Philip Mallory Jones ~Georgia / Ohio

LISSEN HERE!
By Philip Mallory Jones and Dorothy Mallory Jones
Atlanta, Georgia: 2006. Edition of 100.

13 x 19", 50 pages. Printed on an Epson 2200, using Epson archival paper and ink, @1200dpi. Frosted mylar covers with plastic coil binding. Images composed from family archives, contributions from colleagues and friends, and "found" photos.

Poetry by Dorothy Mallory Jones accompanied with image compositions by her son, Philip Mallory Jones. Ms. Jones has written on black historical fiction and poetry; Mr. Jones son, has worked with video, film photography, and writing for art-making since 1969.

Dorothy Mallory Jones: "This book began life as a meld of black history and a celebration of black womanhood. It is factual, anecdotal, autobiographical. It is born of remembered snatches of my own, and anybody else's family lore; of provocative family nicknames; of knottted, worked-out hands of my grandmother; folded so patiently in her lap. It is the fruit of a lifetime of standing back and watching the relentless energies of a race of stricken people, steadily galvanizing toward liberation. It is listening, always listening, to the cadence, the flow, the pungent getting-to-the heart of it, that is our speech."

Philip Mallory Jones: "This collaboration has been germinating for three decades, and longer. It comes out of, and marks, the paths we have traveled, my mother and I, from those early days of her teaching and me learning, to mature artists who respect each other's work. We have come full circle, in a way, albeit to converse through our art, with a shared language, about the lore and legends of our family, and our extended Family."
$750

BASIC BLACK

Looking at the brittle bones
The withered lips,
The blue veins rising like whelps
Across the back of her fragile brown hands
It is hard to believe
The legend of this ancient sister.

But then she lifts those eyelids
So thin and marbled with wrinkles,
And lo!
A twinkle so wicked it stings

Well.

The root is still there.