All five members of The Saturdays insisted there was no bad blood when they parted ways in 2014.
However, The Sun previously revealed that Rochelle and Frankie’s 24-year friendship may have hit the rocks.
The duo were invited to watch the tennis at Wimbledon as As guests of sponsor Evian.
Frankie Bridge posts cryptic TikTok about ‘being a people pleaser’ amid feud with Myleene Klass
They mingled with other celebrities and guests just yards away from one another in a suite.
However, they failed to actually interact with each other as they enjoyed the delights of the hydrangea building nearCourtOne.
An insider told The Sun: “It was clear the women were keeping their distance. They sat on opposite sides of the suite and kept to themselves.
“While Frankie posed for pictures with S Club’s Rachel Stevens, Rochelle took selfies with her husband Marvin and his I’m A Celebrity campmate Sam Thompson.
“Even though they were pleasant to each other when they did brush shoulders, they didn’t spend any extra time together than they had to, in between being amicable while passing each other en route to watch the tennis.”
Both of the stars were clients of her now ex-husband, who worked as a showbiz security manager.
Their continued friendship is said to have caused a rift as Myleene, 47, reportedly believes Rochelle took Graham’s side.
But they have not been seen on-screen together on the ITV show since an awkward episode last year.
At the time of the first report, representatives for Rochelle and Myleene did not reply to a request for comment.
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Frankie explained that she was prescribed meditation and relaxation her on holidayCredit: Instagram / rochellehumes
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She reportedly avoided her childhood friend and former bandmate Rochelle Humes when they were both invited to watch the tennis at WimbledonCredit: Splash
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Meanwhile, Myleene’s feud apparently stems from their friendship with her ex-husband Graham QuinnCredit: Getty
While the pair still follow each other on Instagram, Rochelle’s like is a rare move amid their feud – as they rarely publicly support each others’ posts.
The Up singers haven’t liked each others’ uploads in years, and there have been no likes or comment exchanges between the pair since 2013.
This could mean they were wiped if one of them had blocked the other.
Singers and presenters Marvin and Rochelle Humes have enjoyed successes both together and individually. Here are some of their biggest highlights.
S Club Junior/S Club 8: Early in her career, Rochelle was a member of this S Club 7 spin-off group. All of the original members were either early teens or younger when joining the band. They disbanded in 2005.
VS: The brainchild of Blue singer Simon Webbe, a pre-JLS Marvin featured in this group from 2004 to 2005. Although not a member himself, Webbe also managed the band.
The Saturdays: Rochelle joined the English-Irish girl band in 2007, along with Frankie Bridge, Vanessa White,Una Healy and Mollie King, following auditions. The group began an indefinite hiatus in 2014, although each of the members have moved on to other ventures.
JLS: After leaving VS, Marvin met Oritsé Williams through mutual friends, forming the beginning of what became JLS. Adding Aston Merrygold and JB Gill, the group famously auditioned for The X-Factor in 2008. JLS finished as runners-up to Alexandra Burke and initially disbanded in 2013. They later reunited from 2020 onwards.
This Morning: The couple were regular stand-in presenters on the ITV daytime show up until 2015.
The Voice:Marvin hosted series three through five of The Voice alongside Emma Willis on BBC One. The show later moved to BBC One, without Marvin continuing on.
The Hit List: Marvin and Rochelle began presenting this music-themed game show in 2019. The programme’s success has seen both civilians and celebrities take part.
I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!: Marvin participated in the 2023 series of the beloved show. He starred alongside the likes of Josie Gibson,Tony Bellew,Nigel Farage and Fred Sirieix. In the end Sam Thompson was crowned King of the Jungle.
In 2013, soon after Myleene’s divorce from Quinn, guests at the Glamour Women of the Year awards saw her storm over to Frankie after believing she had been blanked.
A source said: “Myleene seemed to take that as Frankie taking sides with Graham because of their working relationship.”
Meanwhile, Frankie and Myleene have not appeared on Loose Women together since an “awkward” episode last December.
Sources said that though they’d rather not be on together, they are professionals and do their best to make things work.
