Kadir Nelson has done the world a great service. If you care about justice, baseball, baseball history, and the Negro Leagues, then Nelson has done a great thing for what is important.
Recently, while walking through Books a Million in search of the Spiderwick series for a young reader, there the book stood, tall and visible in a sea of books, and my eye was immediately drawn to the book. The book? We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball, depictions of stars and game scenes from the vantage point of the artist. Check out this link to learn more about Kadir Nelson and his work. He has at least three new fans of his work.
"Negro leagues baseball (1920-47) was an exquisite flower grown from poisonous soil--the ugly racial attitudes of 20th-century American--and nurtured by men who refused to allow the ignorance that barred them from the major leagues to extinguish their passion for the game," writes Phil Taylor in a recent issue of Sports Illustrated.
Nelson worked eight years on the project, buying vintage uniforms, wearing them, taking photographs in them, studying them, and then painting familiar faces and telling familiar stories of those great athletes who played whenever the big league team was out of town in their stadiums, or in places where they could simply draw a crowd, or in Cuba, or in places where they could set up their portable lights. Some faces and stories are not familiar and they are told as well. Amazing text and even more amazing paintings.
The text is written from the perspective of the athletes themselves, telling their own personal stories. Nelson has studied them well. Interesting, though, that he's only 33 years of age. His art and his text say that he surely has captured the spirit of the times and the stories of these great athletes.
The art work is awe inspiring. The details in the heroic figures of Buck O'Neil, Josh Gibson, and Satchel Paige are amazing to see. Taylor in his article speaks of the relationship between artist and the athletes as they "became partners in the process, creators of a thing of beauty that, like the legacy of the Negro leagues, will last forever." Prints of those paintings must be purchased and placed on walls of people who care about art, baseball, and justice. That book must be purchased by parents and grandparents and given to the young.
There's an eight year old in Oklahoma who's been reading the book and admiring the paintings. Yesterday he called and asked if we could talk about Cool Papa Bell.
So, Kadir Nelson, I owe you one.
Recently, while walking through Books a Million in search of the Spiderwick series for a young reader, there the book stood, tall and visible in a sea of books, and my eye was immediately drawn to the book. The book? We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball, depictions of stars and game scenes from the vantage point of the artist. Check out this link to learn more about Kadir Nelson and his work. He has at least three new fans of his work.
"Negro leagues baseball (1920-47) was an exquisite flower grown from poisonous soil--the ugly racial attitudes of 20th-century American--and nurtured by men who refused to allow the ignorance that barred them from the major leagues to extinguish their passion for the game," writes Phil Taylor in a recent issue of Sports Illustrated.
Nelson worked eight years on the project, buying vintage uniforms, wearing them, taking photographs in them, studying them, and then painting familiar faces and telling familiar stories of those great athletes who played whenever the big league team was out of town in their stadiums, or in places where they could simply draw a crowd, or in Cuba, or in places where they could set up their portable lights. Some faces and stories are not familiar and they are told as well. Amazing text and even more amazing paintings.
The text is written from the perspective of the athletes themselves, telling their own personal stories. Nelson has studied them well. Interesting, though, that he's only 33 years of age. His art and his text say that he surely has captured the spirit of the times and the stories of these great athletes.
The art work is awe inspiring. The details in the heroic figures of Buck O'Neil, Josh Gibson, and Satchel Paige are amazing to see. Taylor in his article speaks of the relationship between artist and the athletes as they "became partners in the process, creators of a thing of beauty that, like the legacy of the Negro leagues, will last forever." Prints of those paintings must be purchased and placed on walls of people who care about art, baseball, and justice. That book must be purchased by parents and grandparents and given to the young.
There's an eight year old in Oklahoma who's been reading the book and admiring the paintings. Yesterday he called and asked if we could talk about Cool Papa Bell.
So, Kadir Nelson, I owe you one.
