Notes of Graditude from "Food as a Social Construct" Oasis in the Woods.

 Oasis in the Woods Thank You Notes:

“For you, your skill and love and new friendship.”

“Thank you for such a beautiful experience and for allowing me to share in it.  Love you, Caryl!

For new friendship …. Especially you, Alpha!  Vickie

8.25.2024

“Alpha, you radiate beauty and love, and your presence is contagious. Your energy is magnificent, and I am blessed to have met you.” Conamor y respero- Davis

“Dear Alpha,

Thank you, a million times over, for welcoming me to Loiter Galleries and allowing me to help with a profit that made me feel like I was back home in Cape Cod. Being in this space reignited my fire and passion for creating a community when I was without one. There aren’t enough words to express my gratitude to you for this chance to connect.” VSanti. 

“Dear Alpha Caryl and Yaya. Love Happy. 

Thank you for the opportunity to experience this art exhibit event. It has opened my mind to the beauty & wonderful earth the lord has blessed us with; now, I can appreciate the water, wind, earth, and art.”

8/25/2024

“Thank you for the opportunity to experience this art exhibit event. It has opened my mind to the beauty and wonderful earth the lord has blessed us with; now, I can appreciate the water, wind, earth, plants, wood, and plants. It’s a good way to be creative. w/life and also appreciate the Earth Art”. 

8/25/2024

“Honor and glory to the team. It was a great pleasure to break bread and enjoy the peace of the occasion with you all. Thank you for the invite. Sharing my sister with everyone in your circle was an honor. I love you. Thank you very much”, Diana Bruton  

“If I was lonely, which I am, I have found beauty where you are. Thank you for the art, music, soul, and artistic beauty.  Sisters in Art & Soul

“Beautiful installation and ceremony; thank you for sharing the space.”

“Alpha brought me here, and she made all things possible. Seeing Alpha smile during the ceremonial dinner made all my expended energy worthwhile. The moments when we hold hands in gratitude are fleeting but expansive. I am grateful to know Alpha and her community. Love Community Gratitude”.

2024 Oasis in the Woods: “The Land” "Earth Art" Food as a Social Construct

Overview 

2024 Oasis in the Woods: “The Land” "Earth Art" is a living, creative, and cultural experiment with sustainable practice at its center. It is an incubator for the artist’s and community’s personal and collective transformation. Land art or earth art is an art that is made directly in the landscape, sculpting the land itself into earthworks or making structures in the landscape using natural materials such as rocks or twigs. Land art, also known as earth art, is documented in artworks using photographs and maps, which the artist will use to exhibit in Loiter Galleries; for this project, artists will make land art in the gallery by bringing in material from the landscape and using it to create installations.

Theme: Oasis in the Woods: “The Land” "Earth Art" 

Loiter Galleries will host artists, dancers, musicians, and storytellers whose art is inspired by the land.  We have invited four artists who are curators of this work to exhibit their nature and environment-centered artworks at Loiter Galleries.

Our collective goal is to build generational bridges while working with ideas and materials that emanate from the land to create installations that answer the question, “How will we rebuild our communities to be stronger and recreate sustainable places to live?” Importantly, this conversation addresses environmental justice's physical and psychological dimensions and impact. 

SELECTED ARTISTS IN THE COLLECTION

Caryl Henry Alexander- Clinton Maryland, Visual/Environmental Installation Artist

Alpha Bruton- Chicago, Illinois, Visual/Installation Artist

Happy/LA Hyder- Mendocino, California, Photograph

Jennifer Andrea "YAYA" Porras- Oakland/Sacramento, California, Multi-disciplinary Art Practice

Happy/LA Hyder from Mendocino, California, will install an exhibition of photographs and maps of The Land Retreat 2013 & 2023. The Land is a project facilitated by the Visual Arts Development Project/ International Society of Arter makers. 

