AFRICAN AMERICAN ATELIER, INC.

My design includes the great Dr. Alma Adams, one of the founders of the African American Atelier in 1990. Dr. Alma Adams’ vision to create an art gallery that successfully exhibited and promoted African American art influenced my decision to make her the main focus of this design. Without her, this organization would not exist. I also included the four words, expressive, movement, awareness, enlightening to seize the soul of the organization.The inclusion of the sun, grass, and tree serves to enhance the narrative, drawing parallels between natural growth and the flourishing of African American culture under the nurturing guidance of the Atelier. Ultimately, the goal of this art piece is to celebrate the legacy of Dr. Alma Adams and the African American Atelier while embodying the essence of expressive art, historical awareness, enlightenment, and the continuous movement towards progress.

This is my Radial Design version of the African American Atelier logo, the background of the circle has African print design typically used in various cloths, print and clothing designs in African and African American designs. Inside where the orange color is, is another representation of Africa it self, the two characters male and female the African American themselves (Awareness, Authenticity) and the Sun representing energy (Enlightenment) and the water in the middle Life (Expression)!! I wanted to uses shades of brown as the base color of the logo because there is in fact many shades of people.

The African-American Atelier's mission of awareness, authenticity, expression, and enlightenment synthesizes Black culture in various ways and to me, is synonymous with Community, Heritage, and Resilience. Providing a place for the local Black community to thrive creatively is a cornerstone of culture formation. Acknowledging past generations and our heritage in the present day promotes authenticity through artistic expression. The resilience of Black peoples is also a key component of our striving for enlightenment, seen especially through the arts. The digital collage I created has the sky between day and night as line drawings of groups of people walk across a hilled landscape. A rustic frame, like torn paper, pulls the image into focus. I wanted the image to be organically framed and chose the textured edges to remind the viewer of faded paper from an old book speaking to our heritage and the lens through which we see our past, present, and future. Lined drawings form the basis of a community maneuvering across the landscape, effortlessly covering the hills and valleys. The landscape filling in the myriad skin tones of those in the diaspora. The sky is at an inflection point, either night becoming day or day becoming night serving as a liminal moment which speaks to a sense of heritage and cultural resilience as a sheltering sky. And that cultural resilience is seen in the continued existence of the community. The name, “African American Atelier Inc” breaks the frame and presents the story beyond it.