The Midcentury Modern home of Justin Edwards, one half of the couple whose love story informs the show — an adaptation of Judy Blume’s 1975 novel — is flooded with work from Black Angelenos.
“Local Los Angeles artists were important for me to put into the sets, and the Edwards family home, specifically, being collectors of Los Angeles art,” Akil, an L.A. native, told The Times.
Production designer Suzuki Ingerslev and set decorator Ron Franco are also Angelenos, which they said contributed to the cultural competency of their work on “Forever.” Although the writers’ strike made elements of their jobs difficult, both agreed that their experience on “Forever” was uniquely positive, in large part because of their curation of the art in the Edwards’ home.
“Sometimes art can really make a space and it makes a statement and it tells you who the character is,” said Ingerslev. “In this case, you really knew who the Edwards were — they curated art and they cared about where they live — and I thought that really made a big difference through the art and through the furnishings as well.”
Franco agreed, saying he had fun sourcing artwork from Black artists that matched Ingerslev’s color palette and also contained themes pertinent to the show.
“A lot of times the shows that you see now are just headshots and everything that we put up becomes a background piece that’s kind of blurred,” he said. “We are very lucky in that this camera really opened up, and you follow everybody through both of the [permanent] sets and you really feel a lot.”
Audiences noticed their effort, said Ingerslev, who’s been bombarded with questions about the artworks in “Forever,” which was just renewed for a second season.
Here are five local Black artists whose work are featured in the show.
Noah Humes, 31
Humes cites a book about artist and writer Romare Bearden that he received from Akil when he was 6 years old as the foundation for his worldview as an artist. (Humes’ mother was a casting director on “Girlfriends,” the 2000s TV series created by Akil, whom Humes calls “Auntie Mara.”)
“I look back [and] that’s what helped form and shape my energy with how I approach the canvas, wanting to tell the story of my community and different things that I see — social moments, political moments, historical remnants,” said the figurative painter.
Humes is drawn to bright colors that capture the vibrancy of his hometown of L.A. “Her” and “Mid City,” which feature prominently in the Edwards family’s media room in “Forever,” depict solitary figures against yellow backgrounds. The foliage in “Her” grows in Humes’ mother’s frontyard. “Mid City,” the neighborhood where Humes was raised, features the red-crowned parrots that wake him up every morning.
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1.“Her”(Noah Humes)2.“Mid City”(Noah Humes)
“I felt inclined to represent and show a certain subtlety of ‘We’re here, we’re centered, we’re always a focal point of unfortunate times, but also we can overcome things and become stronger than we have been,’” Humes said of the twin paintings, which he completed in 2020 after George Floyd’s murder and the national racial reckoning that followed.
Humes also credits his neighbors in L.A., a “system of Black excellence,” for positively influencing his artistry. Animator Lyndon Barrois (“Happy Feet,” “Alvin and the Chipmunks”) is his mentor, and members of the hip-hop collective Odd Future, including siblings Syd and Travis “Taco” Bennett, as well as Thebe Kgositsile — who uses the stage name Earl Sweatshirt — are his childhood friends.
Francis ‘Tommy’ Mitchell, 41
(Francis “Tommy” Mitchell)
Mitchell has been drawing for as long as he can remember, but it was a high school classmate pointing out the permanent nature of a ballpoint pen that led to his aha moment.
“You can erase graphite, you can paint over acrylic and oil,” said the Baltimore- and L.A.-based artist. “Ink is one of those things that I just think of, no pun intended here, it’s forever.”
Mitchell’s portraits feature individuals shaded with ink set against monochromatic acyrlic background. Because it is extremely time-consuming, most artists working in ink compose smaller, more intimate images, said Mitchell. In contrast, his portraits are huge. If the work were hung on the walls of a museum, the viewer may never notice the figure’s skin was drawn in ink and not paint.
“Going to museums or galleries as a kid, I would see these amazing European paintings, and I’m like, ‘Wow, these are amazing,’ but there’s no one that looks like me,” he said, of his desire to focus on portraiture.
