5th Annual Harlem Fine Arts Show in Chicago

artwork

The Harlem Fine Arts Show continues with its 5th Year Anniversary nationwide tour in Chicago. HFAS 2014 is one of the largest and most prestigious collections of works featuring African-American emerging and established artists from around the world. The Chicago show will include many artists from around the world. The show opens on Thursday night with a fundraiser and exhibit sale. Friday is Youth Empowerment Day and Saturday features an art lecture series. Sunday concludes the festival with the exhibit and sale of the featured artists’ works. Featured artists include:

Louise Cutler:  Louise Cutler is a Fort Collins based Creationist, artist, writer and sculptor.  Her work is motivated by her desire to create beauty that cultivates truth, peace and tranquility. Ms Cutler creates in acrylic, metal leaf, foundn objetcs and bronze.  Her eclectic blend of cultures keeps her work fresh and comprehensive. Ms Cutler’s was just recently selected as one of Art Business News Top Emerging Artists of 2014. Her work will be featured in the fall 2014 issue.  March 2014 she took home the coveted 2013, SOLO artist of the year award at the New York Artexpo.  Ms Cutler believes that in order to understand our humanity we must first look outside of self and into the the eyes and struggles of others, only then will we find our true purpose.

Soraya Sheppard: Color Me Africa is a non-profit founded by Soraya Sheppard with the goal to sponsor, celebrate and honor talented African artists. Leaving her home in South Africa to flee the apartheid, Soraya immigrated to the United States. Twenty-five years later, she decided it was time to face her past and returned to the new South Africa.  When visiting an art dealer, Soraya came across a treasure trove of incredible art from the African diaspora. The art reminded her that she wasn’t the only one who struggled during those hard times. She needed to show the rest of the world what these talented artists wanted so passionately to share.  Color Me Africa aims to provide talented African artists with an opportunity to showcase their work at exhibitions across the world, without the constant threat of exploitation by unscrupulous art dealers.

Frank Frazier: Frank Frazier was born in Harlem and left home at age 16 to pursue his artistic career; but this effort was interrupted by service in the Vietnam War. In 1971, while in a Veterans Hospital for more than a year recovering from war injuries, Frazier began his first professional artistic effort ­– a series of oil paintings based on his war experiences. This project helped him recover from his traumatic experience, but it also convinced Frazier that he needed to work with faster media.  As a result, he switched from oil painting to pen-and-ink, acrylics and watercolors. Frazier is perhaps best known for his Tribal Series, in which he uses bright colors and geometric figures to express his Pan-African “community-of-family” philosophy. In order to enhance his artistic vision, Frazier has made several trips to Africa. Working with the daughter of South African Bishop Desmond Tutu, Frazier produced the poster, “Apartheid,” to support the Bishop Tutu Southern African Refugee Scholarship Fund.

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