CM Turner – C-VILLE Weekly

When you want to initiate change—real change—it’s hard to do it alone. The time, effort, versatility, and resources it takes to affect progress as an individual requires a level of passion and privilege most of us cannot afford when there are children to raise and bills to be paid. But when change needs to happen, people have a tendency to step out and find each other.

When you’re part of a collective, you’re part of a democratic collaboration of efforts. You find ways to work together, to do what’s best for everyone involved. You embody gestalt, and organize yourselves into a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts, enabling the collective to achieve advances that extend beyond itself.

This is exactly the kind of work the Charlottesville Black Arts Collective is achieving: initiating change for the betterment of our community, and for Black creatives throughout the commonwealth. The drive to open up opportunities that explore and evoke the essence of Black culture is on full view in the CBAC’s upcoming exhibition “Sugah: Black Love Endures,” which opens at McGuffey Art Center on September 6.

Community commitments

The story of the Charlottesville Black Arts Collective began in 2020, with another artist-run cooperative, the McGuffey Art Center. Two members of McGuffey’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee reached out to Black creatives in the area, seeking individuals interested in curating an exhibition of works by Black artists. Instead of an individual taking the helm, a small group coalesced and agreed to curate the show together. The process served as a catalyst for the creation of the CBAC, which debuted “Water: The Agony and Ecstasy of the Black Experience” in 2021, its first curatorial effort at McGuffey.

“Love is in the Hair,” by “Sugah: Black Love Endures” exhibiting artist Cherrish Smith. Image curtesy of the CBAC.

Since then, the CBAC has partnered with the arts center to mount exhibitions each year, including the 2022 show “Lay My Burdens Down,” and 2023’s “Blackity Black Black,” an embrace of quintessentially Black aesthetics. In this relationship between hosting venue and curatorial collective, McGuffey sponsors the shows, while the CBAC creates open calls, curates the exhibitions, and works directly with the exhibiting artists. McGuffey members help with the art installation process, publicity, and—crucially—provide gallery space for the shows to take place.

“This partnership allows us to help amplify Black art and provide a means of sharing Black art with McGuffey members and visitors as well as helps broaden the diversity of work and artists showing work at McGuffey,” notes CBAC member Kori Price. When asked about the partnership between the CBAC and MAC, Bill LeSueur, operations manager at McGuffey Art Center, added, “It’s mutually beneficial. The search for inspiration is continual. MAC will continue to support CBAC and open up opportunities for underrepresented artists. This establishes a model for future partnerships and additional collaborations.”

Progressive partnerships

As an untethered, volunteer-based collective of artists and art enthusiasts, the CBAC seeks out this type of community partnership to facilitate opportunities for artists in and around Charlottesville, centering Black voices and their creative work. While these opportunities most often take the form of exhibitions geared toward showcasing and selling artwork, the CBAC also aims to support artists by providing workshops to share skills and learn from each other, as well as critiques to provide feedback to creatives, and social gatherings such as community cookouts to strengthen existing relationships and foster new connections.

Tori Cherry, Leslie Taylor-Lillard, Kori Price, Benita Mayo, Kweisi Morris, Tobiah Mundt, Derrick J. Waller, and Mavis Waller currently make up the member roster of the Charlottesville Black Arts Collective. The CBAC is adamant about forming connections with community partners to expand the reach of Black artists throughout the greater- Charlottesville area—in addition to McGuffey, the group has established partnerships with Alamo Drafthouse, New City Arts, Second Street Gallery, and Studio Ix—creating platforms for their experiences to be shared through “a Black lens with clarity and creativity,” as Price puts it.

How sweet it is

Since its inception, the CBAC has focused on curating exhibitions and experiences around ideas that are unique or essential to Black culture. Themes that encourage the expression of Black joy have become especially important to the collective, like 2023’s “Blackity Black Black” and “Black Eyed Peas, Greens, and Cornbread”—an exhibition in celebration of new beginnings and the future—mounted at Studio Ix earlier this year. “Black love seemed like a natural next step for us,” says Price. “We all felt that the way in which love is expressed within the Black community was unique and were curious to see the ways in which artists might choose to depict and communicate love through their art.”

