The Arts Center of Greenwood is hosting two exhibitions celebrating the Gullah Geechee culture, a community descended from enslaved West Africans who worked on rice, indigo and cotton plantations from North Carolina to Florida.
The exhibitions will run through March 3.
The first exhibition at 120 Main St., “Gullah Spirit: Jonathan Green,” features 33 paintings by Charleston artist Jonathan Green. Each work features a vibrant color palette depicting Gullah people going about their everyday lives with earnestness and joy, said the gallery in a press release.
“The Gullah arts of today are the product of skills handed down over generations in America,” said Arts Center Director Sylvia Martin. “They were mostly utilitarian crafts such as creating colorful textiles for clothing, making cast nets for fishing, and weaving baskets for harvesting. One of Green’s iconic images is a painting titled ‘Sweetgrass Carriers’ which depicts Gullah people collecting grass used in their crafts. His work comes alive with its endearingly rich compositions and brilliant use of color.”
Joining Green’s works is an adjacent exhibition, “Sewn by the Sea,” which features a collection of sweetgrass baskets hand-woven by Gullah artisans.
The Arts Center will host a community lecture on Feb. 2 at 5:30 p.m. The talk will feature Victoria Smalls of the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, who will discuss the Gullah Geech legacy.
Following the lecture, the Arts Center will host a reception celebrating the two exhibitions from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.
For more information, visit artscentergreenwood.com.
