Friday, August 1st, 2025
“It’s like the patience a poem demands, the listening, the waiting for the right word, the prayer that turns precision to beauty and to truth. It brings a visual and conceptual balance to Simmons’ collages that is palpable and fulsome. And then, there’s the rhythm and rhyme of the dots, providing refrains and choruses across various canvases.”
- Dora Marke
Please join us on Friday, August 1st for a reception celebrating the release of Strata, a brand new silkscreen print edition by Danny Simmons. Danny and Gary will be discussing the ways in which this project evolved and presenting a suite of ten monoprints hand collaged in the studio by Danny.
If you can’t attend the Friday evening event, swing by the studio to see Danny and Gary in action as they work. Friday, August 1st from 11am-5pm and Saturday, August 2nd from 11am-4pm.
Danny’s visit coincides with BANG ON A CAN LOUD WEEKEND. More info here!
For over four decades, Danny Simmons (b. 1953) has created paintings, works on paper, and assemblages informed by the spirit imbued in indigenous and African cultures. As the founder of the artistic movement Neo-African Abstract Expressionism, Simmons reclaims traditional African motifs used in modernism through his use of dots, textiles, and tribal markings. Simmons is an author, poet, philanthropist, curator, co-creator of Def Poetry Jam, and co-founder of the renowned Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation. Through the non-profit organization, Rush Arts Gallery NYC and Rush Arts Philadelphia have served as important cultural hubs providing exhibitions, arts education and opportunities for hundreds of emerging, developing and underrepresented artists of color since 1995. Simmons is also a collector of contemporary art and African sculpture.
Simmons’ artworks are in multiple private and museum collections including the Brooklyn Museum, Houston Museum of African American Culture, Montclair Art Museum, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, The Smithsonian, Chase Manhattan Bank and the United Nations.