Free Trading Cards at the Trading Post Museum Store!

 CHICAGO- Juneteenth, June 19th, 2022, from Noon until closing, the Trading Post Museum Shop of the DuSable Museum of Black History will be hosting a special Graphic Novels' and Trading Cards' Signing featuring the "Father of the Black Age of Comics", Prof. Turtel Onli. 

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 Added guest will be Johnathan Ford, the dynamic illustrator per the ONLI STUDIOS' "Nu Look" over-sized, limited-edition highly valued trading cards. 

 

ONLI STUDIOS LLC provides its fans readers, customers, and collectors with free, over-sized, limited edition Trading Cards of its Rhythmistic characters to express its appreciation for the independently minded support these enthusiasts demonstrate.  

This bold move to buy and embrace fresh, expansive creative characters that are robustly independent of the predictable orthodoxy of the mainstream is worthy of encouragement.

The mainstream's trading-cards are often less than half the size of the ones from ONLI STUDIOS and usually are not free!

Ford will be there signing the release of these cool hot cards for fans, collectors and lovers of art & history.

Prof. Onli is called the "Father of the Black Age" for coining the term, The "Black Age of Comics" as an affirming genre that celebrates material, concepts and creators derived from the Black, Urban, African and Alternative experience in 1993.  Plus, ONLI STUDIOS produced the world's first open source, indie Black Age Comic-Con

in 1993.  It was the first event of its type.  Since then, many have scaffolded on the ONLI STUDIOS model.  

Due to COVID considerations this event is now an annual virtual production and has been rebranded, "Black Sankofa"!

FACT CHECK: The ONLI STUDIOS event is the first of its kind to be open to all folks, Black, White, Brown, Gay, Queer, Bi, Disabled, and Hot. 

This started in 1993 at a time when the mainstream comics world would never do such a thing and the current rash of imitators would not have been that bold and resourceful to expand the industry with both a radical new genre and a model event for those to learn and be safe in exploring and sharing of themselves.

In 1983, for the 25th Anniversary convention of the National Conference of Artis, Onli was selected to create an illustration for the convention's program book.  Onli took this as both a great honor but also a fantastic opportunity to display Rhythmism.  They gave him a one-day deadline, which was something in his illustration practices was very common. Unfiltered Future-Primitif it would be.  Looking both ways.  Forward and backward. learning and retaining. Planting and harvesting.  From one's collective primary consciousness to one's bondless untold productive imagination.   

(Onli had launched the term Rhythmism in the early 1970s when he was the Founding Director of B.A.G. " The Black Arts Guild. They were so not ready for that.  Plus coming from a youthful 20-year-old. NOPE!)

Needless to say, in 1983, there was still this incredible continued push-back from most of the prime participants of the "Black Art Movement" and the Cultural Nationalist types. They were intensely orthodox.  They robustly insisted it was simply "Black Art"!  That Rhythmism could not be since art should or could not be categorized. 

Then as now, their thesis of "Black Art" was often a nexus of poor to limited technique and skill.  With the subject manner derived from traumatic episodes of Black and African suffering from slavery, exploitation, or colonialization. Plus add images of selected Black or African historical figures or personalities.  They valued a lack of skill as being more authentic.  More powerful?

"Iman" circa 1978 Copyright 1987 Turtel Onli. Ink on vellum. 

Created in the library of the Centre Pompidue, Paris.

Thus, really "Blacker"!  That having competitive skills and technique fit for an Oba or a Pharoah was actually being caught up in a "White Art Thing".  And taking on the challenges of commercial competition,,,,,well that was totally demised as "selling out"!

"Femme Chat" Circa 1977. Created for MODE Avantgarde Magazine.

 Copyright 1995 Turtel Onli

That was so not him. Onli was always looking at every option to display aspects of Rhythmism as a Future-Primitif genre to expand the constricting canon of the international visual art world, Fine and Commercial. Illustrating the cover of the program book was a rare iconic moment.  The NCA / National Conference of Artist was the oldest organization for the celebration and promotion of Black and African Visual Artists.  This was its 25th anniversary celebration. 

Rhythmism would be its face. Future-Primitif all the way!

"Rhythmistic Fatherhood" circa 1974.  Acrylics on canvas. 18" X 40".

Copyright 2022 Turtel Onli.