Richmond-based artist P. Muzi Branch’s “Bi-Cultural,” on exhibit in “Sugah: Black Love Endures.” Image curtesy of the CBAC.

Featuring works from P. Muzi Branch, Lizzie Brown, Chris Green, Jae Johnson, Leslie Lillard, Somé Louis, Tobiah Mundt, Maiya Pittman, Kori Price, Joshua Ray, Dorothy Rice, Cherrish Smith, and JaVori Warren, “Sugah” (pronounced SHU-gah) explores aspects of love related to the familial, the romantic, the self, and the cultural. Paintings, photographs, fiber arts, and mixed media works depicting affectionate embraces, acts of service, and cultural expressions define the look and feel of the exhibition.

Exhibiting artists Dorothy Rice and Cherrish Smith both chose to explore external identity markers in their respective works, “The Sisters Braid Love” and “Love is in the Hair.” In her exhibition application, Smith—the youngest artist in the show and a repeat participant in CBAC exhibitions—explained, “Black hair is art in itself … Black hair is love, and it helps me freely be me no matter how I choose to wear it!”

Drawing inspiration from Gustav Klimt’s “The Kiss,” Lizzie Brown’s contribution to “Sugah” explores romantic love with a nod to art history. As the artist explains, “The intimacy, peace, and security shared between the two lovers is further emphasized through the use of circular motifs, which are symbolic of the wholeness and intricacies of their connection.”

Lizzie Brown’s “Intimacy: The Forehead Kiss” will be exhibited in “Sugah: Black Love Endures.” Image curtesy of the CBAC.

Local artist Somé Louis, who previously showed with the CBAC in “Blackity Black Black,” presents “Gestures of Play,” an embroidered handkerchief that captures the energy of childhood exuberance, documenting dance-like movements. The depiction of dance is “an act that binds me to my cousins and aunties in the Caribbean, who all studied dance, and understood movement through dance in a variety of ways,” Louis wrote in her exhibition application. Speaking on her experiences with the CBAC, Louis says, “It’s always great to find a space that allows for expression and exploration as an artist, which I have found as part of the CBAC exhibitions.”

Richmond-based artist P. Muzi Branch is also showing with the CBAC again after his inclusion in “Blackity Black Black.” Expressing the importance of the opportunities afforded by the collective, Branch asserts, “The CBAC group, through presenting thematic exhibitions, is affirming Black American visual art as a legitimate cultural genre that speaks for, informs about, and undergirds the Black community. African American visual art has unique ethnic norms, ideological themes, and aesthetic qualities that set it apart from all other culture-based art. The term ‘Black art’ is a cultural designation, not a racial one.”

Call and response

The affirmation of Black art and the expansion of cultural understanding and appreciation is at the heart of CBAC endeavors like “Sugah: Black Love Endures.” The benefits of this work extend beyond individual accolades and artistic achievements, impacting not just Black creative communities, but the entire Charlottesville community. As Price confirms, “The art in our shows is for everyone and provides a wonderful opportunity for patrons to explore new art and discover new artists.”

New exhibition opportunities attract new talent, enticing artists to show work in this area for the first time, or to show their work for the first time period. New artists bring new ideas, new expressions, new aesthetics to bear, and we all benefit by getting to see and experience novel examples of art and entertainment. New works creating stronger impacts on audiences bring new attention to an art scene. Viewers come to discover artists and works that resonate with them. New audiences strengthen creative communities by investing their time and resources into galleries and venues, which in turn use those investments to strengthen their programs that benefit artists and audiences, creating a mutually beneficial cycle of cultural and capital exchange.

It’s through this lens that the full scope of the CBAC’s efforts can be understood. The message behind many of the works in “Sugah: Black Love Endures” is that to feel love is to feel safe, secure, supported. When we show up for Black artists, we offer our support. We offer a sense of security and commitment to culture and community. We offer love, and may that love ever endure.

