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FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Gullah Sea Islands & Beyond: The Hallelujah Singers & Potter Willie Leftwich
Charlotte, NC - Marlena Smalls, who last visited Charlotte as Bessie Mae in "Off the Wall & Onto the Stage" - the ballet inspired by Jonathan Green's colorful Gullah Sea Island paintings - will return Friday, November 17th with The Hallelujah Singers, the sacred music group that she founded in 1990. They will perform in the Afro-American Cultural Center Attic Theater at 7:00 pm on November 17, 2006. Willie Leftwich, a lawyer turned potter, is the featured visual artist. The Center's galleries will open at 6:00 pm. There is no cost to view the exhibition. Admission to the concert is $15 for adults and $10 for students.
November's Gallery Talk will explore the South Carolina plantation culture
and roots music - work songs, spirituals and the blues - which led,
ultimately, to the creation of jazz. All artwork in the current exhibit,
Gullah Sea Islands & Beyond, is unique to plantation life. Leftwich,
whose stoneware is included in the exhibit, is one of a small number of
American clay artists who has mastered wood-fired stoneware. A former
aeronautical engineer for NASA and an attorney, he gave up his three-piece
suits for a potter's apron and clay in 1995. "Pottery saved my life,"
Leftwich says. "Once I put my hands in the clay, pottery became my passion." "Before we learned about the Gullah culture, the African was just a former slave," founder Marlena Smalls says. "But understanding Gullah is the key to humanizing the race and showing that he came to this country with his own history, his own rituals and customs." ### |
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