Art Show Features Images Inspired By Civil Rights Struggle
“Violinist” by Adrienne Brown-David is one of the works featured in the upcoming show at Bozarts Gallery.
Staff Report
WATER VALLEY – Long Time Coming, an art exhibition commemorating the Civil Rights Act of March 1964, opens this Friday, March 5, with a reception from 6 – 9 p.m. at Bozarts Gallery on Main Street.
The show features many images and themes related to and inspired by civil rights struggles in the South and African American life, past and present, according to Annette Trefzer, owner of Bozarts and coordinator of the exhibit.
Some of the paintings are based on found photographs of civil rights activists arrested for violating ordinances and disturbing the peace, others revisit famous scenes of protest and civil disobedience, Trefzer said.
Many of the images are powerful portraits of women. Katherine Strause describes her work as a “layering of images from our collective past, images that we all seem to recognize which make these pieces feel familiar and trigger our own more personal stories.”
Strause exhibits nationally and is currently Department Chair and Assistant Professor of Art at Henderson State University in Arkadelphia, Arkansas. She holds an MFA from Southern Illinois University.
Cindy Buob, who began painting her portraits from “mug shots,” endows her subjects with dignity and humanity by replacing the arrest numbers with symbols of innocence, hope, and peace, thereby defamiliarizing the terrifying arrest situation.
Buob holds an MFA from Southern Illinois University. She has worked as a designer, conservation technician, and art instructor while raising a family. Recently she has had two solo exhibitions in Illinois and Arkansas.
Adrienne Brown-David celebrates African American subjects by making them larger than life and addressing topics such as beauty, art, and liberty.
