SPEAK – a colorful exhibition honoring Black History Month – on display at the Laguna Beach Cultural Arts Center
By MARRIE STONE
This month – in response to the Trump administration’s attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion – Google removed Black History Month from its calendar. Last February, Google’s homepage honored civil rights activist and author James Baldwin. This year, the page returned to its generic logo. These are small but stark examples for those who feel it important to continue recognizing the significant and historically overlooked contributions by all members of our nation – not just the ones who control it.
To that end, through mid-March, the Laguna Beach Cultural Arts Center (LBCAC) continues to honor Black History Month by hosting thought-provoking films, discussions and musical performances by Black artists. They’re also offering one of the most stunning art exhibitions they’ve ever shown.
SPEAK celebrates works by collage artist Terrell Washington Anansi, quilt artist Allyson Allen, sculptor Gerard Stripling and photographer Tom Lamb. Roughly 70 pieces make up this rich and colorful collection that not only delights the eye but opens the heart and ignites the mind.
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Photo by Tom Lamb
SPEAK, featuring work by Terrell Washington Anansi, Allyson Allen, Gerard Stripling and Tom Lamb, will be on display at LBCAC through mid-March
For Anansi, who has lived in Laguna for 40 years and raised his daughter here, the exhibition feels especially poignant. It features more than 50 of his pieces created over the past two decades, making this his most comprehensive show to date. To stand inside this collective body of work is to appreciate the recurring themes Anansi grapples with – from female empowerment (having been born to a strong mother and raised a powerful daughter) to racism and the sacredness of human life.
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Photo by Jeff Rovner
Artist and hairstylist Terrell Washington Anansi has lived and worked in Laguna for over 40 years. SPEAK is his largest showing of work to date, including roughly 50 of his pieces.
Like every artist, Anansi puts himself inside his art. The foundation for most of his canvases is the L.A. Times, his hometown newspaper. As a recycle artist, he collects daily editions and draws from various stories and headlines that he collages into the work, often mixing the text with his own poetry, songs and writings. He also incorporates other found objects – wood from Laguna Canyon; leaves, flowers and grass he collects around town; corrugated cardboard boxes; a steamer trunk and even the canvases of other local artists. Then he layers the pieces with his own art – paint and other cut-outs – to create multidimensional and colorful creations he calls “tribal neo-pop art.”
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Photo by Jeff Rovner
Terrell Washington Anansi’s recycle art incorporates newsprint, cardboard and other organic material alongside his own poetry and paint
“I didn’t expect myself to be a painter,” said Anansi, who’s worked as a hairdresser in town for decades, but also has a degree in comparative literature from UCI. “I do this to get rid of my pain and heal myself. I don’t paint nice little pictures. I [include] a lot of words and different things because I’m telling the human story.”
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Photo by Jeff Rovner
Anansi also includes several pieces of self-portraiture as he traces his life and work across the decades
Anansi has experienced plenty of overt and encoded racism in his 75 years. He served as the first black editor of UCI’s paper in 1979. Shortly after he was named, much of the staff quit in protest.
From racial epithets targeted at his 3rd-grade daughter on her school bus in the 1990s to rude treatment by his own clients, Anansi pours all those experiences into his work. He was once told by a New York gallerist that his images of Black women wearing dreadlocks were “too common” to show. Today, those paintings hang inside LBCAC.
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Photo by Jeff Rovner
Anansi’s 2012 “Laguna Canyon Wood Series” showcases strong, Black women painted on reclaimed wood from the canyon
“It is my personal and sacred challenge to make meaningful, fine art out of discarded memories, belongings…people’s histories,” he wrote into his 2015 piece, “Work on a Real Life.” “I allow the recycled bark, paper, cardboard, fabric and wood to talk to me.” SLAVE, he writes, stands for “Sacred Living a Valued Environment.”
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Photo by Jeff Rovner
Terrell Washington Anansi poses with his 2015 slavery piece, “Work on a Real Life” (to his right)
Visitors might remember quilt-maker Allyson Allen’s Piece-ful Protest exhibition from 2021. It briefly hung in Laguna’s Wells Fargo rotunda before being removed two days later after a client complained it made her “uncomfortable.” The show ultimately found a home at the Neighborhood Congregational Church. LBCAC periodically shows excerpts from that exhibition each year. For this show, nine of Allen’s powerful quilts are interspersed with Anansi’s pieces to create interesting and powerful juxtapositions.
