Visionary Vibes: A Blog by Aberjhani

AI Flips the Interview Script with 5 More Questions for 1 Author

9/4/2023

To read the first seven questions of this AI interview conducted by AILC Contributor 444 with author-poet-artist Aberjhani, please visit LinkedIn.com at: AI Flips the Interview Script with 7 Questions for 1 Author. The final five begin now with number:

8.

ILC CONTRIBUTOR 444: Your collaboration with Luther E. Vann on ELEMENTAL, the Power of Illuminated Love (2008) was a unique fusion of poetry and art. How did this collaboration influence your creative process and approach to your subsequent works?

Aberjhani: Working with Luther on ELEMENTAL was like nothing I’d ever done before because I wanted the writing to be genuinely ekphrastic. That meant it should reflect the impulses and ideas first expressed in his visual art rather than my own independent concepts. To do that, I had to study the ways Luther developed his style and then utilize what I learned to express his understanding of things like community and certain spiritual beliefs. But part of what attracted me to the project in the first place was recognizing how much his metaphysical paintings already mirrored certain spiritual philosophies expressed in some of my poetry.

We later reversed that dynamic when he graciously provided covers for my novel, Songs from the Black Skylark zPed Music Player, and poetry collection titled The Bridge of Silver Wings. That kind of partnership across mediums is rare, so his death in 2016 left me feeling unanchored, if you will, for quite some time. Eventually it forced me to tap back into instincts of my own for experimenting with visual artistry. That, over the past five years or so, has led to the creation of fine art photography and digital paintings which have been exhibited offline and also sold in my online art store.

9.

AILC 444: Speaking of which, your distinctive "Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle" is a testament to your versatility as a contemporary creative. How does your visual art complement your written works, and what unique aspects of creativity do you find in each medium?

ABERJHANI: Thank you. I like to say that my visual art intensifies the physical expressiveness of my literary endeavors, and the literary expands and makes more accessible different contemplative dimensions of the visual. I believe that’s most apparent when visitors to the art product pages on my Pixels.com and Fine Art America profiles read the descriptions posted with artwork. But for me, both are forms of communication with the world, so some of the art descriptions are more like stories and have been repurposed as blogs.

The “unique aspects of each medium” come into play when creating the works as well as when engaging them. My art and photography are often the results of attempts to document natural or historical phenomena. Examples of that are The Savannah River Bridge the Morning After Hurricane Matthew and different abstract digital paintings I’ve done on gun violence, racism, and the pandemic in America. In fact, I recently completed a book of art and texts, called Black and Blue Letters from the Red Zone, dealing with these issues and hope to see it published in the not-too-distant future. It’s basically the illustrated edition of These Black and Blue Red Zone Days with additional texts by guest authors.

10.

AILC 444: Your skills as a storyteller are showcased in the essay collection The American Poet Who Went Again as well as the novel Songs from the Black Skylark zPed Music Player. Could you discuss how your narrative style has evolved over the years?

ABERJHANI: American Poet was written from 1997 to 2008 and is a collection of essays which combine memoir with literary journalism. Within that same decade-long time-frame, I wrote poetry that I performed for spoken word open mics, a lot of journalism pieces, and completed work on Encyclopedia of the HR as well as Wisdom. I’m going to say that insofar as the writing in American Poet goes, the style developed from a fusion of everything else I was doing and resulted in an individual form of literary journalism and documentation. As personal as some of the essays are, my goals was to share them as reports on our evolving times.

In observations of Suicide Prevention Week The Kindle eBook Edition of Songs from the Black Skylark zPed Music Player will be available as a FREE DOWNLOAD from September 9 to 12, 2023.

When it came to Songs from the Black Skylark zPed Music Player, which was first published in 2006 as Christmas When Music Almost Killed the World, I gave myself permission to write without the sculpted restrictions required by the essay form. I wanted the novel to be a dance with language while also confronting serious social issues like suicide, recovery from childhood trauma, climate change, and creative license balanced with individual responsibility and accountability. I wanted the book to literally sing, so made song lyrics an integral part of the narrative. The experience of writing the novel was the exact opposite of what I had done previously when writing nonfiction. Working on it helped relieve the stress that came with living in the past to recover the stories of Harlem Renaissance heroes and sheroes, and from confronting the social tensions that followed September 11 in this century.

11.