“Francis R. of City College”
(Francis “Tommy” Mitchell)
The subject of “Francis R. of City College,” Mitchell’s painting featured in the Edwards’ dining room in “Forever,” is modeled after his father. For Mitchell, the work represents a young man with his whole life ahead of him. Making the painting in his Baltimore studio less than a mile away from City College, where his father attended high school, felt like a full-circle moment.
Seeing the work on television only adds to the significance.
“One of my goals is to always promote those who work in ink because it’s not a traditional medium,” he said, pointing to tattoo artists Jun Cha and Mister Cartoon as inspirations. “So for it to be seen on television, it lends credence to, ‘Hey, we’re doing something special as well.’”
Edwin Marcelin, 50
Marcelin’s first job as a teenager was at Stüssy, a Laguna Beach streetwear brand founded in the early 1980s. Minimalist graphic design, a trademark of Stüssy as well as brands Supreme and Undefeated, has always informed his art.
“Everything usually is about engagement, confrontation or affection,” said Marcelin. “Those are things that I tend to generate towards by using very minimal strokes.”
During his time at the California College of the Arts — then called the California College of Arts and Crafts — Marcelin was drawn to Bauhaus, a German school of art that melds functionality and design. Marcelin applies those abstract Bauhaus fundamentals and adds the element of movement.
“If it ain’t moving, it ain’t me,” said the L.A.-born-and-raised artist.
Marcelin said his emphasis on motion lends itself well to the screen — his piece “Clarity,” a dynamic painting of Michael Jordan taking flight, hangs in basketball-loving Justin’s bedroom in “Forever.”
“I think Black folks in Los Angeles are dynamic, so I try to keep dynamic images, people doing things, not standing there, and I think that translates to film very well,” said Marcelin.
“Clarity” is part of a 23-painting series titled “Black Jesus.” Each image in the series, which took Marcelin about five months to complete in its entirety, references Jordan, who Marcelin said is disappearing visually from pop culture. Case in point: He said his 19- and 16-year-old sons may recognize the Jumpman logo, but they wouldn’t instantly recognize an image of Jordan himself.
“There’ll be more basketball players, but I wanted to do something that was completely abstract representing him because he has so many moments that are fantastically beautiful,” said Marcelin.
Corey Pemberton, 34
With a background in collage, glassblowing and painting, Pemberton’s large mixed-media works — of a man singing into his toothbrush in the bathroom, a naked woman smoking marijuana in bed, a man devouring a plate of his mother’s food — are both intimate and mundane.
“At a certain point, I turned an interest to those who had been marginalized by society in some way, whether it was because of the color of their skin or their gender expression or their socioeconomic status, and developed an interest in depicting those people in a way that both celebrated them but also gave them some space to just exist,” he said.
Such themes of ownership and viewership are etched into Pemberton’s work. For example, he depicts the space and objects around his figures in vivid detail. Objects are important, he said, because they carry memories of “the people who created them or gave them to us or lived with them before us.”
Similarly, his painting “The Collector” celebrates “a young black person who’s making a concerted effort to own and conserve our culture, which is so often falling into the hands of people who don’t care about us on a deeper level.” And in many of Pemberton’s pieces, miniature renderings of his previous works can be found on the walls of his subjects’ homes.
“I think when you see a work presented that way, it sort of brings a heightened level of importance,” said Pemberton.
“I Used to Cook More”
(Corey Pemberton)
So it’s doubly significant that Pemberton’s work is on display in the wealthy Edwards’ home in “Forever.” The art in question, “I Used to Cook More,” can be found in the family’s kitchen and depicts Pemberton’s friend and fellow collector Jared Culp eating out of a white takeout container.
“We were talking about all of the takeout that we now consume as busy young Black creatives in L.A. trying to claw our way to the top of something,” said Pemberton.
But success in the art world has been easier to come by in L.A., where he relocated to after six years in rural North Carolina, said Pemberton.
“When I moved to Los Angeles, not only was I selling work but I was selling work to people with shared experience,” he said. “I was getting feedback that not only were these works that people wanted to live with, but they were works that people saw themselves reflected in, and that I was doing something important or meaningful to more people than just myself.”
Charles A. Bibbs, 77
Bibbs worked in corporate America for 25 years before becoming an artist full time. For Bibbs, art — in a crosshatching style, in his case — is all about communicating universal ideas.