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Photo by Tom Lamb
Terrell Washington Anansi and Allyson Allen’s pieces are a perfect complement and juxtaposition of color, texture and theme
“The Protest exhibit is still unfortunately relevant,” said Allen, noting the new wars that have erupted in the Middle East and Ukraine since she created her anti-war quilts in 2020. “It doesn’t matter when these pieces are exhibited. They were timely two or three decades ago and, unfortunately, they will still be relevant 10 years from now.”
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Photo by Jeff Rovner
Allyson Allen’s 2020 “Peace Bomb”
When asked about her thoughts of where our nation is currently headed, Allen said, “We had a saying in the Black schools when I was a kid: ‘You’re gonna learn today.’ It’s tragic that every one of us is going to suffer in one way or another – whether it’s at the gas pump, the grocery store, not getting home healthcare workers or construction workers when we need them. Every single one of us is going to suffer. We’re all gonna learn now.”
Allen went on to note that it’s White women who have historically benefited from the government programs now targeted by the new administration. Those include welfare, food stamps, school lunches and WIC (Women, Infants, Children) programs. “As long as Whites dominate, they will be the majority of the recipients of these programs,” Allen said. “Black people are resilient. We’re used to figuring things out, having a backup plan and rolling with the punches. But most people will be straight up scrambling.”
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Photo by Tom Lamb
Allyson Allen with her 2019 “Color Blocks” (L) and 2020 “War Kills” (R)
Allen’s soft quilts create a beautiful complement and contrast to Anansi’s hard canvases and wooden sculptures. Nearly every piece pops with color, and the themes resonate between the works.
“If people are afraid of the different topics and causes addressed in my work, that’s intentional. It’s deliberate,” Allen said in a 2021 interview with Stu News. “The work creates a juxtaposition between harsh issues and soft, quilted textiles. That’s the whole point.”
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Photo by Jeff Rovner
(L-top-bottom) Tom Lamb’s 2020 “BLM George Floyd,” Allyson Allen’s 2016 “#Blacklivesmatter” and 2019 “13th”
The exhibition also contains several of Tom Lamb’s moving photographs made in the aftermath of George Floyd’s 2020 murder, as well as one of Gerard Stripling’s bronze sculptures.
Photo by Tom Lamb
Laguna Beach sculpture artist Gerard Stripling was named Artist of the Year in 2023 by the Laguna Beach Arts Alliance
Created in 2017, Domum Mori (“Home to Die”) is an actual flag cast in bronze. At its heart lies an untreated steel ring that’s been allowed to oxidize and degrade. Rust bleeds down the bronze like tears. There are our ideals (and the symbol of those ideals), and then there’s reality eroding them. When asked why he opted to put the piece behind glass he said, “Because it’s important. I want people to think about what’s happening.”
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Photo by Jeff Rovner
Gerard Stripling’s 2017 bronze sculpture “Domum Mori”
Aerial landscape and documentary photographer Tom Lamb used his time and talent to bear witness to the events of 2020. Days after George Floyd’s murder, Lamb flew to Minneapolis to chronicle the city’s reaction to one of the most public police killings in U.S. history.
“I’m a documentary photographer, so I photographed some of the artifacts left behind. Not the people, but the objects. Then I merged the images for this show,” Lamb said. “I’m used to photographing stimulating images quickly. I understand when I’ve gotten what I wanted. But it wasn’t until I put these together that I started to really look at the objects, see the crosses, the words, the juxtaposition of elements within the photos. That’s why I put those images together – to further reinforce the messages inside them. It was a powerful, moving place to be.”
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Photo by Tom Lamb
Documentary photographer Tom Lamb captured the emotion behind George Floyd’s murder
What we know of history is only through the eyes of those who tell its stories. Laguna’s history has largely been told through a Caucasian lens. The early 20th-century plein air artists, the counterculture hippie movement, the surf culture and nature photographers all convey a kaleidoscopic portrait of our town. But the Black voice has remained largely silent in Laguna. Until now.
SPEAK will be on display at LBCAC’s gallery, located at 235 Forest Ave., through March 15. For more information, visit their website here.