On the 60th anniversary of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, The Paramount Theater launched a new exhibition series to draw attention to a painful period in United States history. The Third Street Box Office Project connects the theater to the work of acceptance, acknowledgment, and education around the legacy of racism and segregation in the city of Charlottesville, the South, and our nation as a whole.

“The goal of the Third Street Box Office Project [is] to reimagine the space in a way that allows our community to take pause and understand the magnitude of the history of this space,” says the theater’s Executive Director Julie Montross. “To reflect on the past injustices that the Civil Rights Act was meant to address and to look forward and consider the tremendous amount of work that still needs to be done. Our goal was also to invite the community to take an active role in this exercise.”

The theater opened in 1931 as a segregated building that required Black patrons to use a separate entrance on Third Street, restricting them to balcony seating with access to concessions and restrooms separate from white patrons, who entered the theater with convenience from Main Street.

Now, three local artists have been invited to mount work that initiates dialogue and fosters conversations around the past, present, and future of racial equality in our community. Each exhibition will run for three weeks, with Kori Price’s “Walking Dualities” on view from July 2–23, Tobiah Mundt’s “Shadows of the Past” from July 30–August 20, and Nick Brinen’s “Ascending Light” from August 27–September 17.

“I think the most important thing that I want to relate to people who come to visit the exhibition is the immediacy of the past and of history,” says Price. “It’s important that we keep around certain historical places and objects—like the Third Street box office—so that we can continue to bear witness to our city and country’s past of discrimination and inequality and understand that we have so much more work left to do.”

Unfortunately, an act of vandalism targeting Price’s artwork that occurred overnight between July 6 and 7 left “Walking Dualities” temporarily asunder. But the artist acted quickly, and in an inspired maneuver, she was able to reinstall the three photographic banners that comprise the exhibition with a nod to art history. In a social media post shared by the Paramount, Price explains, “It was important to me to repair and re-install my art as soon as possible and make sure that I didn’t hide the damage that had been done.” Inspired by the Japanese ceramic art tradition of Kintsugi, a method of repairing broken ceramics with lacquer and gold or silver dust, Price applied gold leafing to the damaged areas, creating “a metaphor for resiliency, fortitude, and healing.”

The gold accents that now adorn “Walking Dualities” weave in notions of value, soft strength, and the beauty within perceived imperfections. Their contrast with the black and white images create points of focus without distraction. They acknowledge violence but rise above it. Price’s exhibition is as much an occupation of space as a reclamation of one. The figures in her photographs are in motion but remain unmoved. The artistic techniques of trompe l’oeil and forced perspective utilized by the artist to place these figures in situ invite viewers to see themselves in relation to the bodies within Price’s banners. Here, the artwork puts the onus of understanding into a corporeal state, where mind and body reconcile meaning.

To help facilitate its commitment to showcasing the visual arts, the Paramount consulted with its neighbor, the nonprofit organization New City Arts. Executive Director Maureen Brondyke says her organization helped with the “nuts and bolts” of putting together the open call for exhibition proposals for the Third Street Box Office Project, including collaborating on the timeline and logistics of the call to ensure support for artists who might apply. NCA and the Paramount also encouraged applicants to consider how to honor the legacies of Black patrons forced to use the Third Street entrance and what capacities the historic landmark holds for “truth-telling” and “reimagining.”

The arts afford us opportunities to contextualize, recontextualize, and perform history in ways that break down barriers and connect individuals and communities across time and space. They allow us to be aspirational, reflective, and reflexive. The arts enable us to both effect and be affected—emotionally, spiritually, intellectually. These facets are at the heart of endeavors like the Third Street Box Office Project. As Brondyke affirms, “We believe that a vibrant community includes an abundance of arts and culture spaces, and that collaboration between these spaces creates a network of support needed for local artists to thrive and move our community toward a more just, beautiful future.”