Exhibit Dates: February 14th through April 22, 2023

Gallery Hours: March 25th, 1-3pm | April 1st, 1-2pm | April 8th, 12-2pm | April 15th, 12-2pm

Closing Reception: Saturday, April 22, 2023, 1-3pm

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K Gallery presents the Art Of The African Diaspora, a satellite exhibition in conjunction with Richmond Art Center.

The exhibit highlights the rich cultural heritage of six Bay Area artists: Anna W. Edwards, Valerie Brown-Troutt, Carla Golder, Yolanda Cotton Turner, Xan Blood Walker and Zoë Boston, showcasing a diverse collection of painting, photography, mixed media, and collage.

The artists explore themes of identity, history, community, and the African Diaspora’s global impact, providing the viewer an opportunity for a deeper understanding and appreciation of the art and culture of the African Diaspora in the Bay Area.

Artist Bios

Anna Edwards is in her 30th year of creating art in the Bay Area. On her artistic journey she has had the opportunity of crossing paths with many talented, amazing students, teachers, incredible artists, curators, and gallerists who have contributed to her growth. She is grateful for their support, critique, and encouragement.
Returning to her love of cities, she has always chosen the urban landscape as the inspiration for, and focus of, her art. She started traveling with her grandmother very early in her life, around New York City, Buffalo, Richmond, Norfolk, Virginia and other cities around the country and across the Atlantic.

When she started painting there was a constant, consistent intention that seemed to emerge in her work. She realized that it was the sense of adventure she felt when encountering a city for the first time or the fortieth time. She still feels this adventure. She has attempted to express the harmony, beauty, and tranquility, as well as the energy, pathos, and tension present, to large or small degree, in all cities. The paintings in this exhibit have been selected from many of her diverse exhibitions throughout the years.

Image: In the Park, mixed media by Anna W. Edwards, 1996.

Carla Golder is a Black woman artist living and working in Oakland, California, but born and raised in Ohio. The focus of her art is the impact of the African Diaspora and how Black women struggle to overcome oppression and become empowered. Using the African word Sankofa as a guiding force behind her work, she reaches back, retrieving elements from past work, and reconfiguring them to tell the story of the African Diaspora – of being uprooted and then re-rooted in hostile environments, stories of struggle, healing, and rebirth.

She is guided by ancestral voices that, sometimes through dreams, tell her where the divine feminine resides in all living things, revealing its presence in the petals of a flower or the trunk of a tree. In this phase of her work, she incorporates the African deities of water, fire, and air in her drawings to express our inner power and connectedness.

Sankofa: to retrieve wisdom that has been lost or taken away, in order to reclaim, revive, and reshape it as we move forward to achieve our full potential.

Image: Rooted, colored pencil by Carla Golder, 2019.

Oakland native, Valerie Brown-Troutt’s collages and paintings whimsically honor and celebrate love and discord lived, remembered or practiced – arguably an indication of her broad spectrum-life as an artist, mother, educator, administrator and pastor. Art and creativity are her sacred platforms empowering her to make meaning through scrap paper images, mixing colors, adding textual words or verse to recreate and celebrate memories. Brown-Troutt was named one of AOTAD’s Artistic Achievement Awardees for 2023.

Image: Thank You Ebony, Jet and Essence, mixed media by Valerie Brown-Troutt.

Yolanda Cotton-Turner is an Oakland Visual Artist and Fine Art Printmaker. Experimental by nature, Yolanda often creates with other mediums to keep her methods fresh while still giving respect to the more traditional printmaking processes. Her imagery commonly focuses on urban culture, our kindred power within nature, the magic in music, the human experience, and other social, spiritual, and environmental inspirations. Yolanda uses plexiglass, wood, lino, and nature itself as a printing plate, printing onto handmade paper, mulberry, or cotton rag, or natural fabrics. She personally executes all the steps involved in the printmaking process, from developing the image, gouging, inking, and pulling the print by hand utilizing a Griffin etching press.

Yolanda’s work has earned a spot on the walls of the de Young Museum in San Francisco, CA (2020) as well as The Richmond Art Center (2023) and many other notable galleries. She can be found curating creative experiences at her gallery, The Red Door, in Alameda, California.

Image: Water, indigo dye by Yolanda Cotton-Turner, 2018.

Xan Blood Walker was born in Seattle Washington in the heat of the summer. She learned print photography in high school, and went on to obtain two BFAs, one in printmaking and another in painting from the University of Washington. Many years later when pursuing graduate studies in counseling she obtained a Master’s certificate in Art Therapy. Prior to her higher education she attended the school of hard knocks in Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, as an 80’s street punk at the height of the punk rock scene. With over 30 years in recovery she finds a way to blend her varied experiences into a unique and personal style.

Image: Magic Ferret, photography on metal by Xan Blood Walker.

Zoë Boston is an award winning, multifaceted artist who has been creating since youth. LA born and Upstate NY raised, she now resides in Oakland, CA. Zoë’s inspirations come from God, life, love, music, dance, and more. She’s dedicated to being authentic, which in turn, transforms her work into visual and sonic waves of passion expressed on walls and canvas, as well as through music and movement. In her emerging career, she has exhibited her art in the prestigious De Young Museum, has contributed artwork in an Emmy Award Winning documentary, and has had a recent cameo in a documentary featured on CNN, to name a few. Zoë has also exhibited with Macy’s Union Square, The Battery Club, various galleries in the Bay Area and has created murals that have made a positive impact in her community. She continues to push her artistry in new ways that reflect her growth, her drive, and desire to be a vessel that brings light and life into this realm.

Image: Moving Mountains, acrylic on canvas by Zoë Boston, 2019.

About Art Of The African Diaspora

Art Of The African Diaspora is the longest running event of its kind in the Bay Area. It originated from a salon for African American artists known as Colors of Black that was organized in 1989 by artist and professor Marie Johnson Calloway.

In 1996 artists Jan Hart-Schuyers and Rae Louise Hayward established the exhibition The Art of Living Black at Richmond Art Center. Today the exhibition is called Art Of The African Diaspora to incorporate a broader vision, and is run by a steering committee of participating artists.

The showcase exhibition at Richmond Art Center features work by over 120 artists of African descent. This exhibition is accompanied by open studios and satellite exhibitions throughout the Bay Area.

Art Of The African Diaspora in partnership with Richmond Art Center, supports artists of African descent in the Bay Area through representation, professional development, and building a creative community.

For more info about Art Of The African Diaspora, click here.

For more info about Richmond Art Center, click here.

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