“I mix that crosshatching with different colors and paint, and it’s just one layer on top of another until you get your desired effect,” Bibbs said of his “spontaneous” way of creating that’s “almost like magic sometimes.”
Like many Black artists, Bibbs chose his subject matter out of necessity. As a young man, he encountered few Black artists, yet innately understood the power of positive images of the Black experience, especially in the home.
“It’s a very honorable occupation because you’re giving people a part of you that is changing their lives in an aesthetic way,” he said. “All of those things play into people proud to be who they are.”
“Daddy’s Love”
(Charles A. Bibbs)
In “Forever,” viewers may catch a glimpse of “Daddy’s Love,” a drawing of Bibbs’ father and Bibbs and his sister as children, on the wall outside Justin’s bedroom. But this isn’t the first time his work has made it to the screen. Bibbs is credited with the Black Madonna artwork on the honey jar central to the plot of the 2008 film “The Secret Life of Bees.” He said the experience underscored the importance of art, which he said touches the “subconscious mind.”
“[My work] was part of the presentation of the movie and in some way or another may have helped them understand what that movie was really all about.”
Frankie Bridge makes cryptic comment as ‘stress levels at an all time high’ amid Rochelle Humes and Myleene Klass feud
FRANKIE Bridge made a very cryptic comment about her stress levels being ‘at an all time high.’
This comes amid her feud with both Rochelle Humes and Myleene Klass.
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Posting a full-length selfie in the gym, the Loose Women star flaunted her washboard abs in a black crop top and matching leggings.
However, the star made a somewhat pointed hint at the feud and her current mood with her captions.
“After being prescribed meditation and relaxation on holiday by @balancedboss I’m back at the gym today.
“My cortisol was at an all time high. Stress levels max. So we took it back to basics while I was away.”
“I’ve come back feeling so much calmer and ready to start again.”
Making another hint of needing recovery time, she added: “Closely followed by my travel recovery ritual.”
Rochelle Vs Frankie
This comes after The Sun revealed a secret feud behind the scenes with her former bandmate Rochelle Humes.
All five members of The Saturdays insisted there was no bad blood when they parted ways in 2014.
However, The Sun previously revealed that Rochelle and Frankie’s 24-year friendship may have hit the rocks.
The duo were invited to watch the tennis at Wimbledon as As guests of sponsor Evian.
They mingled with other celebrities and guests just yards away from one another in a suite.
However, they failed to actually interact with each other as they enjoyed the delights of the hydrangea building nearCourtOne.
An insider told The Sun: “It was clear the women were keeping their distance. They sat on opposite sides of the suite and kept to themselves.
“While Frankie posed for pictures with S Club’s Rachel Stevens, Rochelle took selfies with her husband Marvin and his I’m A Celebrity campmate Sam Thompson.
“Even though they were pleasant to each other when they did brush shoulders, they didn’t spend any extra time together than they had to, in between being amicable while passing each other en route to watch the tennis.”
How is Myleene involved?
We also told how Myleene was locked in a feud with both Frankie and her Saturdays’ bandmate Rochelle.
Before all the drama, Myleene and Frankie – who both appeared on Loose Women – attended Rochelle’s hen do in 2012.
But the former Hear’Say star claimed she saw her fiance Graham Quinn, 51, and an unnamed celebrity “unzipping” each other at her birthday party.
Both of the stars were clients of her now ex-husband, who worked as a showbiz security manager.
Their continued friendship is said to have caused a rift as Myleene, 47, reportedly believes Rochelle took Graham’s side.
But they have not been seen on-screen together on the ITV show since an awkward episode last year.
At the time of the first report, representatives for Rochelle and Myleene did not reply to a request for comment.
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Rochelle Humes reaches out to Frankie Bridge amid Myleene Klass feud after Wimbledon snub and cryptic swipes
ROCHELLE Humes appears to have offered an olive branch to Frankie Bridge amid the pair’s feud and Wimbledon snub.
The Sun previously revealed friction behind-the-scenes with This Morning anchor Rochelle, 36, and her The Saturdays co-star Frankie, 36.