AILC 444: Your collection of memoir essays, Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah, provides insights into personal experiences blended with journalistic observations of environmental and racial issues. How do autobiographical elements influence your creative process, and do they contribute to a deeper connection with your audience?

ABERJHANI: Coming from a #BIPOC community in Savannah, Georgia, which is also the oldest Black community in the state, autobiographical elements tend to infuse my creative process with depths of emotion and intentional commitment which otherwise might not exist. I believe they do strengthen connections with audiences because a lot of readers can relate to many of those factors. For starters, Savannah itself is a city which has played some keys roles in the history of the United States, such as being one of the original 13 colonies, and it continues to be strategic in the present as the location of a major seaport and a major hub of the modern film industry. It is also home to the historic HBCU Savannah State University, which I attended for a time years ago as an Upward Bound student. On a more personal level, I grew up in a family steeped in the same kind of cultural values and customs which have influenced different forms of cooking, music, spirituality, and social trends all over the world, and which makes it easier for many to feel a strong connection to much of what I write.

12.

AILC 444: As we conclude, could you share a glimpse into your upcoming projects and how they align with your overarching artistic and advocacy goals?

ABERJHANI: Earlier this year, I participated in a video project in support of preserving Georgia’s 100 miles of coastline along the Atlantic. My contributions to the project involved urging all Georgians to remain mindful of the need for corrective action regarding renaming the Eugene Talmadge Memorial Bridge. Additional footage dealt with the erasure of homes and entire neighborhoods, along with the stories that go with them, where historically influential BIPOC Savannahians were born or grew up.

Something I’m holding myself accountable for in regard to preventing such erasure is a music heritage book and documentary project I started during the pandemic with legendary radio programmer Ike Carter of WHCJ Radio at Savannah State University. Carter is something of a cultural arts historian who has some exceptional insights into what it meant to grow up in Savannah during some very interesting Jim Crow times and then moving beyond that to become a champion of what he prefers to call African-American Classical Music. Working with him to compose just the narrative of his life, legacy, and the times that shaped them could become the most impactful work I’ve done since Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance. More important than anything else is the potential the musical heritage project holds for helping all of us adapt to the many changes we’re having such hard times with right now, especially in the areas of evolving cultural demographics and efforts to refine practices of democracy in countries around the world.

AILC 444:Thank you for taking the time to share your insights and experiences with us, Aberjhani.

ABERJHANI: This was fun. I look forward to doing it again sometime.

By AILC Contributor 444 & Aberjhani
Presented in partnership with AI Literary Chat Salon

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The Years 2022 and 2023 (part 1 of 2): Looking Back

12/26/2022

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The beginnings of the last few years––“arguably,” as some like to say––have presented humanity with more reasons to dread flipping the calendar from December to January that to celebrate it. But some of us insist on excavating beauty out of horror and looking forward with measures of hopefulness: regardless of reasons to do otherwise.

Prior to the beginning of Russia’s war in Ukraine back in February, the year 2022 had already started on a somber personal note due to the death of fellow author Robert T.S. Mickles, Sr., on December 31, 2021. While mourning his death, I celebrated Mickles’ life and legacy online at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated intentions to hang around much longer than anybody wanted. I then moved cautiously forward into the year addressing the following:

After posting the above stories and essays, I was all set to push forward on the completion of the previously-announced letters, poetry, and art book project. Then a certain Russian oligarch, not necessarily addressing me directly, said not so fast. The barrage of images showing cities in Ukraine tumbling like dominoes, children and elderly people lying dead in the streets or struggling to escape the relentless unprovoked chaos, and a future Time Magazine Person of the Year requesting assistance from world leaders, made it impossible to ignore what many nations viewed as a direct attack on democracy.

("Ukraine Russia & The Art of Being Human" artwork by Aberjhani originally published in 2022 with article on LinkedIn.)

Some have actually criticized the outpouring of support for Ukraine, measured in billions of dollars and public expressions of solidarity, since the war’s beginning. They point out what they perceive of as a disproportionate response to violent clashes in other non-European countries.

