![]() ![]() Bright and energetic, she's been a part of it all her adults life, more than 20 years, and admits the need to put it into younger hands. "We're trying to find another executive director," el-Amin said. "We also have two lots next to Sankofa that we want to turn it into a community marketplace," she said. She hopes to see customers come from nearby University Health, as well as from the crime lab when it opens. People were breaking in, breaking windows, urinating on the sidewalk. "I want to let Pamoja take over my Sweet Lucinda's, where we will be teaching cooking classes, organic and vegan," el-Amin said. Joined to Pamoja is a cafe el-Amin has been trying to open for more than a decade, Sweet Lucinda's, and a jewelry outlet. Hardy just opened a show there, one that will run through the end of February. Other well-known artists, including Ron Hardy, also work with Pamoja. "In addition to the Tuesday Morning events we've had several functions there, class reunions and stuff like that."Ĭurrent artists now working with, teaching or displaying works at Pamoja include Jerry Davenport and veteran/pioneer member Nan White. Pamoja is "a phenomenal place, because Sister El-Amin and her husband took a Fred Sanford-type dilapidated structure with junk and transformed it into this wonderful facility that has now helped enhance property values and brought cultural awareness to the area," says Craig Lee, who with Lloyd Thompson helps put on the popular Tuesday Morning Breakfast Group sessions at Pamoja. It's now in the planning and fundraising stage, but if Pamoja's current site is any indication the Anna Street site should do Allendale proud, the group's supporters say. "We also will have a community garden there and a mural fence, where we will put panels where artists can come and do murals," she said.Ĭompletion is way off, she said. It also will house a small arts library, with a core of 2,000 books donated to Pamoja, she said. It will serve as an artists residence, an art studio, our executive headquarters and as a cultural research center." We're trying to show the neighborhood what can be done. "We plan to restore this house, using all 'green' materials and all 'green' contractors. Washington High School, that we're turning into a green initiative," says el-Amin, who came to Shreveport from the West Coast to care for an ailing parent and stayed. "We have this house over on Anna Street, behind Booker T. In 1974 the loose-knit group reorganized as the Pamoja Art Society, gaining a charter in 1977 and in 1990 moving from Sprague Street to the current 3806 Linwood Avenue address. and Roosevelt Daniels leagued with their art students and a handful of fellow professional artists to display works at the corner of Sprague and Douglas streets in the Allendale-Ledbetter Heights district. Pamoja - a Swahili word that means "coming together" – started in the 1960s when artists Henry Price, Jessie Pitts Jr. The nonprofit society, which now operates out of a renovated strip mall on Linwood Avenue just south of Tulane Street, catty-cornered between Forest Park Cemetery to the east and the rapidly rising Northwest Louisiana Regional Crime Lab to the north, plans to have an Allendale presence soon, says its executive director, Jameelah el-Amin. The Pamoja Art Society, at well over 40 years old Shreveport's senior black cultural arts entity, plans to have a growth spurt like a teenager soon, at a time when most folks are eying retirement. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |