Facing Race Together

Various Artists

July 8, 2021 - September 3, 2021

“…and above all we have creativity, the strength that unites us.” –Kanae Goji

This exhibition explores the meaning of inclusion and racial equity in our community through the eyes of local artists who have their own stories to tell. These are stories of struggle and strength, invisibility and triumph, and the beauty of diversity.

The artists selected for this exhibition use a variety of media – oil, acrylic, silkscreen, textiles, wood, mixed-media techniques as well as three-dimensional installation – and display works that emphasize their experiences living in the minority or facing metaphorical and literal barriers living in the South. Though each of them faces a different set of battles in their lives, they use art as a way to process the adversity and find a common thread that pulls us all together.

Roxana Sinex

**We are Family**
Oil on Canvas
28 x 36

My painting “We Are Family” is both literal and expressive of the fact that we, as the people of this planet, are all family and that we need to accept everyone, no matter what race, nationality or religion, as our brothers and sisters. The little boy to the left is my son and the girl on the right is his cousin, an adopted Dominican. Yes, we are family.

About the Artist:

Roxana Sinex was drawing before she could talk and grew up hiking and backpacking with her family where she developed a great love for the wilderness. She expresses this in her art, sharing the joy that the forest brings to her along with her life-long passion for portraiture.

Along with her career as an architect, Roxana took classes and workshops in acrylics, oil painting, and pastels. In 2006 she started teaching art and in 2008 opened “Roxy’s Art Studio & Gallery” in Historic Savage Mill in Savage, Maryland.

In 2019, Roxana moved to Greenville, South Carolina and now enjoys her life as a full-time artist in her new studio at the foot of Paris Mountain, bringing her lots of fresh subject matter to her landscapes and meeting new friends to enjoy and to paint.

roxana@roxanasinexart.com

www.roxanasinexart.com

Charles Eady

**Lady of the South**
Oil, acrylic, inks and silkscreen
50x42

Communities of free blacks existed in the early south, yet they are seldom mentioned in textbooks. When it is taught few details of their aspirations or daily routines are mentioned. Few people are aware they owned land and properties, were counted on federal censuses and took matters to court.

The intent of these paintings is to show freedom in the early south that’s not shown or presented in schools. The existence of these communities reveals written evidence of diversity in segments of the south. By including past communities, it has the potential to bring a positive change to the racial strains of our current America.

**Slightly Mixt**
Oil, acrylic, inks and silkscreen
42x51

Artwork by Charles Eady — **Hidden Freedom**
Oil, acrylic, inks and silkscreen
71x43

Black Jockey of 1790, Charles Eady — **Black Jockey of 1790**
Oils, acrylic, inks, and collage
36X48

Free blacks and slaves rode racehorses from colonial times to the first Kentucky Derby. The first thirteen of fifteen Derby’s were won by blacks; Oliver Lewis was the first winner in 1875.

This painting includes an impressionistic cotton scene, to represent a sense of bondage, however, the rider refuses to be held back by the challenges of society. His aim is to be the first one to the finish line, but he will be content with strides for freedom.

About the Artist:

The truth is African Americans have been portrayed to the nation and the world in a pool of political propaganda, causing most people to believe the media’s presentations. In addition, these note-worthy citizens have mostly been excluded from the pages of history books. African Americans are a family-oriented people helping to nurture communities across America.

As an artist I take on these issues with provocative paintings and a book I authored titled, Hidden Freedom. The images I create are deliberately painted to show the daily lives of free blacks who lived in the south that were exempt from history. They are a people who survived in an era of bondage, their contributions to the south are presented with images and documents of their bold existence.

I have spent years searching their records from the colonial times to the Antebellum South and found startling facts. Their images have the potential to ignite the imaginations of all viewers as they view a different narrative of the South.

www.deepersouth.org

Sabrina White

About the Artist:

Sabrina White is a South Carolina artist, born and raised in the Lowcountry, currently living in Lexington, SC. She is a K-12 arts educator who has shown her work in galleries in North and South Carolina and attends art residencies, most recently at Azule, A Place for Artists in Hot Springs, NC. She has also published short stories, poetry, and artwork in various publications. Her work deals primarily with issues of race and ancestry, her words and imagery dominated with the faces of the Black man, woman, and child.

Lori Isom

Facing Race Together Exhibit — **Pals.Playmates.Soldiers**
Acrylic on canvas
28x34

This painting depicts young buddies who grew up playing, fighting and protecting one another in the projects. Like most children who are disadvantaged, they are unaware of their circumstances, and learn early on how to bond and take care of each other.

