A trio of groups supporting African Nova Scotian artists and art-making are seeking three artists to exhibit their work in an upcoming February exhibition.
The Black Artist Initiative, The Cowry Collective and The Concrete Garden Association are inviting African Nova Scotian artists to submit their works for display in “The Concrete Garden,” which will run through February, African Heritage Month, at Nova Scotia Community College’s Truro Campus.
The chosen artists will receive a $200 fee for their submitted pieces and can set the selling price as they see fit. Of the proceeds, 15% will go towards the Viola Daisy Scholarship Fund, which helps ANS artists pursue an arts education.
Artists have until Jan 24 to respond to the call-out by submitting this straightforward form. The form asks for one-to-five photos of previous artworks, and whether artists will create new pieces or submit pre-made pieces for the show. Works must be delivered by Feb 1 and will be on display for a month, starting Feb 8.
Artists are welcome to submit sculptures, canvases and digital pieces, but artificial intelligence art of any kind is prohibited.
The show’s theme is A Concrete Garden, and the call-out says that “pieces that accurately reflect resilience and growing out of difficult situations will be prioritized.” Anyone with questions should email theconcretegardenproject@gmail.com.
The Concrete Garden Association is a non-profit organization based in Halifax and Truro, created in the summer of 2024 by cousins Felicity Wright and Sheldon Morris.
“We’re an organization that supports African Nova Scotian artists on all platforms,” Morris tells The Coast, “and what inspired us to do it was our love for art in general—all forms of it, whether that be audio works, visual, performing arts—we’re just always indulged in it, whenever we’re around it.”
The CGA aims to help emerging and established artists experiment, grow their practice and gain recognition for their work with support from others. It does this by hosting events, creating funding opportunities, organizing art showcases and more.
“When I was younger,” says Wright, “I was super into musicals and musical theatre, and my mom used to draw, so I started by copying her.” It became one of her favourite art forms while also belonging to theatre clubs and making and selling paintings in middle school.
This past summer, Wright and Morris were discussing starting an art project together, “and that just snowballed into everything that we’re doing now,” says Wright. They knew they wanted to make the CGA a nonprofit, she says, “because we wanted to make it easy for artists to go to art school and not have to worry about the funding side of it. For me, that’s one of the main reasons that I didn’t go to art school. I just didn’t have the funds.”
It was the same for Morris, who wanted to study film but wasn’t sure it was feasible.
Thus, the duo decided to create a platform to support both artists working as freelancers and those who want to pursue art school right out of high school but are worried about how to pay for it.
Although Morris and Wright didn’t go to art school, they tell The Coast that many of their close family members did, and they both draw inspiration from them. Their siblings and cousins are filmmakers, musicians, graphic artists, and designers. Making art is something of a family business.
Since its formation, the CGA has hosted events such as a “sip and paint” at Wright’s work in November and a recording and writing session with Bayview High School students, the latter in collaboration with Unity Charity.
Wright and Morris say they’ll be back with another recording session for students soon and will offer a similar writing workshop with students at Springhill High School this winter.
Working with youth is a big part of the CGA’s mission, which the duo says is “to empower African Nova Scotian artists by providing a platform to showcase their work, celebrate their cultural heritage, and foster community connections” and to “promote artistic expression as a means of personal growth, cultural preservation, and social change.”
The group’s vision is “a future where African Nova Scotian art is recognized, valued, and accessible, inspiring dialogue, social change, and cultural pride within and beyond our community.”
February’s show at NSCC will be the group’s first exhibition, “so we’re super excited,” says Wright.
The Concrete Garden exhibition, funded in partnership with the Nova Scotia Association of Black Social Workers, opens on Feb 8 as part of the CGA-organized Black History Month Art Expo. The event runs from 7-9pm at the NSCC’s Truro Campus in McCarthy Hall, at 36 Arthur Street. It’s a catered event, with live musical performances and ANS-made artworks and crafts for sale.
Admission is pay-what-you-can, and 100% of the proceeds will go to the CGA’s Voila Daisy Scholarship Fund, named in honour of Wright and Morris’ late grandmother. The goal of this fund is to reach $5,000, “but if we can make it $10,000, that would be even better,” says Wright, because they want to be able to give one scholarship a year to help a student study art beyond high school.
For that reason, Wright says “it just made sense to do the first show at a school because our main goal is to create scholarships and to connect with different schools, especially with NSCC, where they offer many trade programs for artists.”
Morris is an NSCC alum and works as an African Nova Scotian student support worker at Truro Middle School. He says watching this show come together has been “pretty surreal.”
“We were talking about putting on an event and putting it on in a gallery type of space and thinking, ‘where are we going to have it? What are we going to do?’ And then next thing you know, I’m at NSCC, and we’re getting a gallery, and the way it looked was exactly how I pictured it in my head.”
Says Wright, “I always say to [Morris], ‘this is so crazy that this summer, it was just an idea of something we wanted to work on.’ Then, recently, we got a few T-shirts to give out to the people who are volunteering and helping us out, and even looking at the T-shirt was so crazy to me because it was just an idea not too long ago.
“I’m so proud of everything we’ve done so far, and it’s cool to see all the people who have reached out to work with us and want to help and get involved.”
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This article appears in Dec 19, 2024 – Jan 31, 2025.