Ancient Prayerz
M. Saffell Gardner and Aaron Ibn Pori Pitts
February 23 – April 7, 2024
In the late 1980s, M, Saffell Gardner and Aaron Ibn Pori Pitts initiated their first of many collaborations that would occur over the course of four decades. Ancient Prayerz is a series of monoprints dating from 1991-92, made from a woodcut they hand-carved in Pitts’ Hamilton Street studio in Detroit, and printed at Robert Blackburn’s legendary Printmaking Workshop, a seminal open studio on 17th Street in Manhattan since its establishment in 1947. Run on Rives and Arches archival paper, each work in this vintage series represents a unique variation featuring inked stencils of self-referenced icons related to West African deities.
Known as an activist, artist and poet, Aaron Ibn Pori Pitts (September 16, 1941 – August 13, 2022) founded the Ogun artist collective more than 40 years ago, as well as the local press Black Graphics International, Kcalb Gniw Spirit and Band Unit #10. He was a member of the Detroit radical labor group League of Revolutionary Black Workers. Pitts exhibited and performed internationally.
M. Saffell Gardner (February 7, 1954) is a multi-disciplinary artist, art historian, curator, educator and mentor, whose drawings, paintings and sculpture have been exhibited internationally. His work is in the permanent collections of Henry Ford Hospital, Detroit Medical Center, The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Renaissance High School, Southeastern High School, Detroit School of the Arts, Detroit rePatched, and Michigan Legacy Art Park, among others.