If you’ve been to the City Gallery at Waterfront Park lately, you may have seen Amiri Geuka Farris’ work — he’s one of three African-American artists currently featured in the exhibit Spirit and Memory: Contemporary Expressions of Cultural Heritage, curated by artist and collector Jonathan Green. In fact, you may also have seen Farris’ art in the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, which has also exhibited his work. But that’s a story for another blog post.
Farris, whose art celebrates the Gullah-Geechee culture and heritage, won the North Charleston Arts Festival’s Design Competition for Gullah Islander Toss, a mixed-media piece that depicts a fisherman gracefully throwing a cast net. Along with several of Farris’ other pieces, Gullah Islander Toss will be on display at the North Charleston City Gallery throughout the month of May. Guests at the festival, which runs May 2-10, will also be able to buy T-shirts and posters featuring the winning design.
Farris is extremely active in the Sea Island-Beaufort area arts community — he teaches fine arts at the University of South Carolina-Beaufort, is the current artist-in-residence at Hilton Head’s Gullah Museum, and was named the 2008 Artist of the Year by the Penn Center at St. Helena Island.
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