International Society of Altar Making artists construct temporary installations curated by master altar makers, drawing on personal history. Envisioned to evoke the transformative value of historical and contemporary cultural traditions, the MAP's Gallery uses the power of myth, stories, and imagination to give voice to the universality of cultural traditions.

Co-curator Andrea Jennifer "YaYa" Porras was an artist and assistant at the MAP Gallery, where she was mentored and guided by master artist/Altar Maker Michelle Walker. YaYa, in her own right, has studied the traditions of her ancestry; she is an Aztecan dancer, an African-modern dancer, an actress, a poet, and an altar artist from Sacramento, California.

August 23, 24, 25th Join us as four artists culminate to exhibit their nature and environment-centered artworks at Loiter Galleries in downtown Long Beach, California.  

Sunday afternoon, we will celebrate and use food as a social construct with a sit-down dinner with Long Beach, California's favorite cook, Cecile's Catering, who inspires our menu! 

As someone who loves to cook and eat, I have always been fascinated by the cultural significance of food. Eating is not just about satisfying hunger; it is a social activity that brings people together and builds relationships. Food can evoke memories, create shared experiences, and reinforce cultural traditions.

"At this afternoon's salon, we will explore the role of food as a social construct and how meals play a crucial role in societal bonding. We have invited twenty-four guests, including gallery staff, members of our network, friends of the artists, and benefactors."

The closing on Sunday will feature storytelling and music and a de-installation of the artworks. 

● The environmental and social impact of the project.

 How your project directly explores or impacts environmental issues.

We have in mind a topic we have addressed in our curatorial practice, calling curators and installation artists to create temporary installations to examine the state of our environment. In addition, we are unraveling common patterns of activism aimed at rebuilding communities and remaking places, addressing the physical and psychological dimensions of environmental justice. 

 Our project directly explores the idea and focuses on the social impact of deep play and risk-taking play that serves to overcome fears and develop confidence as we explore this work. Exploration of natural or imagined environments versus the urban built environment and strategy play involves long-term planning to achieve a goal of temporary installation to design and develop infrastructure in placemaking. 

2013 "The Land" Retreat Auburn California, Anita P. Lowe Host. 

Caryl and Jessie Alexander, Host Rabiah Al Nur @ Potomac Riverkeeper Network 

2023 Breathe, viewing the river while enjoying each other and planning for Oasis in the Woods, Brandywine, Maryland. 

Host, Caryl Henry Alexander @ Juniper's Garden, Brandywine, Maryland

Happy/L.A. Hyder - Explores the Art of DEEP/RISKTAKING PLAY

Join us at Loiter Galleries in Long Beach, California, for "2024 Oasis in the Woods," a display of "Land Art" or "Earth Art"—the Art of Deep/Risktaking Play in the Environment. The Opening Ceremony will be on Friday, August 23rd, from 6-8 p.m. The exhibit will be open on Saturday, August 24th, from 1pm - 6pm and Will Close on Sunday, August 25th, from 2-6pm.

Happy/L.A. Hyder remembers taking her first serious photograph on a fourth grade school trip, leaning over the railing to focus on the swirling water below. She purchased her first serious camera in 1969; her latest series is from a trip to Japan for an exhibit in 2023. After 48 years in San Francisco, where she purchased that first camera, she moved to Mendocino on the North Coast of California.

    As a member of the Vida Gallery collective at the SF Women's Building, she produced her first installation in 1982. With Caryl Henry-Alexander, she created a labyrinth on the land in the first Oasis in Auburn, CA. Hyder says, 'Participating in this rendition of Oasis in the Woods is bringing all my creative senses and collaborative skills into play. I look forward to what we four bring together.'

   Hyder's self-portrait 'New Country Daughter/Lebanese American is published in 'Lesbian Art in America', Harmony Hammond, ed., and in the third and fourth editions of 'This Bridge Called My Back', Gloria Anzaldua and Cherrie Moraga, eds. She was the founder and served as director of LVA: Lesbians in the Visual Arts (1990-2003). Her writing is published in 'Arab & Arab American Feminisms', eds: Rabab Abdulhadi, Evelyn Asultany, & Nadine Naber; 'Dispatches from Lesbian America, eds: Xequina Maria Berber, Giovanna Capone, Cheela Romain Smith.

