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Creative Arts Expression about Race

Durham youth are welcome to engage in the Unifying Community Voices (UCV) initiative, and assist with designing solutions as stakeholders through DCABP Inc's COURAGEOUS CONVERSATION™ forums and Creative Arts Expression about Race (CAE). Through CAE, area youth have a choice of genres to reflect and react to inter-generational conversations about Race and Social Justice issues emanating across the nation.  

Participants are encouraged to reflect and share your creative expressions (e.g., literary, visual arts) to be displayed via the DCABPI website, social media channels, and at local exhibition venues. Local authors, poets, playwrights, artists, musicians, rappers, photographers, and journalists will be available to assist you in developing your project, if needed. All UCV forums and youth artistic project sessions will be held via a virtual environment until further COVID-19 pandemic guidance is given by state and local officials.

 

Click on the preferred genre(s) below to submit your creative

All CAE submissions will be made via this webpage

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This contest is in no way sponsored, endorsed, administered by, or associated with Instagram or Facebook. This contest is operated in accordance with state and local rules and regulations. DCABPI reserves the right to censor and refuse any inappropriate submissions for any round of the contest named "Creative Arts Expression about Race". 

Welcome to

THE NEXT BIG THING

 

FEATURED

NORTH CAROLINA ARTISTS

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CAE ROUND 3 - CONTEST WINNER
GENRE / VISUAL ARTS

CAE Contest
Round 3
"Visual Arts"

Title: Shattered
Submitted by: Quincey Maye-Dean

CAE ROUND 3 - CONTEST WINNER
GENRE / POETRY

Title: Even on the Blacktop
Submitted by: Monfonobong Utin
Sometimes you gotta go alone on the blacktop, Up and down with the rock, never stop.

Up and down with the rock, never stop

No one looking, none to shed a tear,

Court looking empty, only you and all you can bear.

Practicing foundations, scouring locations

Taking shots from different stations.

Brick after brick, tock after tick

Sometimes the flow makes you sick.

Can't afford to look at the clock

Ain't no lucky rabbit’s foot in my sock,

Just me and the rock on the blacktop.

CAE Contest
Round 3
"Poetry"

CAE ROUND 2 - CONTEST WINNER
GENRE / VISUAL ARTS

Title: Duality
Submitted by: Abegail Campos

CAE Contest
Round 2 
"Visual Arts"

CAE ROUND 1 - CONTEST WINNER
GENRE / VISUAL ARTS

Title: Being Human
Submitted by:
Jateya Winston

CAE Contest
Round 1 
"Visual Arts"

CAE ROUND 1 - CONTEST WINNER
GENRE / POETRY

Title: I’m on my way
Submitted by:
Kameesha Pascoe


Well there’s 9 months and counting till I graduate high school.
There’s been some good years and bad but now I’ve reached the end.
I feel like a tireless mother working to provide and I don’t have kids.
I’m so stressed by everything and everyone.

There’s 9 months of school left. I ask myself how am I am going to
survive in a world that requires money everyday.
This poverty life comes with perks and some negative things.
The perks of it is, whatever you do will work in your favor.
But the negative aspect of being a poor individual is being unable
to provide on a consistent basis and needing the help of others.
Yeah I know everybody needs help from others but Not when I have
to contemplate whether the answer is no or never. 

There’s 9 months of school left. I’m a mother with you knowing it’s already hard for me to support myself, the question is....
How am I going to take care of the kid without financial support?
Well you see I may have to take out loans, grants and financial aid
for the beneficial purpose to support myself.

Look at me, what do you see?
Do you see a young African American woman being successful?
In reality some people say umm No!! We’re seen as criminals, slaves,
and housewives.
From the outside looking in, we’re given labels which cause emotional turmoil, and —- destructs our minds.

In reality, although we’re given labels and stereotyped, we still have the opportunity to succeed.
I choose to take my chance at success no matter what people think.
And in 9 months I’ll give birth to my dreams.

CAE Contest
Round 1 
"Poetry"

JEFF DONALDSON
1932 - 2004

Jeff Donaldson is an African American artist, art historian, and critic who has contributed to the definition of the Black Arts Movement's philosophy and aesthetics in the United States. Donaldson was three years old when his elder brother began sketching in Pine Bluff. He was inspired to begin drawing cartoons and comic books, and his passion for the arts grew even stronger when he enrolled at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, where he founded the school's first Arts major. While there, his lifelong passion in Afrocentric painting was cultivated by John Howard who had studied under the famous Harlem Renaissance artist Hale Woodruff.

Donaldson went on to receive a Masters Degree in Fine Arts from the Illinois Institute of Technology's Institute of Design in Chicago, then earn a Ph.D. in African and African American Art History from Northwestern University.

