His dedication is marked by numerous exhibitions in Florida, throughout the United States, in Africa and in Europe, including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Palermo Italy. It is not only fitting that we honor his commitment with this retrospective exhibition, but that we introduce him to a North Carolina audience. The group of works here span Falana's entire career, and nearly every major drawing, printmaking and collage series. Altogether they include the earliest work of his career through the most recent. The first is based thematically on the Civil Rights movement of the sixties, where images evoked a keen awareness of his African heritage and defiantly called attention to the struggle for racial equalities. These were followed by a stunning series of realistic drawings that used students, friends and family members as points of departure. The most recent works show that Falana has steadfastly explored the modern idiom of abstraction.

In a recent conversation Falana remarked that an eager entrepreneur was disappointed that Falana would not allow him to sell his work on the internet. He would join a long line of discouraged individuals and galleries. Falana has never actively sought gallery representation and has admonished his students that they should not pursue art with material gain in mind. This revelation should come as no surprise to anyone that has followed his career. While many museums own his work, few of the grand museums do and he is not discussed in every textbook. Despite this, there have been numerous one-person exhibitions throughout the United States. There was the "Ken Falana Color in Motion" exhibition at the Center for the Arts, in Vero Beach, Florida in 2000 and the "Ken Falana: A World of Color Exhibition", at the Pensacola Museum of Art and the Museum of Arts and Science in Daytona Beach in 1997. A big exhibition of his prints and collages at Virginia Polytechnical Institute and State University was held in 1993 and numerous exhibitions of his drawings and prints have been held. But all of these exhibitions displayed the man in parts. Here, for the first time, we get to see him whole. While his later work is clearly mainstream in appearance, like earlier expressions, it does not follow prevailing art world trends. Falana has consistently preferred to revel in the freedom to make drawings, prints, and collages that explored the social and aesthetic issues that interested him. The purpose of this essay-and the exhibition that accompanies it- is to demonstrate the remarkable range of Kenneth Falana's work-- while providing a broader cultural and historical context within which to view it.

Next to creating art is Falana's fervor for making certain that students take full advantage of their educational opportunity by mastering the rudiments essential to making good art. Firmly committed to general goals, composition and design concepts never took backseat to sound drawing fundamentals or to solid printmaking techniques in his classroom. These dual passions were not complacent preoccupations, but manifestations of a committed individual whose drive and determination are firmly anchored in Florida roots and in the historically black university, where he elected to remain. Following the traditions of James E. Lewis at Morgan State University and John Biggers at Texas Southern University, (other artist-teachers who were committed to developing artists at historically black institutions) Falana rebuffed attempts to move to larger universities that might have afforded the opportunity to concentrate more on making art than teaching. While simultaneously carving a niche in North Florida he negotiated a comfort zone that left neither the artist or teacher wanting.

Falana, a product of Florida is ever there was one, was the third born in a family of fourteen in Flemington, Florida in 1940. Love of art did not pervade his immediate family, however it held interest for extended family. He fondly remembers his aunt and uncle, with whom he sometimes lived, taking him to the Ringling Museum in Sarasota. There he became enamored with classical and Renaissance nude sculpture and began copying them. Unaware that he was continuing the time-honored, centuries old tradition of copying from classical nude examples, he simply followed his natural inclination to draw. His choice of subject matter, however, did not exactly rest well with one uncle in particular. Following the advice of his supportive uncle, he decided not to leave the drawings laying around in order to continue his obsession. The development of one of Florida's most accomplished artists, and its most significant collagist, had begun.

The years 1960-64 were pivotal for him. He would become the first in his family to attend college and he received an AA degree from Gibbs Junior College in St. Petersburg in 1962 and a BS degree in Art Education from Florida A & M University in 1964. Following graduation he would teach art at Crispus Attucks Jr. and Sr. High School in Hollywood, Florida and work as an art specialist at the Communication Art Center, BBPI, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. In 1970, desiring to learn more about printmaking, which he had developed a fascination for, Kenneth Falana entered the University of Wisconsin graduate program. It is safe to say that he came of age as an artist during this period under the tutelage of Dean Meeker and Warrington Colesceoff. Of the two, Dean Meeker perhaps had the larger impact. After receiving an MFA in printmaking from the University of Wisconsin -Madison in 1972 he accepted a teaching position at his alma mater, Florida A & M University and has been there ever since. For more than 30 years, Falana has produced an oeuvre that exemplifies rigorous discipline and inventiveness borne of the lack of fear of changing technique, experimenting with media, or reassessing the significance of subject matter. These undertakings only come from artists who have attained mastery over their creative impulses and materials during a lifetime of self-training.

During his years teaching in public school, Falana's creativity could not be contained. Two of the earliest extant works produced during this period are two landscapes dating from 1966-68. Both reveal a familiarity with the traditions of Western landscape rendering and an already marked technical accomplishment which derive from two major sources: his years of doing childhood sketches around his hometown of Fleming, Florida, and his study at Florida A & M University. 4th Avenue Rooming House records the economic depression of many Florida towns and reveals the difficult life that social turmoil engendered in many areas of the United States. The realistic approach is indicative of the style that many beginning artists embrace. He is intent on capturing life as it is, without appealing to artifice or luster. The tenements are typical of the vernacular architecture in many American cities that provided housing for the poor. Seen up close the tenements stretch diagonally across the picture plane and utilize every inch of space. An iron and wooden barrel in the foreground appear to be harbingers of an uneasy life. Front porches, on the lower and upper levels, do not significantly contrast with the wooden planks on the exterior of the houses. Prominently strung across the front porches is freshly washed laundry that gently sways because of a sudden gust of wind. At the core of the second work Untitled, is the scrupulous detail of an oppressively deteriorated storefront. With broken windows and crumpling bricks revealing the relative old age of the building, a more ominous note is revealed in the sign reading wines, liquors, and beers. The quietness, we realize, is permanent; there was once robust life hidden behind this façade. In both works there is a vague sense of loneliness and uncertainty that suggests that the small details of peoples' lives tend to get submerged and lose their meaning.

By 1969 the injustices being inflicted on African Americans seemed to produce a cultural revival in Falana. He was beginning to redefine the aesthetic standards of his work and adhere to the philosophy of the Black Arts Movement. 1 The assassinations of Malcolm X in 1965 and Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1968 was a turning point that provoked a new direction in his art. Stirred by an awakened social consciousness as well as by political ideology, he adopted new techniques and approaches. Printmaking had now become the mode of expression that provided an avenue for the African and Afrocentric aesthetic. Allys Palladino-Craig has written that Falana was an accomplished printmaker before he attended graduate school and had mastered numerous printing media. Drawing inspiration from traditional African art Africa initiated a series of works in the collagraph medium. 1. Here a rich tableaux of classic African masks, animals and figuration appear before a brightly hued backdrop. Conspicuous are lettered ethnic groups and kingdoms that have special significance, especially the ethnic group Fulani.

Two collagraphs from 1970, Untitled and Rage, are latent responses to the Reverend Martin Luther King's death. The former is a poignant reminder that Dr. King had been unwavering is his commitment to breaking down racial barriers. The ironic inscription 'Southern Way of Life' is graphically depicted in imagery synonymous with the segregated South. Colored only signs and scenes showing a lynching victim, the insidious sharecropping system, the Black Panthers, and wanted posters for runaway slaves surround the profile image of Dr. King. In Rage, a young black man forcefully raises a stylized clinched fist, that appears to clutch the American flag, while hopelessly looking out at the audience. A deliberate reductive style similar to naïve painters shows an indifference to the academic rules in a similar manner that Jacob Lawrence did.