OVERTOWN
Artists hold preview of Works
The Art Basil exhibition will be held in Miami Beach on Jan. 5-8,
and one group of black artists is giving a sneak preview of what it will be showcasing.
Timbuktu Market Place Artist Collective and its president, Marvin
Weeks, will hold a reception and exhibition from 7 p.m. to midnight Saturday at the Lyric
Theatre, 819 NW Second Ave., in Overtown.
Timbuktu, in conjunction with Millennium Movers, a black
professional business group, will present Ancestors, Origin and Community, an art
sculpture installation exhibit by Weeks and Xavier Cortada at the reception.
Also, urban artists Betty Garrison Battle, Addonis Parker, Bayunga
Kialeuka and Tracey Nicole will present their works in an exhibition titled The Urban
Community.
The Lyric Theatre will be transformed into an art café for the
occasion, with music provided by the Eugene Johnson Jazz Quartet.
As part of the program, organizers are sponsoring an art and
cultural workshop for children from noon to 5 p.m. Kids will have a chance to paint a
mural.
Weeks, curator of the show, is the city of Miami Community
Redevelopment Agency's Overtown Artist-in-Residence. He will unveil a four-panel
multimedia historical collage titled The Glory of Overtown at the reception.
Week, who believes art can affect civil and spiritual development
of inner-city communities, is involved in several business-development ventures with
governmental agencies and others in Overtown and Liberty City that will demonstrate how
art can change communities and help them become sustainable.
Two of the projects include an Overtown Art and Entertainment
Center and the 7th Avenue Vanguard Business Association's marketing of the Liberty City
business corridor.
Cortada is a Cuban-American artist and attorney whose works have
been shown around the world, including the White House and at major corporations. He
believes in the ancestral commonality of the diverse cultures in South Florida, and he
will unveil a mural of the Cuban and Haitian elderly titled, We Are in the Same Boat.
Cortada will exhibit the DNA Molecule, a rendering of a
genetic code made up of rice and beans.
Battle, born and raised in Overtown, is a retired Miami-Dade public
school teacher who studied in Paris during the 1960s under William Stanley Hayter, a
Studio 17 artist known for his etchings. She started painting again after many years and
said art is therapeutic and has helped her with her health problems. She will unveil a
work titled Women in Overtown.
The events are free to the public and are sponsored by the city of
Miami Community Redevelopment Agency, the Miami-Dade Empowerment Trust, Miami-Dade County,
the Black Archives History and Research Foundation of South Florida and Millennium Movers.
For more information, call 786-443-5218. |
