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American Visions, April, 1999
ZONING ABOUT IN HOUSTON
This April, the 1999 Houston International Festival continues a 28-year-long tradition of presenting arts and crafts, music and food for families. This year features a special tribute to the heartbeat of southern Africa.
The festival, which was launched in 1971 on a few blocks of Main Street, has expanded annually, now encompassing 20 blocks of downtown Houston's city parks, plazas and streets. Set up in this area are six outdoor entertainment zones (African, Caribbean, American. Texan, Latin and Kids) and nine stages featuring more than 1,600 regional, national and international performers, all filling the air with salsa, country, reggae, jazz, blues, zydeco and more.
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Zone Africa: An innovative cultural safari takes visitors through Stone Kingdom--a living museum, stage and demonstration area with relics and sculptures from Great Zimbabwe on exhibit. Nearby, the Zip Zap Circus from Cape Town, South Africa, made up of 15 to 25 children, performs daredevil acts, and the renowned Soweto Street Beat fuses different dance forms with its own traditional township moves. Making its North American debut is Johannesburg's Moving Into Dance, which mixes African dance, music and ritual with Western dance forms.
Afropop music is in demand on the World Music Stage, where international stars, including trumpeter Hugh Masekela, singers Oumou Sangare and Angelique Kidjo, and pianist Abdullah Ibrahim perform.
Zone Caribbean: The Caribbean Pan Yard returns for a second year, bringing steel drums and brilliant costumes reminiscent of carnival. A travel expo presents vacation bargains, and for those who can't wait till then, the Caribbean Market offers culinary delights from the islands.
Zone America: The music stage presents zydeco (with Boozoo Chavis), gospel (with the Blind Boys of Alabama) and soul (with Ann Nesby), as well as country and the blues, while the Gypsy Market is defined by crawfish, corn on the cob, sausage on, a stick, and other fun foods, as well as distinctive handmade crafts.
The festival runs April 17 to 18 and 24 to 25. Call (800) 541-2099 for more information, or visit www.hif.org on the World Wide Web.
A NEW NATION OF DESIGNERS
A global digital revolution, led by a new generation of status quo-bucking designers, is rewriting the rules of design practice. Their ideas and synergy will be captured at DesigNation's third International Design Conference, April 22 to 25 in Atlanta.
Sponsored by the Organization of Black Designers, which is based in Washington, D.C., the conference is the world's only international multidisciplinary and multicultural design conference. The event is expected to draw 5,000 attendees and more than 200 corporate exhibitors, bringing together advertising, graphic, broadcast, fashion, multimedia, interior, product and architectural designers from all over the globe.
This year's conference theme, "DesigNation2: ICE," explores new ways in which the digital design revolution is reshaping information, communication and entertainment (hence the acronym ICE), as well as the work, ideas and design culture of noted designers in these arenas. The conference also will chronicle changes in how companies are creating and competing.
For more information, call DesigNation at (202) 659-3918 or send e-mail to OBDesign@aol.com.
STOP ASKING
Fine art and craft art converge at the exhibit "Stop Asking/We Exist: 25 African-American Craft Artists." Though visually a fine-arts extravaganza, the work is also utilitarian, featuring cabinets, baskets, dolls and the like. The collection addresses such themes as fine art versus craft art, as well as personal, ethnic and social delineation.
Curated by internationally known fiber and performance artist Joyce Scott, "Stop Asking" represents the work of 25 innovative nationally recognized artists, including Martin Dingus (mixed media), Thomas Miller (wood), Willis "Bing" Davis (mixed media), Martha Jackson Jarvis (mixed media), William Rhodes (wood) and Carolyn Mazloomi (fiber and quilts). The exhibit features 70 works of art in a variety of materials, including clay, glass, metal, wood and fiber.
The artists' works also are featured in a color catalog, which includes two essays on the works. Copies are available from the Society for Contemporary Crafts, in Pittsburgh, where the exhibit had its premiere. From there, it moves to the American Craft Museum in New York City (May 14 to September 8); the New Bedford Art Museum in New Bedford, Mass. (October 7, 1999, to April 5, 2000); and the Mobile Museum of Art, Mobile, Ala. (January 31, 2000, to April 5, 2000).
HUGHIE LEE-SMITH
Hughie Lee-Smith--a master painter who was a member of the National Academy of Design, whose paintings are in the collections of major American museums, and whose paintings were used as backdrops on The Cosby Show--died of cancer at an Albuquerque, N.M., hospice on February 23. He was 83.
Over his decades-long career, he produced paintings that were distinctive for their cool, restrained vision of the enigmas of life and for their depiction of loneliness and alienation; at times, however, hope, optimism and the promise of love overcame desolation. Lee-Smith painted "to affect people, to make them feel," he said in an interview with American Visions in 1990.
