Visiting Exhibitions

Crealdé School of Art’s Hannibal Square Heritage Center Visiting Exhibition Series presents cultural and visual arts offerings in a variety of mediums—folk art, photography, painting, quilt-making, and historic artwork by famous African-American artists, as well as opportunities for hands-on involvement and community collaboration. Our offering is unique to Central Florida, yet we have taken inspiration from various Centers for African-American history and culture which present the blend of permanent exhibitions and installations with changing cultural, artistic and historical exhibitions, including The King Center in Atlanta, Georga; The LaVilla Museum in Jacksonville, Florida; The Afro-American Cultural Center in Charlotte, North Carolina; The Riley Museum in Tallahassee, Florida; and the American History Museum of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C.

The visiting exhibitions are generally located on the second floor of the Heritage Center; however, some are two-venue exhibitions utilizing both the gallery space at the Heritage Center and the Alice and William Jenkins Gallery on the main campus of the Crealdé School of Art in Winter Park.

The Visiting Exhibition Series at the Hannibal Square Heritage Center is funded through a Tourist Development Grant from the Orange County Government, Department of Arts and Culture and the Community Redevelopment Agency of the City of Winter Park.

2010-2011 Visiting Exhibition Series

Connecting Andre Smith and Zora Neale Hurston: Maitland and Eatonville as Joining Communities

Adapted for the Heritage Center by Richard D. Colvin, Curator at Maitland Art and History Association

The powerful, recently restored paintings of Andre Smith, a contemporary of Zora Neale Hurston, will be on loan from the Maitland Art and History Association to coincide with the Zora! Festival. The exhibition features 20 paintings by the Maitland Art Center’s founder, visionary artist and architect Andre Smith (1880-1959) depicting Eatonville, home of author Zora Neale Hurston, in the 1930s and 40s, accompanied by text panels of Eatonville folklore and photographs. The exhibition explores the relationship between these two artists, their creative endeavors, and their respective communities. The vibrant colors and narrative style reflect the trend in painting during the 1930s, when the Italian Renaissance fresco style painting was revisited, as reflected in the work of Mexican muralists such as Diego Rivera and in the W.P.A. (Workman’s Progress Administration) murals, which are in public buildings throughout Washington D.C. and present an inspirational image of the hard work and contributions of common people. Filled with beautiful landscapes and moments in community life, this exhibition, originally curated by the late cultural historian Dr. Beverly Robinson of U.C.L.A., will be adapted for the Heritage Center by Richard D. Colvin, Curator at Maitland Art and History Association.

The Art of Uncle Monday and Other Florida Tales

April 15 to August 27, 2011

See framed prints of work by the late Kitty Kitson Petterson which illustrate Dr. Kristin G. Congdon’s book: Uncle Monday and Other Florida Tales. The tales go back over 100 years. Large illustrations vividly express the humor, fright, and other emotions in the stories.

Mid-Century: A Photographic View of Three African-American Communities in Florida.

September 9 to December 30, 2011

A two venue exhibition at the Hannibal Square Heritage Center and the Alice & William Jenkins Gallery featuring Ellie Weems, Gordon Parks, and selections from residents’ family photographs of the Hannibal Square community in West Winter Park. Curated by Peter Schreyer, in partnership with La Villa Museum in Jacksonville, and The Southeast Museum of Photography in Daytona Beach.

2009-2010 Visiting Exhibition Series

Just Above the Water: Florida Folk Art

curated by Kristin Congdon and Tina Bucavalas
April 9 through June 26, 2010
Opening reception: Friday April 9

Just Above the Water looks into the lives of thirty-five Florida folk artists. These artists, in many cases self-taught, show us another perspective of life—one that is inspired by their everyday customs, their working and living environments, and their community traditions.

The thirty-five framed panel exhibit, on loan from The Museum of Florida History in Tallahassee, is based on the book Just Above the Water: Florida Folk Art by Kristin Congdon and Tin Bucuvalas. The book is the culmination of a five-year project encompassing thorough on-site research and many hours of interviews with the folk artists. On the opening night, a lecture will be held at adjacent Mt. Moriah Missionary Baptists Church, where attendees will be able to interact with authors and exhibition curators Kritsin Congdon and Tina Bucuvalas.

Hannibal Square Folk Art Festival

In conjunction with Just Above the Water: Florida Folk Art Exhibition, The Hannibal Square Folk Art Festival will be a day-long festival on Saturday, April 10, 2010 of art sales by exhibited artists and select Highwaymen, soul food vendors, jazz musicians and a “Kid Folk” program, which teaches children about folk art through the Just Above the Water exhibition and gives them an opportunity to create works of art using folk art methods. Programming and marketing partners will have representation, including the Winter Park Community Redevelopment Association (CRA), and businesses associations: the Hannibal Square Merchant’s Association, the Winter Park Chamber of Commerce and the African American Chamber of Commerce.