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Mum of two Frankie, 36, recently posted a cryptic “you’re dead to me” upload after the pair kept their distance at Wimbledon.
Meanwhile, Rochelle – who was in The Saturdays band with Frankie since 2007 – uploaded an equally thought-provoking message about “choosing partners wisely.”
Frankie’s mystery message was also also posted after her feud with Myleene Klass came to light – after a row over the Hear’Say singer’s “cheating” ex.
We then reported how ITV has stepped in to manage strained relations between Frankie, Rochelle, and Myleene.
Yet now Rochelle has appeared to support Frankie in a rare move, hitting the heart-shaped like button on her recent Instagram upload.
It showed the Loose Women panelist stripping to a patterned bikini as she soaked up the sunshine in the Maldives.
While the pair still follow each other on Instagram, Rochelle’s like is a rare move amid their feud – as they rarely publicly support each others’ posts.
The Up singers haven’t liked each others’ uploads in years, and there have been no likes or comment exchanges between the pair since 2013.
This could mean they were wiped if one of them had blocked the other.
TOUGH TIMES
Recently, The Sun reported how ITV has stepped into manage relations between Frankie, Rochelle, and Myleene.
All three former pop stars now work as Daytime presenters at ITV.
They were all once close, with Loose Women hosts Myleene and Frankie attending Rochelle’s hen do back in 2012.
However, Rochelle and Frankie remained friends with their former bodyguard and Myleene’s ex husband Graham Quinn.
Rochelle even posted snaps with Graham in Ibiza earlier this week.
Marvin and Rochelle Humes Career Highlights
Singers and presenters Marvin and Rochelle Humes have enjoyed successes both together and individually. Here are some of their biggest highlights.
In 2013, soon after Myleene’s divorce from Quinn, guests at the Glamour Women of the Year awards saw her storm over to Frankie after believing she had been blanked.
A source said: “Myleene seemed to take that as Frankie taking sides with Graham because of their working relationship.”
Meanwhile, Frankie and Myleene have not appeared on Loose Women together since an “awkward” episode last December.
Sources said that though they’d rather not be on together, they are professionals and do their best to make things work.
Tensions between the trio could well have heightened after Graham hit back at Myleene this weekend, blasting allegations of his “cheating.”
WIMBLEDON WOE
Frankie and Rochelle snubbed each other at Wimbledon last month, after a 24-year friendship.
Then this week, I’m A Celeb star Frankie shared a TikTok about falling out with a friend.
A caption written over the clip read: “You’re so quiet…
“Thanks, you said something five years ago and I’ve just realised you’re actually dead to me.”
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Netflix’s ‘Forever’ features artwork of Black L.A. artists
L.A. has long been a beacon for the arts. So it’s only fitting that “Forever,” the Netflix series that showrunner Mara Brock Akil envisioned as “a love story within a love letter to Los Angeles,” celebrates local artists.
The Midcentury Modern home of Justin Edwards, one half of the couple whose love story informs the show — an adaptation of Judy Blume’s 1975 novel — is flooded with work from Black Angelenos.
“Local Los Angeles artists were important for me to put into the sets, and the Edwards family home, specifically, being collectors of Los Angeles art,” Akil, an L.A. native, told The Times.
Production designer Suzuki Ingerslev and set decorator Ron Franco are also Angelenos, which they said contributed to the cultural competency of their work on “Forever.” Although the writers’ strike made elements of their jobs difficult, both agreed that their experience on “Forever” was uniquely positive, in large part because of their curation of the art in the Edwards’ home.
“Sometimes art can really make a space and it makes a statement and it tells you who the character is,” said Ingerslev. “In this case, you really knew who the Edwards were — they curated art and they cared about where they live — and I thought that really made a big difference through the art and through the furnishings as well.”
Franco agreed, saying he had fun sourcing artwork from Black artists that matched Ingerslev’s color palette and also contained themes pertinent to the show.
“A lot of times the shows that you see now are just headshots and everything that we put up becomes a background piece that’s kind of blurred,” he said. “We are very lucky in that this camera really opened up, and you follow everybody through both of the [permanent] sets and you really feel a lot.”
