Months later, Kornegay founded Staticc Art and Life to "deliver beauty to the world," he said. Kornegay hesitated at first but then went out and purchased a Nikon D3200 and in between interviewing people and working at Home Depot, started taking photographs. When he mentioned to an ex-boyfriend that he wanted to interview house music DJs about their craft, his friend suggested he also buy a camera, so he could have a video record of the conversations. RELATED: The silent epidemic: Black gay men and HIV The response was so positive, Kornegay decided to start a Facebook fan page. “Portrait of Aryn” by Johnnie Ray Kornegay III.Įvery Tuesday from then on, he began posting art- and music-related missives on Facebook. In 2011, Kornegay said that he ended up one night on Edgewood Avenue, where he discovered an artist, Eric Nine, exhibiting his work “I’m a Beast.” Kornegay, if you haven’t guessed already, is also a black gay man, a revelation he hadn’t publicly proclaimed until in 2015 after he found himself adding his name to an online letter expressing love and devotion to Michael Johnson, a black gay man sentenced to prison for “knowingly” exposing or transmitting HIV to six male partners.
I could see that in the way his eyes lit up as he talked about “Be the Flame” and his newest body of work, “NAKED,” a photo series of 25 black gay and bisexual men in the nude, about body image and self-love and about what had evolved into his third dream: telling the stories of black gay men.
Life with Gracie runs online Tuesday, Thursday and alternating Fridays. I say that because, three days before World AIDS Day, I was with Kornegay in his Stone Mountain photography studio and it was very clear to me the man had discovered his true passion, which comes, of course, with accepting your true self.Įach week, Gracie Bonds Staples will bring you a perspective on life in the Atlanta area. It lasted four years and then in 2000, he walked out of that dream and, after graduating from Temple University, into a second, eventually rising to recruiter for Independence Blue Cross, which eventually led to a managerial position with Borders bookstore and then Home Depot here in Atlanta and closer, not just to his third dream, but what seems to have been his destiny. RELATED: Who do you think is the good Samaritan in this tale? This, he said, was an abbreviated version of that. Kornegay, of course, accepted.įor as long as he can remember, Kornegay wanted to be a music producer/performer. Kornegay returned that evening and several evenings after that, and six months later, the studio owner offered him a job as a technician. What happened next gives new meaning to what it means to follow your dream. If you're not doing anything later on, we're having a gospel music recording session. When using a search engine such as Google, Bing or Yahoo check the safe search settings where you can exclude adult content sites from your search results Īsk your internet service provider if they offer additional filters īe responsible, know what your children are doing online.The man said yes and proceeded to lead Kornegay through the studio. Use family filters of your operating systems and/or browsers
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