125 Windows Into Historic Community:
The Complete Hannibal Square Heritage Collection

July 9 through September 25, Opening reception: Friday, July 9

Visitors—residents, tourists, historians and cultural anthropologists alike--will never have seen 20^th century documentation of community like this: The award-winning Heritage Collection: Photographs and Oral Histories of West Winter Park, spanning the 20^th century, has been growing with each of the six Heritage Collection Days, since 2002. This successful collection has already outgrown its permanent exhibition space—only 90 pieces are displayed at one time. This special exhibition will fill the Heritage Center with the entire 125 pieces that make up The Heritage Collection. The currently displayed collection will be augmented by archived and new pieces from the most recent Phase VI of the collection.

This is history told as “story” from the lips of people who have lived those stories. Images and oral histories depicting everything from daily life to special neighborhood events and rites of passage will teach about the lives and reflections of many of West Winter Park’s African-American families. What was it like to be part of a community where everyone knew each other…at a time when church was part of nearly everyone’s life…when the family’s first car was cause for celebration…and when everyone had to be back on the West Side of the railroad tracks by 5 p.m.…until 1971. These stories answer those questions and reveal much more about the makings of this proud and beautiful community.

In a climate of intense development throughout their home community, The Heritage Collection has been an exhibition that touched a chord and brought together the African-American residents in an unprecedented way. Residents and the city of Winter Park started paying attention. What was once a whisper became a full chorus tuned to preservation and celebration. The neighborhood continues to be developed—but with an eye on the history and heritage of this special place. Visitors will have a chance to see the entirety of a powerful exhibition that was a catalyst for change in the City of Winter Park, who has since named itself “the City of Culture and Heritage.”

The Art of Hope:
A Regional Juried Exhibition Commemorating the
First African American U.S. President, Barack Obama

a two-venue exhibition held at The Heritage Center and at Crealdé School of Art’s Jenkins Gallery, October 8 through January 15, Opening reception and awards presentation: Friday October 8.

Visual artists from all visual arts mediums, throughout the 9 Southeastern United States (Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana) will be invited to enter this juried exhibition commemorating the significance and the hope surrounding the election and presidency of Barack Obama. Entry fee will be $20, and there will be 3 awards and approximately 60 pieces will be selected for exhibition.

The juror and curator for this exhibition will be Bobby Scroggins, sculptor and Associate Professor of Art at the University of Kentucky and visiting instructor at Crealdé School of Art.

Complementing this exhibition will be the unveiling of the updated Hannibal Square Timeline, which includes the date of the inauguration of the 44^th president and 1^st African-American president.

Bigger Than A Scrapbook:
The Talking Quilts of Lauren Austin

A two venue exhibition held at The Heritage Center and at Crealdé School of Art’s Jenkins Gallery, January 15 to March 27.

Austin, a New Smyrna-based African-American quilt maker, “tells stories with her quilts that go to the heart of history in African-American culture.” She creates portraits in fabric that portray lifestyle, political and legal themes relating to the black experience and the African Diaspora worldwide. In her art quilts, Austin shares her cultural and family history, her experiences as a U.S. diplomat to South America, and her background as a human and civil rights lawyer and associate law professor at Syracuse University School of Law. Austin has been a community artist in residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach. She is currently working on a commission depicting a colony of Bahamian freed slaves that will be dedicated in Freeport, Bahamas, this October. Prior to her two-venue exhibition, Austin will be in residency at the Heritage Center for a two-day community workshop, made possible through the 2009 TDT Cultural Tourism grant. She will teach the quilt-making process to Hannibal Square residents—youth to seniors—who will create a family heirloom quilt plus a collaborative quilt, which will be included in the 2010 exhibition and added to the permanent public art collection of the Heritage Center. The two-venue exhibition will feature Austin’s larger quilt works at the Crealdé Jenkins Gallery and her smaller, community-based works at The Heritage Center. An opening reception will be held at both locations from 7 to 10 p.m., beginning with a gallery talk by the artist at Crealdé’s Jenkins Gallery, followed by a live-music reception at The Heritage Center.