 

In 1967, Donaldson coordinated the visual arts workshop that painted the Wall of Respect through his participation with the Organization of Black American Culture, a group he helped found in Chicago. The exhibit paintings commemorated prominent African Americans and sparked a wave of outdoor murals around the United States during the 1970s. Donaldson has had over 200 group and solo exhibits in galleries and museums in Africa, Europe, South America, the Caribbean, and the United States. He served as Dean of Howard University's College of Fine Arts where he authored several critical articles. Donaldson was also Vice President of the Board of Directors at The Barnes Foundation, as well as a member of the National Center for Afro-American Artists' Board of Directors.

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See artist work below & link > Jeff Donaldson Artwork

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KEHINDE WILEY
1977 - PRESENT

Kehinde Wiley was born on February 28, 1977 in Los Angeles, California. At the age of 12, Wiley was selected to study art and language in Russia as part of the USSR Initiative. Wiley was influenced by the works of John Constable and Thomas Gainsborough. He obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Art from San Francisco Art Institute In 1999. He then earned a Master’s in Fine Art at Yale University School of Art in 2001. Wiley's art style is compared to Renaissance Master Paintings. His subjects would pose in the typical way that would remind the viewer of the renaissance. He was awarded the Artist of the Year Award from the New York City Art Teachers Association and Canteen Magazine’s Artist of the Year in 2011. On February 12, 2018, Wiley unveiled the portrait of former U.S. President Barack Obama for the National Portrait Gallery.

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See artist work below & link > Kehinde Wiley Artwork

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"Artist Profile" Archive - click below

FAITH RINGGOLD 
1930 - PRESENT

Faith Ringgold was born in the Harlem district of New York City as the youngest of three children who were nurtured during the Harlem Renaissance and exposed to all of the city's cultural offerings. Because she had asthma as a child, Ringgold spent a lot of time at home with her mother, a fashion designer who taught her how to sew and to work with textiles imaginatively. Ringgold acquired an interest in painting throughout her elementary and high school years, and by the time she finished she was determined to make her passion for art a career. She enrolled at City College of New York in 1950, but the liberal arts department declined her enrollment, so she decided to pursue art education.

 

Ringgold began work on a series of paintings entitled "American People" in 1962, which are now considered among her most notable works. Paintings like "Neighbors, Die", and "The Flag Is Bleeding", are all based on themes from the civil rights struggle, portray the racial tensions of the time. Her first solo gallery was display in 1967. To further share her experiences, Ringgold developed a series of quilts that are possibly her best-known work, drawing inspiration from Tibetan art and honoring her mother's early impact. She made her first quilt, Echoes of Harlem, in 1980 (a year before her mother died), and went on to produce a number of others, finally including text. Who's Afraid of Aunt Jemima (1983), the Michael Jackson homage Who's Bad? (1988), and her most renowned work, Tar Beach (Part 1 from the Woman on the Bridge series), are among her narrative quilts (1988). Ringgold has garnered several awards for her work as an artist and activist, including a National Endowment for the Arts Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship for painting, and an NAACP Image Award. Her art is still on display in prominent institutions all around the world.

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See artist creative below & link > Faith Ringgold Artwork

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AMY SHERALD 
1973 - PRESENT

Amy Sherald was born in Columbus, Georgia, in 1973. She was influenced by the issues of Americans with race and identity in the south. In 1997, she received her bachelor's degree at Clark Atlanta University. After moving to Baltimore, MD, she went on to earn a Master’s in Fine Art at Maryland Institute College of Art. In 1999, Sherald established an international exhibition within Central and South America, and her style would change to the view of African American culture and body. Sherald uses grayscale to paint skin tones to face the concept of color as race. She has earned a multitude of awards and grants along with painted the portrait of the former First Lady Michelle Obama for the National Portrait Gallery.

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See artist creative below & link > Amy Sherald Artwork

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Click name & artwork below to view

Jaki Shelton Green

On Feb. 2, 2015, Jaki Shelton Green became the first African American and the third woman to serve as Poet Laureate for The State of North Carolina. As ambassador for poetry and the spoken word, she is a community arts advocate that has created and facilitated programs that serve various audiences and populations.

 

A native of Orange County, Green has been active in North Carolina’s literary and teaching community for more than 40 years. She has penned eight books of poetry, co-edited two poetry anthologies and written one play. She is a 2014 North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame inductee and was the recipient of the North Carolina Award for Literature in 2003. Green currently teaches Documentary Poetry at Duke University Center for Documentary Studies. Over the last 40 years, she has taught poetry and facilitated creative writing classes at public libraries, universities and community colleges, public and private schools and with literary organizations across the U.S.

 

Green’s numerous awards include the 2016 Kathryn H. Wallace Award for Artists in Community Service, through the Triangle Community Foundation, and a 2017 Duke University Faculty Travel Grant to the Alhambra Cultural Center International Prose Poem Symposium in Marrakech, Morocco. Her poetry has also been widely choreographed by dance companies including the Chuck Davis African American Dance Company in conjunction with the Kennedy Center and the Nasher Museum.

 

To view more, See > Jaki Shelton Green Poetry

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