dog and has performed steadily with Toto since 1990. Foote has a similarly impressive resume. In addition to backing up iconic artists such as Smokey Robinson, Billy Cobham, Maxwell, Wu Tang and Blood, Sweat and Tears, Foote has worked behind the scenes scoring films and TV commercials. His style on “Harlem- Works” is a combination of funk, jazz and R&B. The tribute concert, at 8 p.m. Saturday, June 9, at Provincetown Town Hall, promises to be a mix of cultures, just like Provincetown itself, Person said.

“There’s going to be that Motown feel. But they’re going to play [George] Gershwin. They’re going to play Herbie Hancock. Gary will play four or five songs from his CD. He’s composing this show specifically for Provincetown,” he said. Turner’s family is expected to attend the performance. The pallbearers at her funeral will be ushers at the show, Person said. And a plaque in memory of Turner, “from all who loved her,” as it will state, will be presented to the family at the beginning of the show. It is slated to be installed on one of the Town Hall benches.

“The town has been so wonderful,” Person said. “David Gardner, Sharon Lynn, Darlene Van Alstyne in licensing. They’ve all been so helpful. I want the show to be very elegant and nice. I want everyone to feel they’re coming to Sandy’s home.”

Accompanying Foote on June 9 will be Argentinian pianist Dareo Boente, Ken Gioffre on saxophone and Tony Lewis on drums. Tickets are $32 and can be purchased at dreamproducer.eventbrite.com.

JUST THE FACTS
What: HarlemWorks tribute concert to Sandy Turner
Where: Provincetown Town Hall, 260 Commercial St.
When: 8 p.m. Saturday, June 9
Tickets: $32 at dreamproducer.eventbrite.com

“Slices of life through the prism of the heart”
Written by Anne Lerardi  |  November 8, 2012 |  www.thebarstablepatriot.com 

HERB SCHNEIDERMAN PHOTO
WELL-GROUNDED – Artist Mark Person points to a photograph of his family at Zion Union Heritage Museum.

Mark Person’s photographs capture his perspective on life growing up in rural Alabama and Georgia: his dreams, his family, his faith. An enthusiastic crowd gathered at the Zion Union Heritage Museum in Hyannis Nov. 2 for the opening of his solo show, “Staying Grounded.” Mark warmly greeted me, leading me through the exhibit, welcoming me into his world. “As a photojournalist,” he explains on his website, “I deeply feel an imperative to extrapolate and capture slices of life through the prism of the heart. I am a vessel, with Spirit and the wisdom of my ancestors moving through me.”

“Metaphor, how the image grabs you, is most central to my work,” he said. He brings me over to a close-up photo of a cotton plant. “I was driving on an assignment as a photojournalist and was lost. There I came face to face with this field of cotton and I realized, ‘This is my roots. I must never forget where I came from.’”

As a white kid from Boston, I first saw pictures of cotton in the Sixties when a special curriculum on “Negro” history and slavery was introduced in my ninth grade civics class; the images and stories deeply impacted me. Seeing these buds of cotton through Mark’s lens, I saw not only the struggle but also the beauty. In Person’s words, “Beauty and metaphor are everywhere.”

Next, Mark pointed out a picture of a wooden house. “I used to sit on that porch with my grandfather as a child,” he said. “He encouraged me to dream.” Next to that photo was the newly erected sculpture of Martin Luther King in Washington: Dr. King, arising out of the massive stone, his deep voice echoing the biblical witness, the overcoming of oppression, that can emanate out of one person’s dream.

I am particularly struck by a large photograph of a family, a very large family of many generations. They are proudly holding a banner: “Chandler Family Reunion.” I learn from Mark that he is from a family of 10. “There’s my older sister; she believed in me and helped me get my first job. In the front row are my mother and her sisters.” Mark has a special way of releasing the image to a broader consciousness. Metaphor speaks to the heart as well as to the mind. Mark’s family becomes my equally large Italian-American family and from there we become one family embracing all humankind.

Mark pointed out a portrait of three of the Tuskegee Airmen, the first African-American military aviators in the United States armed forces. “I interviewed the man in the middle. They were courageous and highly skilled. They weren’t allowed to serve in combat because of the racial attitudes in 1941. They are all in their nineties now.”

A large central wall of the museum has three pieces. In the middle I am fixed on a foreboding stark stone structure with bars over the entrance and the words MART and underneath “OLD SLAVE MART MUSEUM.” To the left is a photo of a St. Francis sculpture and to the right a statue of Christ in the midst of tall flowing reeds, arms outstretched in a welcome. While I am arrested by this metaphor of human suffering, I take refuge on either side from Francis, the saint of peace and Jesus, the man of compassion.

Mark has found another home on Cape Cod: “I found my passion on Cape Cod Bay in the winter of 2010,” he writes on his website. “With my Blackberry, I snapped a photo while meditating on a glorious sunset over the still water. Something ‘clicked’ in me, too, a profound sense of hope and peace that a new dawn was about to break.”

Mark Person is a multi-faceted artist. He is involved in publishing and has created an upcoming book, Finding Peace through Photography. He also founded Middleman Productions, to manage and promote top recording artists. From Jan. 30 through Feb. 17, he will have another exhibit at the Cultural Center of Cape Cod in Yarmouth, with an opening Feb. 2. Two concerts of his recording artists will also take place there, on Feb. 9 and 16.

Zion Union Heritage Museum is a living witness to the stories that have shaped and continue to shape African-American and Cape Verdean lives. It is a place for all of us to connect to our humanity. In Dr. King’s words, “Until all are free, none are free.”

You will be richly rewarded for availing yourself of the time to visit the museum at 276 North St. in Hyannis (508-790-9466). “Staying Grounded: The Photography of Mark Person” will be on exhibit through Feb. 28.

Photo Credit: Anne Lerardi

Click here to read the original article.