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Women History Event at Bronx Museum

By Howard Giske
he Bronx Museum on Friday, March 1st, hosted their First Friday event for Women's History Month, with women showing off their artistic talents in poetry, painting, and music. The audience also got a tour of the Joan Semmel-- a Lucid Eye-exhibit, with Semmel being a female innovator in the field of symbolic and realistic portraiture. The poet Flora Montes gave a key insight into the thought behind the beauty and brilliance of the woman on performance that night. Montes also participated in the cooking for the event that served chicken and beef pockets, frosted cake, as well as drinks. Her poetry though referred to the pain of being a struggling woman, with the title: "Hurt Me." She recited the hurt she had felt as a woman with worldly ambitions, with lines like "Hate me; make me stronger, after years of being told I wasn't smart enough." She reminded the audience that accomplishment has a price in struggle and pain. On the lighter side, there was a Bronx Museum raffle where the winners got Bronx Museum tote bags, and yearly memberships to the Bronx Museum. The event was a fun menu of attractions, with the side salad having to be the three women live painters, making acrylic painting from scratch before the eyes of the audience. Lexi Bella is a fine artist living on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Bella's street art and work in the live art scene in NYC and Philly have been her focus in the past few years. Danielle Mastrion is an NYC-based artist and painter, muralist, and photographer. She worked on a 12-foot trib-

ute mural to the Beastie Boys on E. 1st Street and 1st Avenue. Both of these artists painted quick and interesting portraits of women. Marthalicia Matarrita aims to paint decay, savagery and innocence. The painting she produced at the event was of a leopard cub on top of the head of a child, definitely on her favorite themes. In 2006, Matarrita formed M-Squared Art Productions with her 2 brothers. Throughout the evening-artists Lexi Bella, Danielle Mastriion and Marthalicia Matarrita painted in the Lower Gallery and later in the event room. The main course of the event were 2 sets from the all-women's jazz band-- the Camille Thurman Quartet, a remarkable act, headed by the multi-talented Camille Thurman. They played dreamy jazz that I thought would be all instrumental until on the second piece Thurmann started to sing. She played the saxophone, flute and sang, performing together with a string bass player, keyboardist and drummer. Thurman is also a composer and has shared the stage with jazz greats like Dr. Billy Taylor, George Coleman and Charlie Persip. Thurman's vocals range up and down at least 2-octaves, including the light and instrumental-like style called "scat singing." She was a performer in the recent "Black Girls Rock" event, and is excited to announce that she received the 2013 ASCAP Foundation Young Jazz Composer Award for a new composition off of her unreleased album, Origins, also entitled "Origins". For more information about events at the Bronx Museum, please see http://bronxmuseum.org or call 718-681-6000.

Harlem News Group March 7, 2013

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