A workshop on race, art, and storytelling
“I could really feel it in my body, and felt my heart racing,” said Smith College student Nikte Lopez-Aleshire, reflecting on a chilling video shown during a mixed media workshop led by artist, writer, and educator Angel Abreu.
On February 7, on a snowy Saturday morning, Lopez-Aleshire joined Five College students and community members at Augusta Savage Gallery for Recentering the Narrative, a workshop as part of Abreu’s residency with the gallery leading up to his exhibition Crossing Narratives, which will open March 27 and run through May 8.
This workshop explored urgent conversations on police brutality, racism, and social prejudices. The Pulitzer prize-winning novel James by Percival Everett, which is a reimagining of Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, led the day's conversations and artistic activities.
“We watched a video of Boots Riley telling a story about racial profiling and police violence in the Bay Area, which is where I’m from,” said Lopez-Aleshire. “The video really stuck with me, and it's very cool to start this project with a discussion … and to connect art with different social justice movements.”
“It was cool to write our thoughts down so we could all connect with the content we were watching. … It was really powerful.”
Afterwards, the group read aloud thirty-five pages of James, dissecting the language and analyzing the themes in what Abreu described as a “seance.”
Elise Barnett, a doctoral candidate in Afro-American studies, was a moderator of a book talk for James. “It’s been really wonderful to see the folks gather together, even people that didn’t read the book, to make art pieces.”
The workshop culminated in a hands-on creative exercise: attendees crafted unique collages onto wooden canvases layered with adhered pages of James. Then, given illustrations based on the novel, the attendees were prompted to create their own pieces. The canvases came out in a sea of different shades, highlighting different paragraphs and sentences that spoke to each participant.
“I think there is a way in which one is producing something that is creative, you sort of get lost in the work, " said Barnett. “like you’re in a sort of trance, where the hands are producing a thing and the mind goes elsewhere.”
These unique artistic pieces will be presented alongside Abreu’s other work in his exhibition, Crossing Narratives, at Augusta Savage Gallery. An opening reception will take place on March 27 at 5 p.m.
— Madda Ferrante, UMass journalism student
