Exhibition Hype Link

 Interview link per the Black Age of Comics! LINK

"The War For Planet NUBA" drops from the Rhythmic-Zone Dec. 9th 2023.

Orders can be placed via the Graphic Novels' tab at www.onlistudios.com

 

This amazing book dropped Oct. 3rd 2023.  Ytasha Womack intelligently put together exciting crucial creative, cultural and commercial aspects of MARVEL's Black Panther.

This book is great for fans, educators, students, researchers and haters all should be up on this book.

 Prof. Turtel Onli is quoted four times in the book and references are made to "Rhythmism" and "The Black Age of Comics. Both were coined, founded and established by him. Rhythmism since the 1970s as a Future-Primitif approach to the visual arts.  The Black Age of Comics as a genre & movement that is derived from the Black, African, Urban and Alternative experience, since 1993.

Prof. Onli & Ytasha sharing a lil' luv & faith at Pocket Con in Chicago. NOTE: Pocket Con was modeled after the decades long Black Age of Comics Convention produced in Chicago by ONLI STUDIOS since Feb. 1993.

 

Audio LINK to interview with Prof. Turtel Onli, M.A.A.T. , PhD. who coined Rhythmism in the early 1970s as a Future-Primitif approach to the visual arts and launched the innovative Black Age of Comics. in 1993.

 

Prof. ONli is taking bids on this rare statue. Email your interest at multiglobe@aol.com

 

 CHICAGO- Smart collectors are seeing early original limited-edition comics and 'zines from ONLI STUDIOS showing up on Ebay.at increasing price points recently. Specializing in limited edition publications, the rarity and innovative nature of these items are motivating and appealing factors to these astute speculators. 

 Mainstream publishers often produce hundreds of thousands of publications in an edition diluting the collection pool.. Whereas the svelte focus of ONLI STUDIOS is more like the tradition of studio-print-makers, in that it produces limited editions. With reprints being modified so that each edition or series is unique.

 https://libguides.sdsu.edu/comicsbytopic/afrofuturism

The above is a link to the Afrofuturist Comics Collection at the San Diego State University Library.  A tremendous resource.

 https://www.instagram.com/p/CTaEYPNLIsB/

The above is a link to a rare time lapse video of Prof. Onli painting in public at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago in 2021. Here he does his Rhythmistic Future-Primitif thing in depicting the classic image of NOG: The Nubian of Greatness.  

 

“On Rhythmistic Art”

A Future-Primitif Approach to Visual Art.

All images and art are Copyright 2023 Turtel Onli and other dates.

They may not be remixed or reproduced for commercial purposes

without a written agreement with Dr.Turtel Onli, M.A.A.T.

 

“The art of Turtel Onli is African Centered. Many who have seen it appear to be confused by it. The culture conscious African Americans find it unacceptable because it does not bespeak the “traditional” Africa that they have come to know and love.  The middle-class find it difficult to accept because it is too African and not like what they have been told is “good art”.  Most Rhythm & Blues...... Hip-Hoppin’ Black Americans do not know about him or his work.

“Miles Plays Miles”. Actual proposed album cover illustration. From a private collection. Circa 1975

 

As I stated earlier, his work is African-Centered. He has termed his style Rhythmism.  He coined the term in 1975 when he created an illustration for the legendary musician, Miles Davis, and rightly so.  The paintings, wearable art, Graphic Novels. illustrations and performances he creates are alive with RHYTHM.

 

    

 

 

 

 His work is demonstrative in its force.  The colors appear to dance before you.  The eyes, the lips, the styles of hair pull you, cajole you, take you in.

 

“The Rhythmistic Button-Head Bench” Chicago Childrens Museum permanent collection.

“Bench Mark Functional Artworks”, circa 1995. Navy Pier Chicago.

 

Detail of “The Naga Momas”. Oils on wooden panels. Circa 2022

 

Untitled creative discharge: Colored pencils. Circa 2016.

 

The colors are bright, vibrant, steamy as they vaporize into a thin layer of white heat and back the vibrantly charged colors.  The colors dare you to laugh, to play, to join in the high energy of life.  Life on a higher plane. Life in a new Africa, a futuristic Africa with a neo-tradition that does not deny itself but digs down into itself to bare yet a new fruit for the future.  This future fruit, a Rhythmistic one, is an universal fruit to embellish the entire fabric of humanity.

 

“Chili Tongue”, watercolors. Circa 1998.

 

Universal is mentioned because the reference to Onli’s work being African Centered and not generally accepted in that community is due to its power and influence being misunderstood.  There is another community into which Onli has yet to be accepted and that is the mainstream Art Community.

 

Hype from the “Rhythmistic Smorgasbord Exhibition” courtesy of the Box Factory For the Arts, St. Joseph, Michigan. Featuring selected works from Onli’s “Passion Fruit” and “No Evils” Rhythmisitc visual art series.

 

Onli is representative of a new age, a forward-thinking age. An age that has a vision of an Africanization of the future by an Africa that is viable in the world scheme of things.  And a world unified by its universal values.

Hype from the 2021 Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago’s blockbu

ster group exhibition and the solo exhibition at stately Gordon Parks Hall’s Corvus Gallery of the University of Chicago, both featuring Onli’s Rhythmistic Future-Primitif visual art.

