Gene Austin and Todd Douglas Bailey are two artists living in Corning who won't be pigeonholed.
Austin makes Afrocentric fine art and photographs. He's also an accomplished graphic designer and website builder.
Austin makes Afrocentric fine art and photographs. He's also an accomplished graphic designer and website builder.
Bailey writes, produces and directs independent films and is a guitar player in a rock band.
Though they have divergent artistic directions, both use visual media for artistic expression, an area where African-Americans have seen gains in recent decades.
The first museums dedicated to African-American art began to open in the 1960s. Other museums that don't have a black focus have been increasingly collecting and showing the work of black artists.
"There are a lot of indications that the visual arts, in terms of the African-American community, are expanding, growing, being called to not just the attention of African-American collectors; it's available to a very large community," said Collette Hopkins, the director of education and public programs at the National Black Arts festival in Atlanta.
Hopkins said one of the people she credits for bringing attention to African-American visual art is comedian Bill Cosby, who is scheduled to appear Friday at the Clemens Center.
Works by black artists found their way into many living rooms through "The Cosby Show," she said, because it was in the home of the fictional Huxtable family.
"All over the walls were all of this artwork by African-American artists," Hopkins said, noting that the artist Varnette Honeywood, who died in September, and others received exposure through the show. (The show is mentioned in the first paragraph of Honeywood's obituary in The New York Times.)
"That was a major impetus for people to look at African-American visual artists who perhaps never might have seen it before," Hopkins said.
Gene Austin
Gene Austin, who has lived in the Corning area for about nine years, thinks of himself primarily as a graphic designer and website developer for companies. But his artistic expressions extend beyond his professional life.
"Completely, as a person, I love doing photography and I love creating artwork," he said.
Austin learned he loved art when he was young. His mother and aunt were both artists, he said.
He sold his first pastel painting, of sunlight hitting sand dunes, when he was around 14.
Austin has exhibited his work at Corning Community College, Corning Inc., Lockheed-Martin and other places. He's sold about a couple of dozen works locally.
Austin decided to focus on Afrocentric art after observing that most of the locally made fine art he's seen depicts the scenic aspects of the region.
