Great offerings are on tap at this year's Art Beat Festival from May 11-15 at Portland Community College in Northeast and Southwest Portland. For a complete schedule: www.artbeat.pcc.edu.
Arvie Smith - Artist Talk
5pm - 6pm, Monday, May 11, MAHB 221, Cascade Campus, 705 N. Killingsworth St.
Arvie Smith presents a slide show of his recent body of work, Chitlin Circuit. He addresses both formal painting issues as well as social and historical issues that drive his work. As an African-American growing up in the South and South Central Los Angeles, his life experience and studies envelop his work.
Grandma Zula's Legacy - Film and Discussion
2pm - 3:30pm, Monday, May 11, Little Theatre, Sylvania Campus, 12000 S.W. 49th Ave.
Come for a screening of Grandma Zula's Legacy, a film about an African-American family's struggles and triumphs from slavery to farm life in the South to cross-country migration to Oregon. After the film, stay for a discussion of the process and creation of this film with Julianne Johnson-Weiss, Zula's great granddaughter.
Inspired by family matriarch, Grandma Zula, Kiser/Payne women have a long tradition of building community, transcending racial barriers, and utilizing political channels to meet the needs of their community. Through the narration provided by Zula's great granddaughter, Julianne Johnson-Weiss, interviews with Zula's granddaughter, as well as interviews with historians that knew this family and friends that shared their experiences, we travel through time anecdotally; personally and with passion. These are the stories of the death and rebirth-of a lifestyle, segregation and integration-of a community, and this family's desire to secure the rights for all regardless of race, creed or culture.
The traditional story of the Civil Rights Movement often starts and ends in the South, and this film brings to light what African-Americans were doing to organize, become political activists, and transcend racial barriers in the Pacific Northwest, which posed its own set of unique challenges in the fight for equality and justice.
Jujuba - Music Performance
Noon-1pm, Thursday, May 14, Performing Arts Center Foyer, Sylvania Campus
This high-energy Afrobeat and Juju with an eleven-piece band features master talking drum player Nojeem Lasisi from Lagos, Nigeria. Enjoy the hot percussion, funky rhythm section and blazing horn section!