Caryl Henry Alexander- Curator "Oasis in the Woods " Long Beach

 August 23rd - August 25th, 2024, Loiter Galleries, Long Beach, California. 

Visual Arts Development Project welcomes curator Caryl Henry Alexander as she presents and explores her installation from "Nzinga Nature Tour Oasis 2023", the topic of "Land Art" or "Earth Art" in a three-day installation.  

Caryl Henry was born in Highland Park, New Jersey, in 1955. She has been a practicing artist her whole life and has exhibited widely in galleries and museums in the US and abroad. 

Her practice focuses on social and environmental justice, women's rights, and cultural equity. She is a proud founding member of several artists and women's grassroots advocacy groups in the Bay Area. 

Her education is a mélange of traditional art schools, residencies, and collaborations with artists in communities internationally. She is a 1980s adapter of non-traditional arts education projects, including community public art and artists in the schools, and is a curator of storytelling art exhibitions. Caryl has also taught in art schools and universities and is today a mentor to many of her former students.

For the last two decades, Ms. Henry Alexander has focused on visually communicating our not-so-natural environment's catastrophic changes and its joys and sorrows. Today, her work is collaborative and leans into community, a sustainable world, and joy! 

Environmental art encompasses historical approaches to nature in art and more recent ecological and politically motivated works. It has evolved away from formal concerns, such as monumental earthworks using earth as a sculptural material, towards a deeper relationship to systems, processes, and phenomena related to social concerns.

Integrated social and ecological approaches developed as an ethical, restorative stance emerged in the 1990s. Over the past ten years, environmental art has become a focal point of exhibitions worldwide as climate change's social and cultural aspects come to the forefront.

What is Deep Play?

Play allows one to encounter risky or potentially life-threatening experiences, develop survival skills, and conquer fear.

This type of play is defined by play behavior that can also be considered risky or adventurous.  Deep play can happen alongside any of the other types of play – Creative play, communication play, dramatic play, exploratory play, fantasy play, locomotor play, imaginative play, mastery play, object play, recapitulative play, role play, rough and tumble play, social play, symbolic play, and socio-dramatic play. 

Learn more about the 16 play types in our blog post, “What are the Playwork Principles and Play Types?”

J. Andrea Porras / Yaya is a Queer, two-Spirit Curator

 

J. Andrea Porras / Yaya is a Queer, two-Spirit curator, producer, intersectional artist, and practitioner; with over 30 years of experience in performance, organizing, facilitation, grant making, grant reviewing, philanthropy, and mentoring. Porras curates’ visual exhibitions, creates site specific installations, ritual performance, teatro y flor y canto movimiento. 

Porras earned their B.A. from California State University Sacramento's Theater Dance and Cultural Anthropology Departments, where they specialized in Black, Indigenous, and Chicano Theater. They focused on acting, improv movement, playwriting, producing, and video documenting. 

They studied, taught, performed, and participated in Inter-Tribal ceremonies as Caribbean Danza Mexika traditional dancers predominantly connecting and building in Northern California across the Southwest and later in Cuba, Mexico, Africa, and New York.

Arts Administration: 

Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission. They served as the city's Arts Education coordinator and later Co-founded, Directed, and Facilitated a Roots, Altars, and Movement course at World Arts Space. 

Arts Grant Specialist for the California Arts Council, where they managed a portfolio totaling approximately $9 million in funding per year. 

I am an agent for BIPOC communities as a member of the Caltrans Office of Race and Equity, Native American Liaison Branch Headquarters. 

University of Davis Education Opportunity Program recruited them as student teachers/peer mentors in Ethnic Studies, Acting, Chicano Theater, Cultural Anthropology, and African African-Caribbean dance. 

Philanthropic focus: 

They have offered intersectional multimedia art between edutainment and story sharing, storytelling ceremonies through solo and collaborations for over 25 years. 