Archive of Exhibitions

2008-2009 Visiting Exhibition Series

Sacred Places, Sacred History: Black Churches of West Winter Park

July 7 – September 26, 2009

	Black church historian Rebekah McCloud, Ed.D. University of Central Florida, was the winner of the 2003/04 Rhea Marsh and Dorothy Lockhard Smith Research Grant from the Winter Park Public Library. With this funding, McCloud conducted research, wrote educational panels and paired them with photographs to create Sacred Places, Sacred History: Black Churches of West Winter Park. The exhibition explores and provides insight into the rich history of west Winter Park’s churches and the important role they have played in community life.
	Linda Schäpper: Central Florida Folk Art Painter of Historic and Sacred Scenes October 6 – December 19, 2009 Opening Reception: Thursday, October 15, 5:00–8:00 p.m. during the Third Thursday Hannibal Square Stroll Folk Art painter Linda Schäpper is most widely recognized for her “Family of Christ” tapestry — an enormous patchwork of human figures encircling Jesus on the cross that became the spiritual backdrop for Pope John Paul II’s landmark October 1995 mass in New York’s Central Park, and for her “Nativity II,” which became the 1998 UNICEF Christmas card. Linda Schäpper: Central Florida Folk Art Painter of Historic and Sacred Scenes is an exhibition of paintings depicting African-American community life from a historic perspective. The artist will hold a community workshop August 21–23, 2009.
	Centennial Faces October 7–December 20, 2008 Centennial Faces, on loan from the Museum of Florida History, is a selection of family portraits by Tallahassee photographer Alvan S. Harper. The early 20th century photographs show members of affluent, upper middle-class African-American families in Florida’s capitol city. These portraits disclose a dignity far removed from the poverty and hardship typically portrayed in photographs of African-Americans in the post-Civil War era. Reflections of Harper’s clients’ prosperity are apparent in elaborately beaded dresses and finely tailored waistcoats. The forty-nine portraits comprising the exhibit are only a fraction of the two thousand glass plate negatives in the Alvan S. Harper Collection in the Florida State Archives.
	A Decade of Zora! Festival Posters January 13–March 28, 2009 A Decade of Zora! Festival Posters celebrates the 20th Anniversary of the internationally known ZORA! Festival with official posters from ten years of past festivals. Each poster is a print of the work by some of the 20th century’s most noted African-American artists, including Jacob Lawrence, Elizabeth Catlett, Romare Bearden, Faith Ringgold and the late Dr. John Biggers. Curated by Dr. M.J. Hewitt, member of the ZORA! Festival National Planners and former co-editor of the International Review of African-American Art. On loan from the Zora Neale Hurston National Museum of Fine Arts. The Hannibal Square Heritage Center is honored to celebrate the Zora Neale Hurston Festival’s 20th Anniversary by exhibiting the posters created to recognize some of the most noted African American artists of the 20th century. We salute the contributions of this internationally recognized festival, its longtime director Mrs. N.Y. Nathiri, and of course, author and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston, for their tremendous contributions to the culture of our region, the nation, and the world. -Peter Schreyer, Executive Director, Crealdé School of Art, at the opening reception

2007-2008 Visiting Exhibition Series

South Apopka: A Community Portrait by Photographer Bob Michaels May 2-July 26, 2008 South Apopka, with its deep roots to the past, is characterized by remaining almost entirely African-American. This exhibition features portraits and social landscapes of this unique Central Florida community by Crealdé alumni Bob Michaels. The exhibition was curated by Peter Schreyer, one of his instructors and mentors. Some of these photographs were exhibited at the Apopka History Museum during Black History Month in 2007. "South Apopka represents the African-American community that bounds my home, the City of Apopka, Florida. This area has a long history, rich cultural heritage, a real sense of community, and some extraordinary people. It is a traditional small town (of the sort that has passed away in the modern era) where everyone seems to know everyone else. South Apopka is unique among rapidly expanding Central Florida in having almost no population turnover. Most of the residents were born there, including a number of third- and fourth-generation natives. It is common to hear several people recalling events that happened over fifty years ago but where everyone was present. It is truly a throwback to an old time when the population of central Florida was a very small fraction of what it is today." -Bob Michaels

A Hannibal Square Portrait: Plein-Air Painting by Tom Sadler and His Students

March 13 – June 28, 2008

During the inaugural session of classes at the new Hannibal Square Heritage Center in the fall of 2008, Crealdé associate faculty member Tom Sadler and his plein-air painting students captured moments in time on Hannibal Square. The class focused on paintings of the historic area and its mix of the old and new. Some of the old churches are featured in several of the works while others focus in on the shops in the square itself. Works in this exhibition also include the old houses in the area, which sometimes incorporate a new building under construction in the background. The Hannibal Square area is undergoing extensive transition and this change is portrayed sometimes dramatically, and in other cases more subtly, through paint on canvas. Curated by Tom Sadler. (Above image: Yellow House by Claudia Backes, part of the permanent collection of the Heritage Center.)

