Carrollwood exhibit to highlight Black artists

CARROLLWOOD — The Carrollwood Cultural Center is celebrating Black art and is currently accepting submissions for its Black Art Matters exhibit opening in late March.

The exhibit will run from March 27 through April 24 and an art reception is scheduled for Friday, April 7 from 5:30-7:30 p.m. at the Cultural Center, 4537 Lowell Road, Tampa. The call for entries is still open and the deadline is set for March 11.

“This is the third year we’ve had the Black Art Matters exhibit,” said Michele Stone, curator at Carrollwood Cultural Center. “We want to create more awareness around the diversity of Black art and how it comes in so many different spectrums, from realism to abstract to even having one artist who creates things based on science.”

In November 2020, Stone said she was inspired to highlight Black artists for Black History Month, so she reached out to several of her African American artists and devised a roundtable discussion. It started with an idea, Stone said, but the problem was she didn’t know the best way to go about it and depict Black art in a way that would do it justice and would provide the best impact.

The artists helped to create the name of the show, Black Art Matters, and to come up with a mission statement for it, which reads:

“This art exhibit is about celebrating the peaks and valleys of ALL Black lives in the past, the present and the possibilities of the future. Art that explores the struggle, tears, laughter, frustration, and hope. Art that depicts the unwavering faith, power and character, the endurance and fearlessness experienced generation upon generation. Art that conveys depth, provokes discussion and even makes people uncomfortable. Regardless, if it’s portraying the Harlem Renaissance, dismantling the stigma in today’s workplace or even how to safely raise a Black child in today’s society. We want to convey as much of it as we can, provided there is no blatant and overt violence.”