These other equally abhorrent conflicts were already taking place in the world. They remain major factors in numerous international leaders and everyday world citizens belief that Russia’s brutal aggressiveness cannot stand unanswered. Responding to the threat of a potential world war 3 is something most have never anticipated in our age of technical wonders but respond we did:

Why Genocide in Ukraine Matters to A Black Poet in America (Pt. 2 of 2)

In addition, dominating international political discourses as it did, there was no way to keep the war out of the Conversations with the World series here at Bright Skylark. Given that the pens of poets and brushes of artists have long been employed to make sense of human beings’ tendency to inflict destruction upon each other and planet Earth, it would have been irresponsible not to address Russia’s war in Ukraine on multiple platforms throughout 2022. The global ripple effects of the war have generally been unavoidable: the crippling inflation, food and energy insecurity, and increased ecological instability.

Conversations with the World 110: Some 2022 Thoughts on Love and War

There was no official war declared in America against Jews, Asians, Muslims, or African Americans. Yet hate crimes against them rose to some of the highest levels in years.

Confirmations of Beauty and Justice

In the midst of all the international and domestic rage, certain achievements have helped us to maintain faith in the better qualities of our collective characters. The breath-taking photos of double-deep space captured by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, with its remarkable images of barely-formed galaxies and developing stars, reminded everybody just how much bigger existence is than a single individual, nation, planet, or even universe.

Closer to the literary values promoted on this website: In nods to the often overlooked contributions of African-American women to their homeland, the late memoirist-poet-educator-activist Maya Angelou became the first Black woman to be featured on a U.S. quarter. Ketanji Brown Jackson stepped into history by becoming the first Black woman appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Moreover: an 18-year-old named Jaylen Smith became the youngest Black man in American history ever elected mayor when he won his bid for the position in Earle, Arkansas. And Representative Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) became the first African-American voted to lead the House Democratic Caucus.

Defying the COVID Pandemic Lockdown Blues

The “Hidden Histories” Savannah authors and books collage by Hannah Brawley can be found on the Georgia Historical Society's website at https://georgiahistory.com/marker-monday-hidden-histories-2/. Located at top center of the collage is ELEMENTAL, the Power of Illuminated Love by Aberjhani and Luther E. Vann. Also included are works by authors: James Alan McPherson, Conrad Aiken, Johnny Mercer, Jack Leigh, Mrs. Wilkes, Murray Silver, Flannery O'Connor, and John Berendt.

I’m also glad to note advancements on different fronts here at Bright Skylark. Back in March, I had the honor of participating in a very successful Authors Day event. It was held in historic Lafayette Square, in downtown Savannah, Georgia, just across the street from iconic author Flannery O’Connor’s Childhood Home and the world-famous Cathedral Basilica of St. John the Baptist. This was my first such outing since the pandemic hit in 2020 and turned me into a semi-comfortable recluse. The Authors Day event made it possible for me to finally make up for all the Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind launch presentations I’d had to cancel due to COVID-19 surges.

In addition, later in the year, the long-awaited 2022 Flannery O’Connor Review spotlighting my artwork and poetry was published. Some celebrated the rarity of such an occurrence while others quietly dismissed it. For this author-artist, it helped bring some much-needed balance to public discourses on racial issues attached to O’Connor’s work and life. It also alerted readers to recently completed art, letters, and poetry book.

Later, in the summer, I joined fellow authors George Dawes Green, writer-poet Jon Goode, and Edgar Oliver on stage as a guest “raconteur” for a celebration of The Moth organization’s 20th anniversary and the release of Green’s novel: Kingdoms of Savannah. (Still need to carve out time to write my essay on KINGDOMS.) The sold-out Moth performance was enough to convince me to also participate in the Art on Bull Street fundraiser in October. Sadly, while I was invited to participate in The Oxford Union’s 2022 International Poetry Symposium on November 28, several developments prevented me from making the trip across the Atlantic Ocean for that event.

Which brings me to plans and works in progress for the year 2023.

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NEXT: The Years 2022 and 2023 (part 2): Looking Ahead

Aberjhani (Author-Poet-Artist)
Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
Creator of Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

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Laureates and visionaries: Chronicling legacies of black artists in Savannah (part 2/3)

5/6/2022

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"Luther and the Coming of Light No. 2" digital art by Aberjhani)

In his introduction to section two of Luther E. Vann’s Elemental the Power of Illuminated Love, contributing writer Bill Dawers makes this statement:

“Even those already familiar with Luther’s work are likely to find the images collected here startling. (Doubly startling, I imagine, since so many of the works are still in the collection or the artist.) Certain thematic and structural elements are visible across the decades––the presence of the spirits, the grids, the convergence of multiple realities, the exploration of human interaction in public spaces.”