Audiences noticed their effort, said Ingerslev, who’s been bombarded with questions about the artworks in “Forever,” which was just renewed for a second season.
Here are five local Black artists whose work are featured in the show.
Noah Humes, 31
Humes cites a book about artist and writer Romare Bearden that he received from Akil when he was 6 years old as the foundation for his worldview as an artist. (Humes’ mother was a casting director on “Girlfriends,” the 2000s TV series created by Akil, whom Humes calls “Auntie Mara.”)
“I look back [and] that’s what helped form and shape my energy with how I approach the canvas, wanting to tell the story of my community and different things that I see — social moments, political moments, historical remnants,” said the figurative painter.
Humes is drawn to bright colors that capture the vibrancy of his hometown of L.A. “Her” and “Mid City,” which feature prominently in the Edwards family’s media room in “Forever,” depict solitary figures against yellow backgrounds. The foliage in “Her” grows in Humes’ mother’s frontyard. “Mid City,” the neighborhood where Humes was raised, features the red-crowned parrots that wake him up every morning.
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1. “Her” (Noah Humes) 2. “Mid City” (Noah Humes)
“I felt inclined to represent and show a certain subtlety of ‘We’re here, we’re centered, we’re always a focal point of unfortunate times, but also we can overcome things and become stronger than we have been,’” Humes said of the twin paintings, which he completed in 2020 after George Floyd’s murder and the national racial reckoning that followed.
Humes also credits his neighbors in L.A., a “system of Black excellence,” for positively influencing his artistry. Animator Lyndon Barrois (“Happy Feet,” “Alvin and the Chipmunks”) is his mentor, and members of the hip-hop collective Odd Future, including siblings Syd and Travis “Taco” Bennett, as well as Thebe Kgositsile — who uses the stage name Earl Sweatshirt — are his childhood friends.
Francis ‘Tommy’ Mitchell, 41
(Francis “Tommy” Mitchell)
Mitchell has been drawing for as long as he can remember, but it was a high school classmate pointing out the permanent nature of a ballpoint pen that led to his aha moment.
“You can erase graphite, you can paint over acrylic and oil,” said the Baltimore- and L.A.-based artist. “Ink is one of those things that I just think of, no pun intended here, it’s forever.”
Mitchell’s portraits feature individuals shaded with ink set against monochromatic acyrlic background. Because it is extremely time-consuming, most artists working in ink compose smaller, more intimate images, said Mitchell. In contrast, his portraits are huge. If the work were hung on the walls of a museum, the viewer may never notice the figure’s skin was drawn in ink and not paint.
“Going to museums or galleries as a kid, I would see these amazing European paintings, and I’m like, ‘Wow, these are amazing,’ but there’s no one that looks like me,” he said, of his desire to focus on portraiture.
“Francis R. of City College”
(Francis “Tommy” Mitchell)
The subject of “Francis R. of City College,” Mitchell’s painting featured in the Edwards’ dining room in “Forever,” is modeled after his father. For Mitchell, the work represents a young man with his whole life ahead of him. Making the painting in his Baltimore studio less than a mile away from City College, where his father attended high school, felt like a full-circle moment.
Seeing the work on television only adds to the significance.
“One of my goals is to always promote those who work in ink because it’s not a traditional medium,” he said, pointing to tattoo artists Jun Cha and Mister Cartoon as inspirations. “So for it to be seen on television, it lends credence to, ‘Hey, we’re doing something special as well.’”
Edwin Marcelin, 50
Marcelin’s first job as a teenager was at Stüssy, a Laguna Beach streetwear brand founded in the early 1980s. Minimalist graphic design, a trademark of Stüssy as well as brands Supreme and Undefeated, has always informed his art.
“Everything usually is about engagement, confrontation or affection,” said Marcelin. “Those are things that I tend to generate towards by using very minimal strokes.”
During his time at the California College of the Arts — then called the California College of Arts and Crafts — Marcelin was drawn to Bauhaus, a German school of art that melds functionality and design. Marcelin applies those abstract Bauhaus fundamentals and adds the element of movement.