Public Housing, Lori Isom — **Public Housing**
Acrylic on Canvas

This piece is a continuation of a series I've been working on about my childhood, and the kids I grew up with in a Brooklyn apartment building called "The Pink Houses" - aka the projects. This little girl depicts a combination of joy, sass, boldness and confidence. She is well taken care of and well provided for, as were most of us. This is contrary to what a lot of people think of in regard to youngsters raised in public housing.

About the Artist:

It is fair to say that Lori has experienced a varied and broad career as an artist and an all-around creative person. Beginning with studying fashion illustration in high school and later at Parsons School of Design, she also dedicated years working as a professional dancer, singer and actress in New York and L.A., and tried her hand at several interesting entrepreneurial pursuits along the way.

A figurative and portrait artist for over 20 years, Lori has been commissioned to do hundreds of individual and family portraits, many of which include military personnel and heads of companies. She has also shared her love and knowledge of art by coaxing the budding artist out of young children, adults and seniors. Lori's work has been featured in the pages of American Art Collector, and she has been interviewed for television and newspaper articles regarding her work.

She has had several solo exhibitions, and has been a featured artist in many group exhibitions. Lori also completed a one-year artist residency for the City of North Charleston, during which she had the privilege to work on several community-focused projects including outdoor murals, art workshops and demonstrations, and outreach programs. At this point in her career, Lori is working to grow in greater artistic expression through deep personal exploration; moving beyond the influence of societal values and mores.

Find Lori on Instagram: ArtintheNow

Amanda Ladymon

Amanda Ladymon art — **The Mill Struggle, Unraveling the Southern Strategy**
3’ x 2’ x 15’

Struggle has many shapes to it – it comes from long periods of enduring difficulty and facing unforeseen obstacles, as discussed in Vince Copeland’s famous pamphlet, “Southern Populism & Black Labor”. This sculpture will address the emotional and physical aspects of struggle through the human figure and textiles. African American and white women of North and South Carolina worked together in fighting Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” that outcast most African Americans from working in textile mills. Columbia was once a major center for textile mill production, with 89 percent of all textile production in the US coming from this region by 1961. Indigo, which was used to dye blue jeans, was one of the first cash crops for South Carolina. The blue jeans used in this piece were all acquired within the same area of West Columbia where the majority of The Columbia Mill workers lived. The textile symbolizes that connection with this historic time in the South. With struggle there was progress and by 1976, 1 in 3 mill workers was African American.

About the Artist:

Amanda Ladymon’s work involves creating a circular dialogue, with one part affecting another, creating an endless flow of biomorphic, organic forms and evolving experimentation with materials. Research on the interior workings of the human body and of plants and ocean life on the macro and microscopic level creates the initial cognitive drive for the work. Balancing tension through visual relationships of form and color, her mixed media pieces are the product of a natural, self-organizing principle that operates intuitively. There is an endless interplay between the structured and the amorphous or between evolution and entropy.

amandaladymon.com

ladybugartstudios.com

Kanae Goji

Diversity
Oil on Canvas
52.25 x 28.25

These butterflies symbolize the harmony of diversity with its magnificent color, comparing it to our roots, which project the sensitivity of the beauty and diversity of the peoples.

I made this collection of butterflies thinking of us as a society comparing the butterflies that were once small caterpillars and symbolize the transformation and evolution of each person.

Butterflies are the species that migrate to warmer areas for climatic reasons. Sometimes they go through many difficulties to achieve stability. This compares the migration of working people to pursue their dream of a better life. The constant flight and the goodness that characterizes us, the butterfly as a symbol of our identity, breaking down barriers and fighting day by day.

This work was made thinking of all of us that as different, we always have that something that characterizes us, the different beauty, the color that symbolizes the warmth of our personalities, the kindness and patience with which we hope to be admired and be considered as equals, we show our wings and we are able to fly and realize our dreams.

In life, in change, there are always wings that are broken, dreams that are truncated, obstacles faced so we always have our hope of composing what has happened and moving on. We are charged with commitment in these wings, loyalty, union, strength, and much daily delivery, we have the perseverance, voice to raise very high as if we were music, dance, folklore, culture, creation, love, discipline, courage and above all we have creativity, the strength that unites us like this small collection of butterflies, soft to look at, but at the same time strong to change. We are a noble and gentle culture that expects to be considered more and more accepted every day in this society as inclusion. That's why I know that although we are all the same, we have the same and beauty is invisible to many eyes, that's why I show this small collection of diversity.