(To read part 1 of this article please click here.)

In the decades following his move back to Georgia, the month of May became one in which Vann’s life and career saw numerous milestones. It was May 1991, and again in 1994, that the city of Savannah’s Beach Institute hosted critically acclaimed exhibits by him. Although the historic Elemental show opened at the Jepson Center for the Arts in April 2008, the book launch occurred May 29. Moreover, the legendary Barn Studio and Gallery show took place May 24, 2014. It would seem appropriate enough, then, to consider at this time the implications of the work that remains.

Visionary Artists and Thinkers

The synthesis of Vann’s cultural, spiritual, and philosophical perspectives within his paintings and sculpture––what Dawers referred to as certain thematic and structural elements–– make him something of an anomaly in African-American art. He eschewed what could have been, for him, the easier path of producing––or, more accurately, re-producing–– popular images cast in a Southern motif.

He chose instead to make visual statements aligned with the observations of visionary artists and thinkers with whom he felt a kind of metaphysical kinship. Influences like Italy’s 15th-century Renaissance genius Leonardo da Vinci, Spain’s 16th-century Renaissance painter El Greco, and African America’s 20th-century Harlem Renaissance talent Beauford Delaney probably would not surprise many people. Certain others might.

Doris Lessing and Vann's Universe That is Actually a Multiverse

British author Doris Lessing’s novel, The Golden Notebook, was one of Vann’s favorite reads. He easily related to what it portrayed about a creative individual’s attempt to bring intellectual order to the fragmented landscape of her inner being by working with a collection of four notebooks to produce one definitive Golden Notebook. Those who might question such a link between Nobel Prize for Literature winner Lessing and Georgia Arts Festival winner Vann need only do two things: first read The Golden Notebook, and then study different images in Elemental, the Power of Illuminated Love.

Just as Lessing’s character Anna Wulf drew on different aspects of her imploding biography to compose a more wholistic representation of herself, Vann fused personal spiritual meditations with more objective public observations to paint his evolving theories on humanity as “One.” This oneness was organic in the sense that our physical activities inevitably impact each other’s lives and our spiritual dispositions, or the lack of such, color the nature of our relationships.

The concept of conscious unity is important to the artist because these intertwining dynamics (what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., called “an inescapable network of mutuality”) occur quite paradoxically within a universe that is actually a multiverse. While Doris Lessing’s novel may be described as an innovative work of feminist fiction, it contains numerous passages descriptive of experiences in Vann’s life and the place art occupied within it. Moreover, in Lessing’s introduction to the 1971 edition of the novel, she discusses how opposing characters reconcile their different perspectives:

“…They have also reflected each other, been aspects of each other, given birth to each other’s thoughts and behavior––are each other, form wholes. In the inner Golden Notebook, things have come together, the divisions have broken down, there is formlessness with the end of fragmentation––the triumph of the second theme, which is that of unity...”

Lessing’s aesthetic declaration could be applied to many of Vann’s masterful works, such as “The Widow Remembers” or “For the Love of the Poet,” and prompt the viewer to discover how dominant and sub-narratives flow in and out of each other on their way toward wholeness. The freedom allowed by such a strategy could produce what Lessing referred to as “delicious intoxication” leading to “the recklessness of infinite possibility.”

For Luther E. Vann, Infinite possibility meant painting outside the lines of aesthetic and cultural assumptions. Even as he relished celebrating his adored African-American community on Millen Street in West Savannah, when it came to making some of his more profound statements either on canvas or off it, he reached so far beyond his earthbound surroundings that commentators often referred to him as a visionary.

Carl Jung and More Benevolent Consciousness

From the Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung’s mapping of the human psyche the artist extracted an operational template which influenced the language he committed to paintings. You could say it helped him both to literally paint his place in the world at a given time, and to shape the purposes that defined his life as they unfolded throughout adulthood.

Jung’s teachings allowed him to view and embrace human beings beyond categories defined by racial, political, or social constructions. In Vann’s multiverse, whether lost in shadows or made radiant by grace, all living souls are on a mission to manifest and serve a self-contained, higher, and more benevolent, consciousness.

