Things Left Behind
Michael B. Platt

05 November – 31 December 2010

Opening Reception: Friday, Nov. 5, 2010 5:30 – 9:00 pm, (With a performance by Carol A. Beane)

Images holding the essences of memory;

biding time, waiting, celebrating…

barely discernible stories of who was here and

what happened there;

visions of imagined spaces-layering time

within abandoned, unoccupied and frequently

dilapidated interior rooms and exteriors;

there is always something.

- Carol A. Beane

For the past five years Michael Platt’s imagery has centered on the transformation of the human spirit that occurs when it confronts imagined or actual events and circumstances.   Using the female figure, he creates images intended to express traces of the human spirit, often inspired by spaces with a history and the presence of things left behind. Empty spaces are as much storytellers as those filled with living.  Exploring the visual possibilities of such circumstances, Platt has addressed issues of slavery, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the levees, waiting, searching for home; and celebration.

About the artist, Michael B. Platt // For the last decade Platt has been exploring the possibilities of digital imagery in prints, and in his collaborations with poet Carol A. Beane which have yielded artists’ books + broadsides.   Recipient of the 2007 Franz and Virginia Bader Foundation Grant, Platt’s work is nationally and internationally exhibited and collected.  It is in the permanent collections of, among others, the Smithsonian American Art Museum; the Corcoran; the Yale University Art Museum; Hampton University Museum, the David C. Driskell Center for Visual Arts and Culture of African America and the African Diaspora; the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; and the Print/Photograph Collection as well as the Rare Books and Special Collections of the Library of Congress.  Platt teaches digital photography and digital printmaking studio at Howard University.

About the poet, Carol A. Bean // About the poet, Carl A. BeaneDC based poet/artist, Carol A. Beane was awarded the 24th Larry Neal Poetry prize for Poetry [funded by the DC Commission for the Arts+Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts], and has received the 2009 National Museum of Women in the Arts Library Fellows Book Arts award for the streets of used to be, done with artist Renée Stout.  Beane, collaborating with Michael B. Platt, also has created widely exhibited artists’ books+ broadsides of poetry+images, represented in numerous private+public collections, among them the National Museum of Women in the Arts; the John Hay Library of Brown University; the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; the Founder’s Library of Howard University and the Rare Books and Special Collections of the Library of Congress.  Beane teaches Spanish+ Simultaneous Interpretation at Howard University and is also a translator.