About the Artist:

Kanae Goji was born in Papantla, Veracruz Mexico. She grew up beside her parents Masaru Goji Inoue (sculptor - plastic artist) and Socorro Jiménez García (nurse), grew up in a cradle of artists beside her. She had a childhood rich in explorations, trips, fascinating adventures that opened a lot to creativity, along with her father she learned many techniques including painting, modeling, sculpture, casting molding. She worked her whole childhood beside her dad as his main assistant in the creations, there were occasions when her development was so advanced that her own father asked for her work to produce them in a large scale and immortalize small creations.

Kanae Goji combined the teaching of kindergarten with the teaching of art at Culture Houses as extracurricular courses that she was invited to participate in and continued to exhibit and sell her easel works, when decided to focus more on muralism, highlighting more as a muralist artist in México. When she met the love of her life, she left everything in México and decided to follow him to this country where it’s been very difficult to find art opportunities. When the young ones began kindergarten, she met Ivan Segura, together with Palmetto and Luna arts, Kanae Goji was very excited about this door open to creativity, where her desire to paint and create is returned to her. She is an art lover, always for everything she invites art with teaching, with culture, with society. Kanae is an artist who combines dreams and techniques ranging from surrealism, expressionism, and abstract figures, she handles colors and nuances always remembering pleasant or dark experiences she has experienced and it’s like, every artist lives and feels through art.

"She is an artist who changes, is not tied to a certain aesthetic, but, according to circumstances, moods, friends, relationships, changes styles."

Now she is living what her foreign father lived in Mexico, that feeling of not belonging, the scarce opportunities for a foreigner. She feels every day more sadness as not being able to find a better job and focus on her ability to teach, she feels devalued and always rejected, discriminated against, and often doomed to failure.

She wants to find a better solvency for her daughters and her family that every day need more, and that, more than love, they also see a mother who can fight and never defeat herself, in the face of adversities. Nowadays Kanae Goji is alive and wanting to do more works wanting to be looked at, her dream is to fly, with her wings of a thousand colors with broken wings wanting to show the world how these butterflies, we are excluded and rejected but look at us here, we are capable, waiting for inclusion.

Keith Tolen

I Was Not Born Yesterday Look, Keith Tolen — **I Was Not Born Yesterday Look**

Time and time again other folks try to tell our story to my face, I don’t say a word, just stare them straight in the face with a steely glance reminding them, that I was not born yesterday. My stare says that I didn’t need the local news to remind me that before there was a Charleston church massacre of nine worshipers there was the Orangeburg massacre of three on a college campus here in South Carolina. And yes, even before that event four little girls were killed in the bombing of a church on Sunday morning in this country. My heart is frozen in a state of mourning, yet also knowing that there is hope on the arisen.

They don’t see my stare because I am still invisible to many in this country where my family ties and the roots of my heritage were ripped up and even viciously chopped off. How can the wounds that are fresh and detached heal, my blank stare responses, cause, I was not born yesterday? Snuff out my life force from this land of the free, home of the brave, because it matters not to your historians. Their names cry out from the earth much too many to list, yet all recorded in the true Book of Life, by the ultimate record keeper and score maker. I look outward to Him for he knows my sorrow and that I was not born yesterday.

So, you spin your tale, continue to tell your story to all those that lend you an ear. My ears are filled with the sounds of the music celebrating that great getting-up day. My eyes have seen more than enough of that digital box tube, so I plant them upward, to the hills the only source of my true redemption. Silence has stitched my mouth from uttering a mumbling word. You see I may not have seen rivers, nor know the source of the winds, I may be a little weary, but like the little bunny, I am completely aware of the source of my power. So, mister man, make your great speeches, write your ideas and stories in da history books, celebrate all the holidays that you would like while in this old land, I will keep my view on the pressing movement of old time because I know and yes, you do also, that no, I was not born yesterday. But I was born to give an account with praise and thanksgiving, but not on yesterday.

JoAnn Borovicka

Corrosion, JoAnn Borovicka — **Corrosion**
Mixed Media on Canvas
14 x 12 x 2.5

In order to face race together, I believe that we need to look at the social and cultural realities that divide us. This is not the time to try to look past differences and pretend that everything is OK. This is the time to read our reality and the history that got us here. One of the realities of our time is the toxic culture of white superiority, and this is the topic of my work entitled “Corrosion.”

