Halo Arts Project Hosts "ASE: Seeing Spirit in Afro-Caribbean Art"

"First Generation" by Eustace Mamba (2024)

While it's always fun to see an exhibit with works by famous artists, a show doesn't have to boast familiar names to be engaging. Case in point: "ASE: Seeing Spirit in Afro-Caribbean Art" now on view at the former studio of John Sims on 10th Street in Sarasota. It's a show no art lover should miss. 

The exhibit features 30 works created by 23 artists and comes from the Petrucci Family Foundation Collection of African American Art. The Halo Arts website describes the concept behind the exhibit this way: "Ase (pronounced axe) is a Yoruba concept that exists across the African Diaspora. It has a dual meaning: both a spiritual direction, understood as 'the power to make things happen' and a vital life force..." The works in the exhibit are quie different in style and subject matter, but each goes back to this basic idea. 

"First Generation" by Eustace Mamba is the work I gravitated to first both times I've visited the exhibit. It is painted on an actual American flag, a choice that makes the work more impactful than a mere painting of the flag would be. A young woman holds an infant whose image is created in part from blocks of different colors. When combined with the title of the painting and the flag, the work seems to be a nod to the melting pot America has historically been. It's worth noting that Mamba himself is a first generation child of immigrants. For more on Mamba and his work, click here.

"White Noise, Let the choir sing a magnified silence
 (25 Affirmation)" by Morel Doucet (2020)

Morel Doucet's "White Noise, Let the choir sing a magnified silence (25 Affirmation)" is a striking photograph of 25 small ceramic figures. Doucet is both the sculptor and the photographer. Most of the figures have natural elements in place of human heads. There are seashells and starfish and coral and the like, all nods to the interrelationship between humans and the natural world. 

Then there are figures with safety pins for their heads.These works are unsettling, not only because they interrupt the artist's ode to nature. And that's Doucet's intention. The safety pins are a nod to the way humans and the natural world are entangled and to the threats that relationship poses to the environment. 

Doucet's choice of white porcelain as the medium is also intentional. A profile of the artist in "Plaid" magazine describes the intention behind his ceramic works as follows. "The concept of 'colorism' is strong here. 'Colorism' is a kind of denial of 'blackness,' both socially as well as physically with skin bleaching.This trend is widespread across the Caribbean. Also, ceramic is fragile, and Doucet connects that aspect of the work to the fragility of being black in America." To read the article in its entirety, click here. And for Doucet's website, click here. 

"Martiniquienne" by Ralph Chesse (1950)

I'll leave you with Ralph Chesse's "Martiniquienne," a work that made me think of the linoleum cuts of Elizabeth Catlett. (Click here to see Catlett's "Sharecropper" in MOMA's collection.) The similarity isn't only that Chesse and Catlett work in the same medium. Both artists imbue their subjects with a sense of strength and resolve and dignity. Chesse's Martiniquienne is taking care of business, whether she's carrying this produce to the market or home. She is erect in spite of what must be difficult conditions. Despite the lack of color, there's something about the image that makes me feel the sun beating down on her. The more time I spend with this work, the more powerful it becomes. 

Chesse was a multi-talented artist whose skills extended well beyond the canvas. He created a mural in Coit Tower in San Francisco for the predecessor agency to the Depression-era Works Projects Administration that can still be seen today. Chesse was also a puppeteer of some acclaim. He was the creator of "Brother Buzz," a children's puppet program that ran for more than 15 years in the San Francisco area. But his puppets weren't just for kids. They also "acted" in productions of works by the likes of Shakespeare and O'Neill. That is something I'd like to see. I am impressed by the scope of his talent. For more on Chesse work and life, click here. 

While there are many other works I'd like to share, I'll let you discover them yourselves. "ASE: Seeing Spirit in Afro-Caribbean Art" runs at John Sims Studio/Halo Arts Project through May 31. (Just to make it easy for you, the address is 1639 Tenth Street in Sarastoa.) The exhibit is open for visitors on Thursday and Fridays from 4-8 and on Saturdays and Sundays from 1-6. For more on Halo Arts Project and the exhibit, click here. And for more on the Petrucci Family Collection of African American Art, click here. Get there if you can!