"Ain't Burned All the Bright"
I wanted to share with everyone the brilliant book that Jason Reynolds and Jason Griffin have created in “Ain’t Burned All the Bright.” “The Jasons” as I have dubbed them, have artfully and skillfully combined their respective talents to craft a mixed media project that encapsulates life for a black family in 2020 living with systemic racism, police brutality, and the COVID-19 pandemic.
The project began with Jason Reynolds constructing three lengthy sentences, broken up within the book by three deep breaths; and Jason Griffin using a Moleskine pocket notebook to illustrate Reynold’s words. The sentences were then broken apart and spread out over the 300-page moleskine notebook, gripping the reader and leaving them tumbling over the pages for more.
The three interludes for breath hold so much weight when thinking about the context of our time. Not only are those breaths something that we have not been able to take for granted with a global pandemic, but they are the breaths that were not afforded to George Floyd when being taken into police custody.
The mediums themselves that have been explored here are some things that I’ve been toying with for the past few years and can be seen in “Lost.” It’s always really interesting to see how other people and their lives have affected how they make work. While exploring different themes and drawing from our own lives we have both taken a blackout poetry style text, superimposing it over art and visual imagery that supports said themes. The employment of similar visual storytelling methods with completely different results is always something interesting for me to see and be inspired by.
The reason why I have acknowledged this work’s genius with a heavy heart is because the Jasons have created such a damn good piece of art that encapsulates the atmosphere and issues that we are dealing with today and I am not too proud to say that I am jealous (artist’s tend to be an envious bunch). I will gladly tip my hat off to them and this fantastic book.
Their websites and the book are linked below. Enjoy!