Mark Jones (born June 19, 1952) is an American visual artist, musician, poet, philosopher, essayist and martial artist. Jones is an artist who has excelled in multiple genres of creative endeavor including paintings, conceptual art pieces, musical performances, compositions, arrangements and productions, poetry, essays, work as an editor and his pedagogical pursuits in music and art as well as the Chinese martial arts. He has also started and run several successful businesses. Since 1983, Jones has been based in Westchester County, New York and has spent winters in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for over 20 years.
Overview
Jones has exhibited his paintings in various galleries in Soho, New York as well as Cleveland and other cities, and was a professor of art at the Cooper School of Art in Cleveland, a private art college. He has performed his music on piano, synthesizers, guitar and harmonica in venues around the world and has had his compositions performed in several cities. He has also arranged and produced sessions for other artists. Jones has written in numerous genres including jazz, classical, blues, rock, world, folk, country and new-age, but is primarily known as a jazz and classical composer. He has been associated with his jazz ensemble, "Sound Sculpture," and has made numerous recordings as well as written and produced music for theater and websites.
The writings of Jones range from his collection of poems, "The Cry of the Lonely, The Song of the Poet," to critical essays on a wide range of subjects including philosophy, art, music, religion, sports, politics, martial arts, and literature. He has been published in the New York Times, Village Voice, Art in America, Newsweek, Mojo, Dirty Linen, Down Beat, New York Jewish Week, the Cleveland Jewish News, Black Belt, Inside Kung Fu, Tai-Chi, and others.
As a martial artist, having been practitioner of since 1971, Jones has specialized in the Chinese internal kung fu systems of taijiquan, bagua-zhang, xingyi-quan, and qigong. Jones has taught privately and given workshops in the USA, Brazil and Thailand.
Despite his large body of work, Jones has worked in relative obscurity, and in order to survive, has worked in professions including a laborer on a Ford Motor Co. door assembly line, a non-ferrous metal sorter/metallurgist, truck loader, warehouse laborer, traveling salesman, restaurant/nightclub manager, music and art teacher, wooden playground designer and manufacturer, home inspector and environmental testing consultant, the last of which he remains active.
Early life
Mark Neil Jones was born in Cleveland, Ohio on June 19, 1952. His grandfather's last name was changed from "Ionis" to Jones by officials at Ellis Island in 1914 when he emigrated from Odessa, Russia, he is of Russian-Jewish descent.Ellis Island "Manifest of Alien Passengers for the United States 16 May 1914" Joseph Jones' two sons (Mark's father and uncle) were born in Newark, NJ and moved at an early age to Cleveland where they grew up, went into business together, and started families of their own. From an early age, Mark Jones showed a propensity for drawing and music, having won a grade school art show and demonstrated an ability to play his sister's piano lesson by simply listening to it from another room. He went on at an early age to take painting courses at the Cleveland Institute of Art, private piano lessons, and gave a recital at the Cleveland Music Settlement. As a child, his maternal grandmother gave him a chromatic harmonica which also expanded his musical imagination.
Teen years In high school, he became smitten with blues music, and began immersing himself in the study of blues on piano, guitar and harmonica. He took a few piano lessons at jazz legend Bill DeArango's studio, and then in 1969, he and guitarist pal Darryl Berk formed the Mo Schwartz Blues Band which also included Mike Washington on vocals, Alan Silver on guitar, Harlan Perry on bass and Tom Pharo on drums. They performed around Cleveland and made a couple recordings.CD – "Mo Schwartz Blues Band: Live in Alan’s Basement,” 1969, Globe Media Recordings The young Jones not only studied the blues on his own, but received a direct transmission from a number of the patriarchs of the blues. Junior Wells heard him playing piano in Ann Arbor, and gave him the seal of approval when he commanded Jones to keep playing while he joined in singing and playing harp. The teenage Jones drew accolades from Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee at Baldwin Wallace College when he performed for them backstage,Personal harmonica autographed by Sonny Terry and is pictured with Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters in Jame Segrest's definitive biography of Howlin' Wolf. He also had an opportunity to jam and study with founding James Gang and Pacific Gas & Electric guitar legend Glenn Schwartz.Reel-to-reel recording circa 1969, and photos in Jones' personal collection In 1970, Jones, while still 17 years old, completed a thesis on a history of the blues – a scholarly recorded 4-hour lecture filled with copious musical examples, including two original works in which he overdubbed himself playing numerous instruments. It was called "the best work of its kind" by Cleveland's acclaimed patriarch blues band leader Bill "Mr. Stress" Miller.Both original recording of thesis and Miller's critique on tape in private collection of Mark Jones