NEXT: The jazz factor: Chronicling legacies of black artists in Savannah (part 3/3)

By Aberjhani
Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
Co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Creator of Authentic Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

More from Aberjhani on Cultural Heritage and Erasures of History

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History and Erasure: Chronicling Legacies of Black Artists in Savannah (Pt. 1 of 3)

5/4/2022

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"Luther and the Coming of Light" digital art by Aberjhani C2022)

Introduction

.he last thing I expected to find myself writing about as we moved deeper into the year 2022 was a 3-way war between Russia, Ukraine, and professed defenders of democracy around the world. But write about it I have on the LinkedIn website as well as here at Bright Skylark. Hopefully, the articles have made it clear one of my primary concerns regarding the war has been the brutal erasure of history and culture as well as that of human lives.

The Chronicling Legacies of Black Artists in Savannah series was first published in my AXS cultural arts column as an expression of that same concern. It is reposted at this time both to encourage unwavering support in their struggle for what Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called “the right to live,” and, in observation of the 14th anniversary of the publication of ELEMENTAL, the Power of Illuminated Love:

Contributors to Unique Traditions

Upon his passing on April 6, 2016, Luther E. Vann joined an illustrious group of brilliant contemporary African-American creative artists who, prior to their transitions, produced numerous celebrated works which have added tremendously to Savannah’s (Georgia, USA) reputation and value as a favorite travel destination for lovers of the cultural arts.

Vann (b. 1937) and Allen Fireall (1954-2014) bestowed upon the city a legacy of fine visual art that documented daily life in different communities throughout the Low Country in Georgia and South Carolina. Like artist William M. Pleasant Jr. (1928-1997) before them, they also contributed greatly to the unique traditions of Gullah art.

(Digital portrait of late Savannah Gullah artist Allen Fireall by Aberjhani)

In many cases, particularly where Fireall is concerned, their painted canvases depict scenes representative of historic cultural activities rarely practiced as part of everyday living in contemporary times. Making nets and sewing quilts by hand, for example, are more likely to be done for creative enjoyment [or to be sold as cultural artefacts] rather than, as they once were, out of simple necessity.

Similarly, men and women carrying bushels of crabs atop their heads, or gathering in parks or alongside roads to wait for job assignments are seen even less rarely (if ever). Nor are you as likely while driving or walking down a lane in the American South to see women in adjoining back yards laughing and talking as they hang freshly-washed laundry out to dry.

Restoring Erased History

The late world-renowned Rev. Dr. Ja A. Jahannes (1942 -2015) was something of a polymath whose exceptional talents included writing plays, poems, novels, and children’s books–– as well as publishing anthologies, producing fine-art photography, composing music, teaching, and delivering inspired sermons. Through his multiple positions as an educator at the HBCU Savannah State University, a minister at Savannah’s now 105-year-old Abyssinia Baptist Church, and a public intellectual, Jahannes empowered many others to pick up where he would leave off.

The names presented here are not done so to invite nostalgic reveries, though studied reflections are certainly appropriate for people familiar with them. They are offered (and a number of others could easily be included) to help prevent their consignment to discarded files marked “erased history, or being deleted, via guerrilla decontextualization by omission, from the more “official” channels of documented acknowledgements.

Whether using the term “erasure of history” or “history of erasure” the final definition points to the same legacy-destroying result: the removal of consequential names and events from their authentic historic context and thus from public awareness. An erasure of history indicates the active or conscious deletion of a subject from various official records. Histories of erasure, as it were, possess the paradoxical distinction of referring to accumulated instances of eradication. The first describes the act of omitting relevant events or biographies. The second describes accounts of such actions.

The late painter William M. Pleasant Jr. surrounded by some of his celebrated works.

Guerrilla decontextualization by omission tends to occur frequently when it comes to African-American cultural arts workers who have not been embraced by certain institutions. Whatever prominence they command stems more from the direct support of, and engagement with, appreciative audiences than from disinterested commercial outlets. Some, such as William M. Pleasant Jr., had the good fortune to produce heirs, like Jalal Pleasant, who also became accomplished artists and have labored to ensure their parent’s work is properly noted.

The Example of Luther E. Vann

All of the people mentioned here have won some level of recognition in their own right. Vann earned his place beside the luminous talents he has joined through a lifetime of dedication to both the spirit and the forms of his craft. It was that dauntless commitment which prompted organizations like the Telfair Museum Friends of African-American Art to back the publication of the ekphratic book, Elemental the Power of Illuminated Love, in honor of his individual genius.