Commentaries:
“The Urban Landscape Painting class set out to capture the essence of the area ‘west of the tracks’ in Winter Park, which is an area in transition. Plein-air and studio work were combined in the effort to portray on canvas what the students found interesting to the eye. Old churches under raking light, colorful store fronts around Hannibal Square, and older homes with the evidence of new construction looming in the background … all were fair game. One student learned ‘that the people who live in the Hannibal Square neighborhood are some of the most genuine people in the world’ and that painting the area ‘very likely changed my life.’”
—Tom Sadler, Associate Faculty, Crealdé School of Art, March 14, 2008

“The class of painters immediately bought into the subject and immersed themselves in the tranquil scenes and beautiful fall light of the Hannibal Square community, without ignoring the sometimes unsettling transitional quality of the cultural and social landscape of the neighborhood. I was impressed how the artists captured much of the beautiful community mood I had loved about Hannibal Square for many years. To my knowledge, the presented body of work represents the first serious attempt to portray this historic community in paintings. The colorful and heartfelt studies add a beautiful contrast to the Heritage Collection of black and white photographs and oral histories contributed by the residents themselves for permanent display at the center.
—Peter Schreyer, Executive Director, Crealdé School of Art, Spring, 2008

The World of Mr. Imagination, Two-Venue Exhibition

January 18 – March 1, 2008

This exhibition was presented at both the Alice & William Jenkins Gallery at Crealdé and the Hannibal Square Heritage Center Gallery. As a tribute to Black History Month, the Smithsonian-collected, Pennsylvania-based artist returned for a major exhibition of his sculptures, constructions and installations. Presented in partnership with Jeanine Taylor Folk Art, The Golden Rule Foundation, and the City of Winter Park. (Photograph at left by Peter Schreyer)

Mr. Imagination (born Gregory Warmack) took a new name when he survived a near-fatal shooting in 1978. His brush with death inspired him to craft a spiritual renaissance in his creations—an awakening which now propels his art toward a declaration of faith and a sense of pride and dignity in his heritage and personal history. His art can be found at the Smithsonian Institute, the Museum of American Folk Art in New York, and the House of Blues in both Chicago and Orlando.

During a two-week residency at the Heritage Center, Mr. Imagination worked with assistant Lynn Tomlinson (Crealdé artist and Director of the 2007 Community Pride Mosaic Mural across the street at the community center) to lead community members, artists, and area school children in the creation of a Memory Wall public art sculpture installation in front of the Heritage Center. The collaborative public art effort—a Golden Rule Community Project—was initiated as part of the Unity Heritage Festival in celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King Day. The Memory Wall was unveiled at the Heritage Center during a special reception for guests from the 19th Annual Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts and Humanities in Eatonville. The Mr. Imagination residency and Memory Wall project was presented by Crealdé School of Art in partnership with the Golden Rule Foundation, Jeanine Taylor Folk Art, and the City of Winter Park

Winter Park Collects Folk Art October 13—December 23, 2007 Presented in partnership with the Jeanine Taylor Folk Art Gallery, the exhibit featured f African-American folk art collections from local residents. The exhibition was launched with a Gala fundraiser, including live music by the First World Drummers and Dancers outside, and jazz and blues singer Ruth King inside the Heritage Center and proceeds from this event went to support the Heritage Center’s mission to celebrate the past, present, and future contributions of Winter Park’s west side community.

Ruby C. Williams, Folk Artist Ruby Williams grew up in Bealsville, Florida—a community formed by her ancestors, freed slaves in the 1860s. It is these roots that form the stage for Ruby’s produce stand and “walk in” gallery on State Road 60. Ruby Williams’ art career began when a passer-by noticed her brightly painted signs advertising her fruits and vegetables. With coaxing from him and others, this spiritual businesswoman, minister and grandmother embarked on the journey that has led her into classrooms, galleries and museums in Florida, as well as nationally. Recently Williams illustrated a charming children’s book titled, I Am Ruby. “I’ve been ministering since I was a kid ... I do everything from the bottom of my heart, whether shelling a bucket of beans or making a painting.” Her brightly colored paintings speak her messages loudly and clearly. “... I like when people look at it and smile.” Ruby Williams was recently honored with a Florida Folk Life Award in Tallahassee and was included in the show, “On Their Own — Selected Self-taught Artists,” at the Smithsonian Anacostia Museum in Washington, D.C.