African Diaspora honors 26th anniversary

By Brandon Nicolas STAFF WRITER

On the first floor of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library is a windowed room, and on display are several paintings created with household acids, dollar store bleach and charcoal.

The Richmond Art Center, in partnership with the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library, hosted an exhibition featuring the Art of African Diaspora.

They partnered up to celebrate the exhibition’s 26th anniversary on Friday.

In 1996, Jan Hart-Schuyers and Rae Louise Hayward established the exhibition, The Art of Living Black at Richmond Art Center. Founded in 1936, the Richmond Art Center is a nonprofit art organization that seeks to grow and sustain innovative art practices in Richmond and the Bay Area.

Over the following years, the exhibition became home to African American artists in the Bay Area, allowing young artists to garner new audiences and build a creative community. The exhibition celebrated its 26th anniversary on Friday.

The Steering Committee is a collective of artists who host the event each year.

Artists Kelvin Curry, Stephen Bruce and TheArthur Wright shared three pieces each in different mediums.

Born in Oakland, Curry picked up art at six years old when his grandmother and mother gifted him an art set, according to his website.

One of his pieces from the series “Summer of Love,” resembles a stained glass window in a church. Each of the quadrants contains a profile looking in a different direction, a symbol of Curry trying to find his way during the creation of the series.

Curry said he is a fan of using geometric shapes to tell a story of love, hate or beauty. Each piece in a series starts long before line work.

He said his most recent series was inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic. Curry said he spent his time studying African masks throughout history.

“The masks all have similar shapes and lines to them,” Curry said. “I’m going to take them and do a remix– keep it primitive but give it a modern feel.”

Curry said his research of African masks led him to produce his latest series which includes quotes paraphrased and inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, philosophy and social justice reforms.

Curry relates the Art of the African Diaspora to the Harlem Renaissance, an African-American cultural movement in New York City in the 1920s.

“It’s important to realize how we are all connected,” Curry said. “It’s hard to move forward if you don’t know what was done in the past.”

Raised in Sacramento, Stephen Bruce said he moved from studio to studio until landing in Richmond where he works in a warehouse downtown.

Bruce’s works have been seen on TV shows, including “House,” “Law & Order” and “The Big Bang Theory.”

Bruce works mainly on copper and brass canvases. “If I can manipulate oxidation on copper using acid, that would be an interesting technique,” Bruce said.

Bruce said he initially started coloring with various chemicals, but fainted one late night in his studio. He would turn to household acetic acids as an alternative, leading him to use other forms of acid.

One of the three pieces Bruce shared during the exhibit was colorized using Frank’s RedHot sauce and pickled pepperoncini. Other acids Bruce uses include pineapple juice and rice wine vinegar. Once the piece is done treating, he sprays it with an epoxy clear coat to prevent the piece from further oxidizing.

His works resemble seascapes and mountains in which Bruce shares his influence to be the southwest.

“I love Sedona, Moapa Valley, all the national parks,” he said. “That’s heaven.”

Bruce said he spends his time in nature, and when inspired, refers to his notebook where he will write the words, “Barbeque sauce. Hot sauce,” to remember the color of the landscape when oxidized upon copper.

TheArthur Wright said he was born in Little Rock Arkansas in 1940 and that he would draw characters on his assignments before turning them in. He gained notoriety for his character, and a demand for his art began at a young age.

Various published writings and art pieces fulfilled Wright’s career until he took a nearly 20 year hiatus from the humanities.

Wright said it wasn’t until his goddaughter requested a painting for her new home that his brush would again meet the canvas in 1994, this time with a new medium. “It was an accident,” Wright said. “I was eating a candy bar around bleach and the bleach somehow splashed on the brown cardboard tray of candy and turned gold.”

In the following weeks, Wright would experiment with bleach, painting Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X and Medgar Evers. This series titled “The Three Martyrs” sold almost immediately, and Wright would no longer question his artistry.

“We never know who we are going to become,” Bruce said. “Who you were is less important than who you will be.”