NEXT: Laureates and visionaries: Chronicling legacies of black artists in Savannah (part 2/3)

Aberjhani
Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
Co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Creator of Authentic Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

More from Aberjhani on Cultural Preservation and Erasures of History

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A Hidden American Treasure Comes to Revelatory Light (part 1 of 3): Geography & History

9/9/2019

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Title-art graphic featuring artist Suzanne Jackson in conversation on stage at the Telfair Museums' Jepson Center for the Arts. (Art graphic by Aberjhani)

Anyone on June 27, 2019, attending the opening of the Suzanne Jackson Five Decades retrospective at the Telfair Museums' Jepson Center for the Arts in Savannah, Georgia (USA), or involved in its production prior to that historic evening, could tell something exceptional was happening. In addition to the mesmerizing kind of vibrant textiles and stunning canvases one might expect to discover at such an opening for a contemporary artist, there were seven vitrines (display cases) filled with family photographs, vintage 1960s flyers advertising a "Revolutionary Art Exhibit," sketchbooks, program notes, letters, photographs, and other revealing archival materials from different chapters of Jackson's, and America's, life stories.

The items made available went beyond career highlights to illuminating an artist's considerable immersion in a significant historical moment: the 1960s-1970s Black Arts Movement as it rooted and flowered in Los Angeles and San Francisco, California. For those observers of African-American history who contend America's West Coast contributed much less to the Harlem Renaissance than other regions because it lacked, during the 1920s-1940s, a heavy representation of the traditions and institutions then associated with Black culture in the South, the 1960s may be considered the bridge which connected history and geography.

Ideas of how and why that might be the case, within the context of Five Decades, first struck me as apparent while listening to the on-stage conversation between Jackson, fellow artist Alonzo Davis, and Telfair Museums curator Rachel Reese. Jackson's and Davis's stories of establishing art galleries in downtown Los Angeles, building a sustainable cultural arts community, and balancing commitments to careers and political struggle with commitments to family life were not completely unlike what we find in the life stories of East Coast predecessors like Lois Mailou Jones and Augusta Fells Savage.

This observation does not contradict the contexts of ecowomanism and black feminist ethics contexts in which the brilliant essays by Reese, julia elizabeth neal, Melanee C. Harvey, and Tiffany E. Barber place Jackson's work in the forthcoming Five Decades catalog. It simply acknowledges one more powerful aspect of the place she now occupies as an influential contemporary artist of historical importance. In her foreword to the catalog, artist Betye Saar alludes to the significance of Jackson's role as someone whose art and advocacy have bridged gaps:

"In the 1960s, black artists in Los Angeles were struggling to be recognized. Some public venues had integrated exhibitions, but generally speaking black artists were ignored... Suzanne made a concrete imprint when she opened Gallery 32 on Lafayette Park Place..." (Appropriately enough, work by the 93-year-old Saar herself is currently undergoing a kind of revival with forthcoming solo shows at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.)

After Jackson's, Davis's, and Reese's dynamic conversation, the feeling when walking among the dozens of artworks hung with dazzling appeal in the Steward North and Kane Galleries, absorbing the full impact of the actual exhibit, was like glimpsing a long-hidden priceless American treasure. Those who have yet to treat themselves to the experience still have until October 13, 2019, to do so at the Jepson. Just as importantly, the exhibition catalog is due out September 25 and orders for it are being accepted now.

Continental Crossings & Fortuitous Connections

Artist Suzanne Jackson (right) speaking with librarian Mark Darby (left) at historic 2004 "Harlem Renaissance in Savannah" book signing and lecture presented by Aberjhani (center) at the Carnegie Branch Library in Savannah, Georgia (USA). (Photograph Bright Skylark Literary Productions Collection)

My journey toward the almost magical evening of June 27 actually began on August 28, 2004, when Ms. Jackson attended my "Harlem Renaissance in Savannah" lecture and book signing at the Carnegie Branch Library in Savannah. Since relocating to the city eight years earlier, she had been surprised to discover the African-American cultural arts scene was as vibrant as it was and included someone who had co-authored (with the late Sandra L. West) the groundbreaking Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance.

I was surprised and impressed to learn she had lived on the West Coast--just as I had in San Francisco--and now taught at the Savannah College of Art & Design (SCAD). If I'd had the slightest prophetic clue of the visual marvels that would be revealed 15 years later, I would have been flat-out amazed.