College
After a year at the University of Miami (1970–71), he transferred to Kent State where he earned a BFA in painting, and also studied literature, poetry and other humanities, and began writing poetry in earnest, having attended workshops with Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan and Galway Kinnell. He especially became interested in French Symbolist art and poetry, post-war American poetry, and Russian and Japanese literature. Jones was also able to travel to the Soviet Union with a group led by KSU president Glenn A. Olds,Photographs in private collection of Mark Jones and spend time living in the jungles of rural Jamaica.Photographs and drawings in personal collection of Mark Jones During this period, after being exposed to the music of John Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Oscar Peterson, Larry Coryell, John McLaughlin, Chick Corea and Cecil Taylor, he caught the jazz bug and began teaching himself how to play jazz piano and studying Indian ragas and other world musics, as well as deepening his skills on guitar. In 1973, he formed the Cleveland Art Ensemble with himself on Fender Rhodes piano and composition, Rod Wilson on trumpet, Roy Minoff on guitar, Bruce Green on bass and Hank Levine on drums, which performed at his senior thesis art show, and included the Jones original extended form composition, "African Sketches".Private collection of Mark Jones; soon to be released on DVD : "Cleveland Art Ensemble Live at Van Deusan Hall, 1974." Jones also began his journalistic endeavors by writing some record and concert reviews for a local publication."The Star" reviews of Dave Liebman's "Sweet Hands" and Sonny Fortune's "Awakening" LPs, review of the jazz ensemble "Imajazz" in performance on Water St., Kent, Ohio, circa 1974 Another interest of his that was cultivated during this time at Kent State was Eastern philosophy and martial arts. He began studying Ishin-Ryu Okinawan karate with Sensei Ron Mohr,Appears in group photograph of the Kent State Karate Club, 1971 and then Chinese Shaolin kung-fu and chi-kung (qigong) with Sifu Ni Wei Chen from TaiwanCurrently teaching in the Dallas area www.nistaichiandkungfu.com as well as extensively reading the classics of Chinese philosophy. Throughout much of his college years, Jones worked summers as a laborer and metallurgist in his father's scrap metal recycling warehouse in Cleveland,Globe Metal Co. Cleveland and Windham, Ohio. Photographs of Jones lifting steel drums in scrap metal yard, 1972, Jones private collection and one summer as a welder and laborer in a Ford Motor Company assembly line in Walton Hills, Ohio.
1974–1983
In the mid seventies, after having back-packed and hitch-hiked throughout Europe with his cousin Gary, especially taking in the art in the great European museums,Numerous photographs in private collection of Mark Jones Jones moved to Youngstown, Ohio where he studied jazz and classical piano with local legend Sidney Jireck, and composition, harmony and counterpoint with Daniel Altsmann.Notebooks/workbooks of lessons by all music teachers, including Altsmann, Jireck, Bishop, Mosca, Taylor in private collection of Mark Jones He also continued his martial arts pursuit, studying an Indonesian style of kung-fu called Poekoelan Tjimindie there with Mas Bill Dobich, a top disciple of the late Goeroe Willie Wetzel, who brought the art to America from Indonesia.Certificate from "The Dragon's Temple of Poekoelan Kung Fu," 1976 At this time, Jones was co-managing a restaurant/nightclub in Youngstown called "Heaven," where he designed murals for the building as well as logos and artwork and copy for adds."Heaven is City's Newest Restaurant," in The "Youngstown Vindicator"“Dinner Theater to Open – Production Set in Heaven," "Youngstown Vindicator""Comedy Stage in Round at New Dinner –Theater," "Youngstown Vindicator" 3/28/76, as well as numerous adds and articles from 1976, 77.Also numerous photographs of building, staff, patrons, in private collection of Mark Jones. The name "Heaven" and concept of the staff dressed as angels and devils were Jones' concept. He also performed with acts that headlined there such as The Drifters, and hired local jazz artists who went on to much later international success, such as Ralph and Dave Lalama, Glenn Wilson and James Weidman to play on a weekly basis, despite the non-commercial financial risk. Jones moved to New York in 1977 and studied bebop piano with Walter Bishop Jr., and began showing his paintings in several Soho galleries,Post card advertisements for show of "Non Objective Paintings" at Anico Gallery, 123 Prince St. NYC. Oct 3–15, 1978, "Inner Odyssey" Solo show at South Houston Gallery 98 Prince St. NYC, March 4–25, 1978, "Graphic Conceptual Documentation" W.I.P. Space John Astor Hall, Dowling College, Oakdale, NY May 1–31, 1980, etc. Photographs of shows in private collection of Mark Jones. including the M. Elson Gallery, which provided live, recorded concerts under the name of "Axis in Soho", and Jones' paintings served as a backdrop for musicians such as Sun Ra,Sun Ra "St. Louis Blues: Solo Piano,” 7/3/77 IAI Music Paul McCandless and Paul Bley.Paul Bley "Axis in Soho" 7/1-3/77 IAI Music He also exhibited his work in a collaboration with the Constantina Petkova Dance Theater Group from Bulgaria.
Move-back to Cleveland