 Destroyed in a studio fire in 2001.

But beyond the novelty of being a Black person making art about the narratives of the Black experience, it was pretty stale to me.  Onli was bringing the heat.  The fire, flow and funk plus his world-class cascading skill-set that included illustrating for some of the largest publishing & broadcasting companies of that era. 

Published in the Paris Metro American English Magazine in 1978 as the "Punk" scene was exploding.

The insert in this illustration credits Onli at age 26 for creating the term

Rhythmism ani exhibiting in a solo showcase in Paris at the FIAP 1978.

 Onli was seriously taking the artistic and creative fight to the belly of the beasts,,,,known as systemic racism, heterophobia, classism, orthodoxy, tribalism, and agism. 

 

  5 Great Reasons to read Rhythmistic Graphic Novels:

a. A Graphic Novel is a book made up of story-telling content that is both visual, and illustrated with a merging of written text and narrative art.

b.  Rhythmism is a genre in the expressive arts that first proved itself in the Visual Arts as being Future-Primitif with an emphasis on techniques, experimentation, imagination and timeless streams of originality. 

Rhythmism was developed by Prof. Turtel Onli, M.A.A.T., a former clinical Art Therapist.

1. With short, concise dialogue interspersed with longer text and beautiful images and narrative illustrations one absorbs a story and the overall content faster and more completely when reading the Rhythmistic Graphic Novel. It activates high ordered cognitive skills.

2.  These limited-edition Graphic Novels are a truly collectable diverse form of literature. They combine images and words to blend Visual and Literary Intelligences into a rigorous yet appealing process enhancing higher ordered cognitive skills as a research proven by-product. They offer a chance at insightful escapism and dynamic fantasy or can be about imagination driven contemporary mythology to historical precision.  

Great for fans, collectors, curriculum coordinators, educators, librarians and students.

Life can be boring or stressful at times, and therefore escapism is important once in a while.

3. The great thing about the Graphic Novel is the emotional responses and connections between the reader and the Graphic Novel itself as the Graphic Novel dynamically illustrates every emotion, struggle, process and physical changes in the characters, and its content. This provokes deeper thinking, builds rewarding comprehension and critical thinking skills while providing low-budget quality entertainment.

4. The best experimental Visual Artists, hot Writers, original Authors, cool Graphic Designers, and surgical Editors work regularly to produce Rhythmistic Graphic Novels from ONLI STUDIOS.  These hybrids of the Visual / Literary arts are usually a complete story unto itself.  They are both a compelling Art Form and a proven Literary Form. Their unique content may be totally fantasy based, Sci-Fi driven, about contemporary mythology, wellness in personal care, sustainably going green, showing positive conflict resolution or providing delightfully needed humor.

5. Rhythmistic Graphic Novels merge the best of all of this reasons and concepts in an adventurous dynamic result that goes where the mainstream does not.  They manifest true, open, expressive and expansive diversity that often is rendered in its award-winning Future-Primitif style. Thus, being the best alternative to the traditional formula based corporate, often boring and predictable Graphic Novels from the major brands.

In conclusion, the growing line of limited edition Rhythmistic Graphic Novels from ONLI STUDIOS LLC with its experimental factors of "Fun, Fire, & Funk" are prefect for this screen-aged world and its over whelming flow of corporate induced creativity that is more about profitable capital gains then the traits, themes and concepts listed above.

 

 Curators and collectors will note:

 CHICAGO- One of the Future-Primitif notions of Rhythmism is the channeling of concepts, images and visual ideas from one time period to another generation. Prof. Onli insists that this is a byway of imagination. Giving renewal to traditions, Art,, and ,visual statements that often flow from beyond ones actual experiences or studies. 

 Onli presented this concept with a lecture and exhibition in 2019 in St, Joseph Michigan's amazing creative venue, The Box Factory For The Arts, to positive critical acclaim. This visionary practice is not about 'resistance" or "protest'" but about giving new artistic life as a growing genre that is at one, African, yet Universal with immense growth potential. 

 Since the 1970s Onli's practice has advocated the reality of actual un-named genres in the Visual Arts born of the Black American experience. Much in the way that collective expressive cultural experience has jettisoned Musical genres. 

Onli has manifested this visual notion into several completed collections of Visual Art.