 

The classic disparities between Blacks and Whites and specifically between White and Black males stumbles blindly over into the Art World.  The continuance of this practice inhibits the flow of contributions by Black artists, creating voids of sterility.  This disparity curtails the universals that we as a culture look for in the world of innovative artists like Onli. 

 

“NOG Banking”. Acrylics on Linen. Circa 2015. The NOG Nu series.

 

The works of artists like Turtel Onli must be endeared, appropriately reviewed and appreciated because their universals will rhythmically pull at the ancestral memories that continue to make us human.  We can no longer afford the limitations of Euro-Centric Art as the only contemporary modernistic approach to unleash the potential power of Art.  Onli and his Rhythmistic Future-Primitif movement give the art critics, patrons, curators and makes the opportunity to expand their concept of the universal.”

 

1989: Marcia Hicks, PhD.

 

 

NOTE: Images will enlarge once clicked on.

Onil is that rare visual artist who has actually working the field of Comic Books & Graphic Novels along with Fine Art and Illustration. Plenty of major Visual Artists claim comix or cartoons as source material or inspiration yet they have never worked in those fields. Often their venture into comics is brazen appropriation or worst.  

Onli is unique in this. Sort of like the masters of music who can perform or compose in Pop, Classical, Jazz and Electronica. Versatility in full effect!

These four unique acclaimed collections are ready to be presented in major galleries or museums. Each body of Rhythmistic Art is ready for the gaze of the astute curator or intelligently well resources collector.

Proven in both worlds of visual expression and communication.

Though the good folks in the flows of the trending "Afrofuturism" tend not to address Rhythmism which was launched in the 1970s as a Future-Primitif approach to not only the Visual Arts but life, we give a little luv to them.  

We see Afrofuturism as a welcome portal to understand what Rhythmism had been doing before, now & since! 

More than another case of overlooking the innovative accomplishment of a Hetero Black Man.  

Onli, the Visual Artist/Arts Educator/Art Therapist who came of age through both the Hippie infused Counter Cultural Revolution & the success of the Black Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, threw down Rhythmism in the 1970s,,,,,,,and folks ignored it.  Dery, a cultural critic, offers the term Afrofuturism in the 1990s and folks luv it.  How Black and forward thinking was that move?

 Welcome to the evolution!

 

 

CHICAGO- The year is 1975 and Rhythmistic visual artist Turtel Onli decides to create a Rhythmistic treatment of Miles Davis for use as an album cover. Then he makes the perilous maiden voyage to New York to stalk Miles down. With his goal being to offer this impressive Rhythmistic illustration to Miles as a future album cover. At the time Onli was a regular illustrator with Playboy Magazine & The Johnson Publishing Company along with being the founding director of B.A.G., The Black Arts Guild. So why not try? By way of the likes of hair-dresser to the stars, James Finney, he visits Miles, over breakfast, in the Davis home. The transaction does not go well as Miles insists Onli release the rights to the artwork for free. No compensation other than the privilege to be part of the Davis Universe. No payment! Simply put, Onli said "No!', to this generous offer. 

Years later the original artwork was collected by a Chicago based fine art collector/musician. Onli is still a practicing Rhythmistic Visual Artist, indie-publisher & Arts Educator. 

His 1974 Delmark Records album cover for the brilliant Avant-Garde jazz greats Joseph Jarman & Anthony Braxton is featured as the lead album cover in the Gallery Section of the landmark book, "Rhythm Freedom & Sound".

 2023 Cancer New Moon begins Gold Sheep Month

July 17, 2023 at 11:32 am PDT is a new Moon in Cancer. Water sign Cancer rules the fourth house of motherhood, home, and ancestry. This lunar month will be an ideal time to focus on your home and nurturing self and others. Plus, the new Moon and Sun trine Neptune in Pisces bringing increased sensitivity that leads to spiritual development. There is a general concern for the emotions of others, and a desire to assist those less fortunate.

The new Moon and Sun sextile Uranus in Taurus. Life can become more interesting. Curiosity is stimulated, and activities with friends and neighbors bring new experiences. There's inspiration to make changes in your immediate surroundings to express your creativity. Travel is very favorable this lunar month. From Tarot Astrology Feng Shui / East/West ZODIAC from ONLI STUDIOS LLC. www.onlistudios.com

 Hello Singapore, The Netherlands, The United Kingom & Germany!

Malcom-10 flowing from the Rhythmic-Zone.  His organic name is Malcolm-10.

 His Rhythmistic Code-Name is Malcom-10. 

Prof. Onli created Maloclm-10 in 1991. ONLI STUDIOS LLC first published Malcolm-10 in 1992. The producers of the movie version of "BLADE" were influenced by Malcolm-10's unique bold Future-Primitif look. The rest is the stuff of future!  Indie creativity is always the source material that empowers the mainstream's actions. 

 

ONLI STUDIOS LLC introduced Future-Funk in 1982 as the Rhythmistic infused 'zine to promote the indie flow of the creative arts.

Rhythmistic Future-Primitif Graphic Novels & Comix are available 

from the dynamic ONLI STUDIOS website. 

Use the Graphic Novels tab. 

Per mobile devices please scroll all the way down to see the small word "Classic". 

Click that link for the full web site experience. 

To show our appreciation for your luv we pack each book in archival plastic 

including a few limited-edition Trading Cards. 

All for Free! 

The mainstream would never be so kind...!