A major source of my inspiration, the Bahá’í Writings, states that racial prejudice is a “corrosion” which has long “bitten into the fiber and attacked the whole social structure of American society” and that racism is fueled by a toxic culture of white superiority. As a white woman yearning to live in a just world, this is difficult to hear but essential to understand and share. Fortunately, information on this topic has never been more readily available. Books such as Caste by Isabel Wilkerson, So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo, The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein, and Crossing the Line—A Memoir of Race, Religion, and Change by Richard Abercrombie and JoAnn Borovicka are but a few of the resources that can help people to see what strives to stay hidden.

My intent is that the artwork entitled “Corrosion” visually convey something of the loss and dis-ease bred by the culture of white superiority.

Growth, JoAnn Borovicka — **Growth**
Mixed media on canvas
31 x 16 x 3.5

The repeated pattern of growth and decay is a fundamental principle of the physical world. Those familiar with history know that this same pattern of coming together and falling apart characterizes social systems, cultures, and institutions. A major source of my inspiration, the Bahá’í writings, gives me hope and courage in this tumultuous time when it seems like many things are falling apart. The writings confirm that “the ominous manifestations of acute political conflict, of social unrest, of racial animosity, and of class antagonism proclaim, in no uncertain terms” that outmoded and oppressive systems, institutions, and social habits are in the process of decay. The Bahá’í writings also explain that while obsolescent systems are disintegrating, new and more mature ways of understanding and being in the world are growing. This is the topic of my assemblage entitled “Growth.”

Notice the quiet leaf pattern in the background—here we have new, healthy, life-giving, systematic growth based on equity, justice, and truth. Notice the dinosaur—already dead—roaring on about the value of old rules of measurement—rules that have imposed false divisions of worth for centuries. The dinosaur is loud, scary, central, and demands attention. It also still has teeth. But ultimately it does not have the strength of the new growth in the background.

I like to think of it this way: Things that are dying make a lot of noise, but new organic growth, like a sprouting seed or a growing tree, are quiet. I find the courage to pass by the screaming death throes of unjust systems by looking for and focusing on the growth of new ways to understand and live in the world based on equity, justice, and fellowship.

About the Artist:

In my mixed media/assemblage art I explore themes of what it is to be human at this time in history. The materials I use include shapes that I carve, mold, sew, paint, or in other ways create myself as well as found items. I love to incorporate into my art objects that have already had a long life, are bursting with personality, and might otherwise be headed for a landfill. I feel that the unique histories of pre-owned materials, with their memory traces of events and personalities, adds layers of mystery to my creations.

For working in a technique described as “assemblage,” I use a surprising number of implements of destruction. I wield saws, drills, wire cutters, hammers, screwdrivers, and knives of all kinds to carve and otherwise shape new materials as well as to modify found objects. Fastening the objects together in an assemblage can be tricky because the diverse materials that may be

involved (wood, metal, glass, ceramic, paper, fabric, plastics) often require different adhesives. Most of my assemblages are enhanced with paints, often highlighted with metallic wax, and—because the variety and layers of texture in my work invite touch—they are always varnished.

JoAnnBorovicka.com

Rachelle Kobilarov

Ayanna Pressley and Family, Rachelle Kobilarov — **Ayanna Pressley & Family**
Acrylic on canvas
8x10

In 2018, the US saw a dramatic increase in women of color as candidates for Congress. A record number of women of color also won primaries in 2018, as well as a record number of women in general ran and won in the primaries, and an unprecedented number of LGBTQ candidates also ran and have won. This was a great stride forward for diversity in our government.

However, there was a backlash against many freshmen congresswomen, especially those of color. Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, and Rashida Tlaib have all been attacked by the establishment and received death threats.

After seeing a photo of Ilhan Omar’s swearing in, with her precious six-year-old daughter at her side, I was struck by how her child’s face reminded me so much of my own kindergarten-aged daughter’s face when she’s excited and proud. Although I hadn’t touched a paint brush in almost 8 years, I immediately started painting their portrait. As I painted, I decided to create a series of 20 portraits of the candidates and politicians who give me the most hope for the future, and “2020 Vision” was born. Most of my subjects are progressive, most are women, with an emphasis on women of color, and many are LGBTQ identifying, who have risked establishment ire by standing up for the most vulnerable among us, advocating for the underserved, and fighting for a cleaner, healthier future.