Porras co-founded Movimiento Molcajete (1997) Contemporary Indigenous Teatro Co. & MA Series Arts (2018), a 501c3 non-profit MA Series Arts nonprofit 2018: dedicated to supporting performance, research & practice by women y queers of color, honoring the full spectrum of cultural and gender identities.

Action manager, community, and art gallery curator at Taller Arte del Nuevo. TANA is based in the rural community of Woodland, CA.

Oasis in the Woods 2024 "Land Art" or "Earth Art"

 Loiter Galleries, 425 Promenade North, Long Beach, California- Monica Fleming and Vinny Picardi. 

 "Land Art" or "Earth Art" involves creating art directly within the landscape, sculpting the land, or using natural materials like rocks and twigs to build structures. It is an ongoing cultural and sustainable experiment that serves as a platform for artists and the community to foster personal and collective transformation.

This exhibition will feature images and elements from Junipers Garden's Oasis in the Woods Environmental Installation, including photographs and maps from the 2013 "The Land" installation." As part of this project, artists will create "Land Art" or "Earth Art" within the gallery using materials from the landscape, resulting in unique installations.

Theme: 

Earth art, also called Land art or Earthworks, is an American movement that uses the natural landscape to create site-specific structures, art forms, and sculptures. The movement was an outgrowth of Conceptualism and Minimalism: the beginnings of the environmental movement and the rampant commoditization of American art in the late 1960s influenced ideas and works that were, to varying degrees, divorced from the art market. In addition to the monumentality and simplicity of Minimalist objects, the artists were drawn to the humble everyday materials, the participatory "social sculptures" that stressed performance and creativity in any environment.

SELECTED ARTISTS IN THE COLLECTION

Caryl Henry Alexander- Visual/Environmental Installation Artist

Alpha Bruton- Visual/Installation Artist

L.A. Happy Hyder- Photograph

Jennifer Andrea "YAYA" Porras- Multi-disciplinary Art Practice

Our collective goal is to build generational bridges while working with ideas and materials that emanate from the land to create installations that answer the question, "How do we rebuild our communities to be stronger and recreate sustainable places to live?" Importantly, this conversation addresses environmental justice, social and psychological dimensions, and impact.

• From August 21st to 23rd, 2024, Installation begins. 
• On Friday, August 23,  6-9 pm, Opening Ceremony, the Gathering  
• On Saturday, August 24th, from 1pm to 6pm, stories of their experiences and how their installations came together, exploring the elements of air/earth/fire/water. 
• On Sunday, August 25th, from 2pm to 6pm, Salon and Closing Ceremony 

● The environmental and social impact of the project.

We consider the topics of air, earth, fire, and water. Our project directly explores the idea and focuses on the social impact of deep play and risk-taking play that serves to overcome fears and develop confidence as we explore this work. 

Exploration of natural air/earth/fire/water or imagined environments versus the urban built environment and strategy play involve long-term planning to achieve a goal of temporary installation to design and develop infrastructure in placemaking. What does this mean? What are we saying?

○ The public engagement component is free and open to the public. 

Guest Curators:

Caryl Henry Alexander,   

For more than 40 years, Caryl has worked as a powermaker in creative collaboration with multi-generational, multicultural, and interfaith communities to conceive, design, and implement community art projects in diverse public settings around the globe. In the studio, Caryl's work includes printmaking, papermaking, textiles, installations, and sculptures. Her media are traditional and experimental, often incorporating recycled or found objects and natural plant matter. Out in the community, she combines her roles as a visual artist, teaching artist, curator, researcher, lecturer, writer, and social activist to support communities in clarifying their shared goals and turning their ideas into one. Her long-term focus is on culture, environment, and nature. She has exhibited throughout the US and abroad. Her media are traditional and experimental, often incorporating recycled or found objects and natural plant materials.