“If it ain’t moving, it ain’t me,” said the L.A.-born-and-raised artist.
Marcelin said his emphasis on motion lends itself well to the screen — his piece “Clarity,” a dynamic painting of Michael Jordan taking flight, hangs in basketball-loving Justin’s bedroom in “Forever.”
“I think Black folks in Los Angeles are dynamic, so I try to keep dynamic images, people doing things, not standing there, and I think that translates to film very well,” said Marcelin.
“Clarity” is part of a 23-painting series titled “Black Jesus.” Each image in the series, which took Marcelin about five months to complete in its entirety, references Jordan, who Marcelin said is disappearing visually from pop culture. Case in point: He said his 19- and 16-year-old sons may recognize the Jumpman logo, but they wouldn’t instantly recognize an image of Jordan himself.
“There’ll be more basketball players, but I wanted to do something that was completely abstract representing him because he has so many moments that are fantastically beautiful,” said Marcelin.
Corey Pemberton, 34
With a background in collage, glassblowing and painting, Pemberton’s large mixed-media works — of a man singing into his toothbrush in the bathroom, a naked woman smoking marijuana in bed, a man devouring a plate of his mother’s food — are both intimate and mundane.
“At a certain point, I turned an interest to those who had been marginalized by society in some way, whether it was because of the color of their skin or their gender expression or their socioeconomic status, and developed an interest in depicting those people in a way that both celebrated them but also gave them some space to just exist,” he said.
Such themes of ownership and viewership are etched into Pemberton’s work. For example, he depicts the space and objects around his figures in vivid detail. Objects are important, he said, because they carry memories of “the people who created them or gave them to us or lived with them before us.”
Similarly, his painting “The Collector” celebrates “a young black person who’s making a concerted effort to own and conserve our culture, which is so often falling into the hands of people who don’t care about us on a deeper level.” And in many of Pemberton’s pieces, miniature renderings of his previous works can be found on the walls of his subjects’ homes.
“I think when you see a work presented that way, it sort of brings a heightened level of importance,” said Pemberton.
“I Used to Cook More”
(Corey Pemberton)
So it’s doubly significant that Pemberton’s work is on display in the wealthy Edwards’ home in “Forever.” The art in question, “I Used to Cook More,” can be found in the family’s kitchen and depicts Pemberton’s friend and fellow collector Jared Culp eating out of a white takeout container.
“We were talking about all of the takeout that we now consume as busy young Black creatives in L.A. trying to claw our way to the top of something,” said Pemberton.
But success in the art world has been easier to come by in L.A., where he relocated to after six years in rural North Carolina, said Pemberton.
“When I moved to Los Angeles, not only was I selling work but I was selling work to people with shared experience,” he said. “I was getting feedback that not only were these works that people wanted to live with, but they were works that people saw themselves reflected in, and that I was doing something important or meaningful to more people than just myself.”
Charles A. Bibbs, 77
Bibbs worked in corporate America for 25 years before becoming an artist full time. For Bibbs, art — in a crosshatching style, in his case — is all about communicating universal ideas.
“I mix that crosshatching with different colors and paint, and it’s just one layer on top of another until you get your desired effect,” Bibbs said of his “spontaneous” way of creating that’s “almost like magic sometimes.”
Like many Black artists, Bibbs chose his subject matter out of necessity. As a young man, he encountered few Black artists, yet innately understood the power of positive images of the Black experience, especially in the home.
“It’s a very honorable occupation because you’re giving people a part of you that is changing their lives in an aesthetic way,” he said. “All of those things play into people proud to be who they are.”
“Daddy’s Love”
(Charles A. Bibbs)
In “Forever,” viewers may catch a glimpse of “Daddy’s Love,” a drawing of Bibbs’ father and Bibbs and his sister as children, on the wall outside Justin’s bedroom. But this isn’t the first time his work has made it to the screen. Bibbs is credited with the Black Madonna artwork on the honey jar central to the plot of the 2008 film “The Secret Life of Bees.” He said the experience underscored the importance of art, which he said touches the “subconscious mind.”
“[My work] was part of the presentation of the movie and in some way or another may have helped them understand what that movie was really all about.”
Source link