A Haywood County art exhibit hopes to build a community beyond the art on the walls.
In the Haywood County Arts Council Gallery in downtown Waynesville, curator Marie Cochran walks through the work of 5 artists that she brought together for the traveling version of her Affrilachian Artist Project. “Affrilachian” is a word that refers to African Americans who also identify as Appalachians.
“It feels like I’ve drawn together these connections that were already there but that no one was able to see,” says Cochran.
This theme of unseen connections works on multiple levels: All of the artists in the show are African American and were at one point associated with Western Carolina University. Cochran was a professor in the school of Arts and Design for 6 years.
“I wasn't the first of all time, it's just, you know, people came and went and at that time I was the only, and I didn't really see any African American students,” says Cochran.
Many of the artists also have other connections to the region. LaKeisha Blount is from Texana, a historically African American community West of Murphy, North Carolina. Artist and writer Victoria Casey-McDonald collected and wrote about the history of the African American communities in Jackson County - she passed away recently. Rahkie Mateenhas Cherokee connections which she explores in her painting “1847” in which two chained arms reach for a key.
Cochran explains that was a point in history at which treaties were being broken.
Cochran says that it was important for her to highlight the complex heritage of Appalachians in this exhibit. She is from Toccoa, Georgia - ancestral Cherokee land that is also near the start of the Appalachian Trail.
“The African American presence in Appalachia has been denied,” says Cochran. “It's like, ‘well how many people were actually there?’, ‘What percentage?’ and all that. And it's like, ‘Wait a minute. Whoa - I don't even want to talk about percentages. We exist.'”
Cochran was inspired to start the Affrilachian Art Project in 2011 after hearing about the Affrilachian Poets - a cooperative in Kentucky founded in part by poet Frank X Walker.
“They had a chance to, you know, share information and to support each other through their careers and coming together and having readings together,” says Cochran. “And that was really to me as a visual artist, reminiscent of the Harlem Renaissance.”
That year, she presented the project at a University of Kentucky symposium. Then Cochran co-curated the inaugural museum exhibition of the Affrilachian Artist Project at the August Wilson Center for African American Art and Culture in Pittsburgh.
Another founding member of the Affrilachian Poets lives in Waynesville and works at Western Carolina University:
“My name is Ricardo Nazario-Colón. I am the chief diversity officer at Western Carolina University.”
Nazario-Colón is Puerto Rican. Much of his poetry is about his homeland. He reads a selection from his poem “The Crease of Almidón” here:
“I am from hice poquito but llevale este plato a Iris. From have you eaten is the follow up question to hello.”
He came to the University of Kentucky from New York. Since then he has made his home in Appalachia.
“There are layers to this. So just like Appalachia as a region, it's a cultural space. It's a geographical space. It's a political space, you know, so too are the Affrilachian Poets,” says Nazario-Colón, who signs his poetry ‘ Ricardo Nazario y Colón’.
He explains the Affrilachian Poets came together in theearly 1990s to recognize and connect writers in the region. It has always been a multicultural group:
“I think we took up that mantle to be able to promote that there are writers of color in this region that we sometimes stereotypically for many, many years considered to be homogeneously white,” says Nazario-Colón.
This is the legacy that Cochran continues in this art project.
A closing reception with the artists will be held Saturday, February 29 from 11am to 4pm, hosted by the Haywood Arts Council.