Alpha Bruton, 

Chief Curator Phantom Gallery Chicago Network, the Phantom Galleries are temporary exhibitions in nontraditional settings. The mission of PGCN is to promote the visual arts community, encourage personal growth and excellence in artists, and support cultural activities through exhibits, workshops, galleries, art centers, and artist residency projects. Before relocating to Chicago from Sacramento, California, she co-founded the Visual Arts Development Project (VADP), an art service organization that develops projects as living experiments for sustainable practices and as an incubator for personal and collective transformation. The Visual Arts Development Project is a community-based art organization that provides resources, workshops, and venues for children, adults, and emerging artists to showcase and express their art.

Jennifer Andrea "YAYA" Porras- Holds a BFA in Theater/Dance Arts from CSU- Sacramento. 

During her studies in the American Southwest, she was a cultural ambassador, arts educator, and performing artist in China, Mexico, Africa, and Cuba. A multi-tale ted artist who has received Fellowships from Teatro Campesino, the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture (NALAC), was a youth mentor and video documenter for the Center for African Peace Conflict Resolution. Curator of the International Society of Altar Making artist constructs temporary installations curated by master altar makers drawing on personal history. Envisioned to evoke the transformative value of historical and contemporary cultural tradition, MAP Gallery uses myth, stories, and imagination to give voice to the universality of cultural traditions.

 L. A. Happy Hyder, executive director of Lesbians in the Visual Arts, has been an arts activist and fine art photographer in the Bay Area for over thirty years. She taught herself photography with a Hasselblad camera in 1971 (the same year she learned to belly dance) and has been developing her craft ever since. 

She is an artist using the camera as her tool and the negative as her canvas. Loving the intricacies of architecture, I seek the same in nature. Every day since spring 2016 (my first in Mendocino following 47 years in San Francisco), I have been ecstatic as I have become physically and visually immersed in this vibrant area. I claim the pictorialist photographers' 1950s Life Magazine as 1950s; their crisp, sometimes stark, B&W images began my love of photography, informing my budding vision and, to this day, making me exact in my choice of image to take and to print.

                                                                    #  #   #

Why Race Matters: Black Farmers and Land Ownership

Providing Market Opportunity to Under-Represented Farmers

Duane Reed of Black Farmers Index helps set up the La Fete Holiday market, the organization's pop-up winter market in Louisiana. Photo credit: Black Farmers Index

What does it mean to grow great food but nowhere to sell it? That is a question we’ve tackled at The Index since our inception. 

Market opportunities are critical for farmers to sustain themselves and grow, but in Louisiana, that can be far and few between, especially for growers of color. So we decided to launch a market startup to give farmers in towns, smaller parishes, and medium-sized cities the opportunity as a marketplace featuring Black growers. As a result, La Fȇte Holiday Market was birthed. 

After breakfast and the meeting, farmers were invited to set up an outdoor farmers' marketplace called La Fête Holiday Market. Our pop-up was a holiday-themed event so that Lafayette residents and surrounding towns could buy locally grown, freshly harvested produce for their winter celebrations. 

The staff at Black Farmers Index saw the importance of providing market opportunities to farmers and offering a platform to gain more agricultural knowledge while building their networks of peers in the state. 

In total, nine farmers sold fresh raw honey, eggs, a variety of fruits such as apples, oranges, and persimmons, and a range of vegetables such as okra, mustard greens, kale, radishes, green onions, collards, and bok choy. 

The farmers were the following: Cryer’s Produce, 4Vics Farm, L4S Farms, Driftwood Farms, Jubilee Justice, Dr. Nettles Farm, Catalan Farms, Maison de Creole, and Lafayette Community Garden. The event was open to the local community members.

Since the meeting was held at the Francois-Benoit American Legion Post No. 504, the organization's members assisted veteran farmers in learning about the benefits they can receive as farmers and vets. 

“We think it is important to give underrepresented growers every opportunity to showcase their operations and bring their food to the market,” said Amara Brown, the organization’s communications strategist and event coordinator.