Mounted wall screen showing video images from life and career of artist and educator Suzanne Jackson. The video was part of the opening for Jackson's Five Decades Retrospective at the Telfair Museums Jepson Center for the Art in Savannah, Georgia, on June 27, 2019. (Bright Skylark Literary Productions photograph by Aberjhani ©2019)

That early meeting was genuinely fortuitous because in those days my responsibilities as a caregiver had already started to limit participation in public events. I nevertheless did make it out occasionally and during the years which followed the lecture our paths crossed enough for an acquaintance to become a friendship. As it turned out, we had more than the cultural arts and California in common. We had both also spent time in Fairbanks, Alaska--she as a child growing up there and me some years later as a U.S. military journalist.

We came to know many of the same creatives and shared enthusiasm over their triumphs. Grief, too, demanded acknowledgement when experiencing the loss of such individuals as painter Allen M. Fireall (1954-2014), his fellow artist and friend Luther E. Vann (1937-2016), and author-educator Ja A. Jahannes (1942-2015). More personal, more blood-connected losses inserted themselves into the stories of our individual lives as well, both stalling and fueling painted poems and poemized visions that would manifest in coming years.

NEXT: A Hidden American Treasure Comes to Revelatory Light (part 2): Jazz, Art, & Partying

Aberjhani
author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
and Songs from the Black Skylark zPed Music Player

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AI Flips the Interview Script with 5 More Questions for 1 Author

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By AILC Contributor 444 & Aberjhani
Presented in partnership with AI Literary Chat Salon

Contact Author-Artist Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

The Years 2022 and 2023 (part 1 of 2): Looking Back

Confirmations of Beauty and Justice

Defying the COVID Pandemic Lockdown Blues

Aberjhani (Author-Poet-Artist)
Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
Creator of Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

Contact Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Laureates and visionaries: Chronicling legacies of black artists in Savannah (part 2/3)

Visionary Artists and Thinkers

Doris Lessing and Vann's Universe That is Actually a Multiverse

Carl Jung and More Benevolent Consciousness

By Aberjhani
Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
Co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Creator of Authentic Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

More from Aberjhani on Cultural Heritage and Erasures of History

Contact Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

History and Erasure: Chronicling Legacies of Black Artists in Savannah (Pt. 1 of 3)

Introduction

Contributors to Unique Traditions

Restoring Erased History

The Example of Luther E. Vann

Aberjhani
Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
Co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Creator of Authentic Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

Contact Author-Artist Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

A Hidden American Treasure Comes to Revelatory Light (part 1 of 3): Geography & History

Continental Crossings & Fortuitous Connections

Contact the Author

Aberjhani

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Categories

AI Flips the Interview Script with 5 More Questions for 1 Author

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

By AILC Contributor 444 & Aberjhani Presented in partnership with AI Literary Chat Salon

Contact Author-Artist Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

The Years 2022 and 2023 (part 1 of 2): Looking Back

Confirmations of Beauty and Justice

Defying the COVID Pandemic Lockdown Blues

Aberjhani (Author-Poet-Artist)Author of Dreams of the Immortal City SavannahCreator of Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

Contact Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Laureates and visionaries: Chronicling legacies of black artists in Savannah (part 2/3)

​Visionary Artists and Thinkers

Doris Lessing and Vann's Universe That is Actually a Multiverse

Carl Jung and More Benevolent Consciousness

By AberjhaniAuthor of Dreams of the Immortal City SavannahCo-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem RenaissanceCreator of Authentic Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

More from Aberjhani on Cultural Heritage and Erasures of History

Contact Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

History and Erasure: Chronicling Legacies of Black Artists in Savannah (Pt. 1 of 3)

​Introduction

​Contributors to Unique Traditions

Restoring Erased History

The Example of Luther E. Vann

AberjhaniAuthor of Dreams of the Immortal City SavannahCo-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem RenaissanceCreator of Authentic Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

Contact Author-Artist Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

A Hidden American Treasure Comes to Revelatory Light (part 1 of 3): Geography & History

Continental Crossings & Fortuitous Connections

Contact the Author

Aberjhani

Archives

Categories

By AILC Contributor 444 & Aberjhani
Presented in partnership with AI Literary Chat Salon

Aberjhani (Author-Poet-Artist)
Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
Creator of Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

Visionary Artists and Thinkers

By Aberjhani
Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
Co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Creator of Authentic Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

Introduction

Contributors to Unique Traditions

Aberjhani
Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
Co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Creator of Authentic Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle