AfroSolo arts festival: United for Peace
Going on now throughout the Bay Area, the 18th annual AfroSolo Arts Festival is showcasing African-American artists and by giving a voice to their experience they can explore unity and peace through spoken-word, paintings, theatre, music and health awareness.
By Gianne Nalangan The Guardsman
Going on now throughout the Bay Area, the 18th annual AfroSolo Arts Festival is showcasing African-American artists and by giving a voice to their experience they can explore unity and peace through spoken-word, paintings, theatre, music and health awareness.
The 10-week festival is put on by the San Francisco-based AfroSolo Theatre Company, which celebrates and encourages African American and diaspora culture through solo performances and the visual arts.
“At first, the AfroSolo Festival was mostly geared towards people with African descent,” said Thomas Simpson, organizer and creator of the festival, “but what I found was that our story is widely known.”
The AfroSolo Festival uses art as a way to combat negativity and promote peace. He said peace is what we, as a society, all strive for, despite your culture, background or heritage.
Feeling a sense of hostility toward President Barrack Obama from the right-wing community and recognizing the ongoing wars in Iraq, Simpson themed last year’s festival as “United in Peace.”
Congruent to last year, the theme continued into this year. Simpson has lined up art events, concerts and theatre art performances advocating peace.
“The idea of AfroSolo originated at a birthday party for myself in 1991,” Thomas Simpson said. In 1994 he officially organized the first AfroSolo festival.
Nannette Harris, East Bay native, is one of many artists in the festival. Her exhibit is called, “Blue People by a Green Painter.”
“I paint to get a message out. To feel the energy and what life is about,” Harris said.
Geared to attract all audiences, Harris paints figures like Michael Jackson, Carlos Santana, President Barrack Obama, Tina Turner, and Billie Holiday.
While using recycled oil, a main components in all her pieces, the “green-painter” painted several portraits of iconic figures with a blue flesh skin-tone.
In painting their skin blue Harris utilizes the color of blood inside all humans to symbolically convey we are all essentially the same.
“The theme of the show is Peace & Unity,” said Harris. “I’ve proven we are all the same, inside-out.”
Harris’ work can be seen for free inside the main branch of the San Francisco Public Library.
Stewart Shaw, the African American center librarian, said the gamut of art displayed throughout the AfroSolo Art Festival ranges from photography, animation to theatre.
The AfroSolo Art Festival runs for 10-weeks, from July 28-October 20, 2011.