The event had such an impact on the community and farmers that the Legion extended an invitation for it to be held there annually.

If you give a hungry man food, he will eat it. 

If you give him land, he will grow his own food.

Fannie Lou Hamer talking about her Freedom Farm Cooperative

Reference:  https://blackfarmersindex.com/f/providing-market-opportunity-to-under-represented-farmers

Alpha Phi Alpha-ZBL chapter in Sacramento, CA, was a virtual affair in late spring 2021

The annual Scholarship & Awards Event (or Brunch) presented by the Alpha Phi Alpha-ZBL chapter in Sacramento, CA, was a virtual affair in late spring 2021.   The chapter provided local entertainment artists and a presentation of their annual college-bound high school scholars and community leadership honorees.  The scholars were winners of a vetted scholarship competition process, and the community honorees produced notable contributions to the Sacramento community through their businesses and/or individual efforts.

This year's theme focused on “education and the arts,” which was enhanced by their special guest speaker, Ms. Tatyana Ali (Fresh Prince of Bel-Air).  Ms. Ali is a polished actor, singer, producer, and social advocate who shared her perspective on learning through the arts.  

The Alpha-ZBL members are excited to share this year’s event with you with the hope of your enjoyment of the show.

ARTners & Kalpulli Xihuacoatl

 PRESENTS ARTgrove Dia de Los Muertos

Sunday, October 29, 2023, Located at District 56, 8230 Civic Center Dr. Elk Grove, CA

Altar Makers 

THE BLACK GIRLHOOD ALTAR

Freedom Square: The Black Girlhood Altar

November 1, 2023—March 10, 2024

Chicago Cultural Center, Michigan Avenue Galleries, 1st Floor East

Photo credit A.  Bruton

Touring The Black Girlhood Altar at the Chicago Cultural Center with my granddaughter, we experience such a powerful, moving installation. That needed no words to tell us what to experience. 

Photo credit A.  Bruton

Photo credit A.  Bruton

Photo credit A.  Bruton

 

photo credit: Scheherazade Tillet, The Offerings to Yemaya, Rainbow Beach Chicago, 2021)

A Long Walk Home is a national art organization that empowers young people to end violence against girls and women. Since its inception in 2003, A Long Walk Home has built a powerful collective of artists, activists, healers, survivors, scholars, and women and girls of color leaders. We are committed to increasing resources and opportunities for society's most vulnerable girls and women in the Chicago area -- low-income girls and women of color, those with disabilities, and LGBTQ-identified -- and those most impacted by violence.

During the uprising and global pandemic in 2021, A Long Walk Home's Chicago-based artists Scheherazade Tillet and Robert Narciso created The Black Girlhood Altar. The Black Girlhood Altar is a multimedia, artifact-based, video, and object-based artwork to create sacred spaces and honor the lives of Black girls and young Black women who have gone missing or been murdered. As a mode of urgent healing – weaving together commemoration and advocacy – the Black Girlhood Altar is built on years of engaged work in Chicago and taking on national prominence. This temporary monument traveled through various neighborhoods in Chicago before being exhibited at the Chicago Cultural Center. Other installations were at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Project Row Houses in Houston, Project for Empty Space in Newark, and the Minnesota State Capitol in St Paul. As a vital cultural institution in the heart of Chicago, the Chicago Cultural Center represents the democratization of arts for public life.

On Freedom Square: The Black Girlhood Altar is intended as a sacred site for missing and murdered Black girls and women. Assembled by A Long Walk Home's artists Scheherazade Tillet and Robert Narcisco and Black Girls in Chicago, the altar is a mixed-media, object-based installation initially created during the pandemic to transform public spaces from trauma sites to collective remembering and power.

The Black Girlhood Altar honors eight Black women and girls: Rekia Boyd, Latasha Harlins, Ma'Khia Bryant, "Hope," "Harmony," Marcie Gerald, Lyniah Bell, and Breonna Taylor, whose deaths or disappearances have galvanized A Long Walk Home's Black girl leaders to be activists and artists. In many cases, injustice defines their afterlives while their stories remain untold, their legacies honored by only a few.

