I’ve long said the Fielder clan are the Marsalises of black alt culture. Seems like everyone in the family is an artistic talent. Brother AJ Fielder is a noted cinematographer (Daughters of the Dust, anyone?). Longtime readers of Bold As Love are probably more familiar with brother Boston Fielder,the musician, bandleader and music producer (remember all those URB Alt Festivals?). Another brother Jim is a video artist. Melanie M. Goodreaux-Fielder, Tim’s wife, is a noted playwright, poet and fiction writer, who’s been featured as part of our now-on-extended hiatus Sundays @…Reading Series. Creatively, there’s much badassery in this family. And they’re all such good people, too.
But I digress: Then there’s Tim: Illustrator, animator, concept designer and cartoonist (and also covered under the above-mentioned good people clause). The former NYU Gallatin student is having an exhibit of his work starting today. Here’s what the Gallatin site says about him and about what’s going on:
Black Metropolis: 30 Years of Afrofuturism, Comics, Music, Animation, Decapitated Chickens, Heroes, Villains, and Negroes features an amazing collection of work by Gallatin student Tim Fielder. It has well over 100 drawings from his career in New York.
As part of the show, Tim will be in the gallery from 11-7 Monday to Friday drawing, teaching others how to draw and doing portraits. It’s a great opportunity to bring your kids into the gallery and engage with them. He will also be handing out a limited number of editions of his comic Matty’s Rocket, “a galaxy spanning tale about the adventures of space pilot Matty Watty. This animatic series is based in an alternative past where the pulp stylings of Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis collide with the real world events of World War 2, FDR, Nazis, the Harlem Renaissance and the oppressive Jim Crow era. Watch as Matty navigates her vessel through a dangerous world filled with evil villains, heroic feats, alien oddities and down home adventure.”
Tim Fielder is an Illustrator, concept designer, cartoonist, and animator born and raised in Clarksdale, Mississippi. He has a lifelong love of Visual Afrofuturism, Pulp entertainment, and action films. He holds other afrofuturists such as Samuel Delany, Steven Barnes, and Octavia Butler as major influences. He has worked over the years in the storyboarding, film visual development, gaming, comics, and animation industries for clients as varied as Marvel Comics, The Village Voice, Tri-Star Pictures, to Ubisoft Entertainment. He also works as an educator for institutions such as New York University and the New York Film Academy.
Tim hopes to push forward with his art in the emerging digital content delivery systems of the day. To that end, Matty’s Rocket is Tim’s first foray in the genre coined as “Dieselfunk”. He makes his home with his wife and children in the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood of Harlem.
Black Metropolis runs through May 30. See it if you can.
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