R2C2H2, Jazz n' the Ladies, 2001, mixed media on paper

Meticulous and complex in their execution, Ronald Cortez Herd II, whose artist name is R2C2H2, fills the frame of his drawings from edge to edge with figures and objects of symbolic meaning. Jazz musicians dance and play, mingling with bird-forms in puzzle-like compositions of interlocking figures. The image of the bird plays a key role in Herd's works and is both a metaphor for a state of mind and a reference to the real-world figure Charlie "Bird" Parker.

The artist works primarily with ballpoint pen, sometimes interjecting his compositions with passages of black, blue, red and green ink, although he has worked in oils and acrylics and in printmaking. Deeply knowledgeable in the history of jazz, Herd's interest began his freshman year in college when he first viewed a film on the musician Sun Ra. Among the many subjects brought to life in the exhibition are Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Jimmy "Jam" Lunceford, Charlie "Bird" Parker, and Lieutenant James Reese Europe, an innovative and important World War I band leader who composed songs reflecting his wartime experiences. Herd's compositions bear relation to German painter Max Beckmann's cafe` prints and drawings from the 1920s however, the artist also cites the influence of Jacob Lawrence, Pablo Picasso, Vincent Van Gogh, Jean Michel Basquiat, William Henry Johnson, and Charles White.

Born and based in Memphis, Tennessee, Herd began to draw at an early age. He recently graduated from Washington University School of Art, where he earned a B.A. degree in painting and printmaking. His work has been included in many one-person and group exhibitions in California, St. Louis and Memphis, and was featured on the covers of the Sisters Nineties Poetry Magazine and the Eliot Review.