The exhibit is presented in three distinct gallery spaces - Ritual and Prayer, Rest and Recess: The Courtyard, and Call and Response – each introduced by a distinctly colored lightbox.

Freedom Square: The Black Girlhood Altar aims to bring awareness to the issue of missing and murdered women of color, promote community accountability, end gender-based violence, and increase visibility. The exhibition creates a space for artists, families, and community activists to engage in public conversation.

A Long Walk Home is a Chicago-based national nonprofit that uses art to empower young people to end violence against all girls and women. 

DATES TO SAVE:

 Saturday, January 13

12-2pm

Daughters of Yemaya: Spiritual Altar Making

Michigan Avenue Galleries, 1st Floor East

Saturday-Sunday,

March 9-10

Time TBD

Black Girl Takeover: The Black Girlhood Altar Festival

Michigan Avenue Galleries, 1st Floor East

The Kwanzaa Festival of Life, Community, and Culture

The Kwanzaa Festival of Life, Community, and Culture was a week-long celebration that honors the achievements of the Black community and provides support. It occurred from December 26 to January 1 at the Sojourner Truth African Heritage Museum.

 In the fall of 2023, we came together to celebrate Día de los Muertos and Kwanzaa in December by activating our spaces. We aimed to honor our customs and traditions and raise awareness about the critical issues affecting our communities. To achieve this, we organized workshops where community members created altars, a sacred practice in our cultures. We invite everyone to attend our opening exhibition at the annual Kwanzaa Festival on December 29. The closing event will take place on February 16, 2024.

International Society of Altar Making

Curator Andrea Jennifer "YaYa" Porras

International Society of Altar Making artists construct temporary installations curated by master altar makers drawing on personal history.

Pause Portal- Can Pause Portal be the starting point to imagine new journey connections and a place to tap into and celebrate the creative energy that moves within and across our city? 

Writing a Word to an Ancester Ribbions - Curator Shonna McDaniel's invited the public to sit and write words of expression to ancestors that have passed on. 

Kwanzaa Altars and Tables are dedicated to Artists from the Community who have passed.

Honoring our ancestral obligation is summarized as recognizing and respecting the wisdom, values, and traditions passed down by our ancestors. It involves acknowledging the interconnectedness between past, present, and future generations and understanding the impact of our actions on our family and community.

Dawud Amir Rauf

Dana Miesha, installed by Shirkeri Badger and Bernadette Walton

Sojourner Truth, installed by Curator Shonna McDaniel's

Marshall Bailey 

Ancestor Female and Male Energy Photo Opportunity

installed by Judah Pimentel

The museum will be a repository during the Kwanzaa Festival, where community members can contribute various whatnots that can be part of our altar installation. They will be invited to tell their stories about the objects they contribute.

Everyone has something they like to collect. We have invited artists and our community partners to gather some of their favorite ideas to help inspire new and creative ways to make your prized collection more than just a group of dust collectors. 

Mrs Cleo Carter

Mr. Sweeney

"I AM The Altar" by Mama Azia

Mr. John Franklin King

"The What Not Shelf" Alpha Bruton

Ceremonial Corner, Writing a Prayer to Loved Ones

"On Saturday, December 30, a celebration was held inside the SOJO Museum. The purpose of the celebration was to make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community to restore our people to their traditional greatness."

"The word 'whatnot' was first used to indicate 'various things besides,' as in applied to shelves that might hold such things such as obituaries, photos, and other momentos. Growing up, I never had a whatnot, but my family did have something my mother called the 'whatnot shelf,' which we understood we weren't supposed to touch."

The Seventh Day of Kwanzaa. Finally, on this 7th and final day of Kwanzaa, we celebrate Imani. Imani means 'faith,' which can be applied to many aspects of our lives. We have expressed deep faith in our religions, creeds, love for our communities, and sacrifices, and

struggles to regain our freedom.