dreams deferred /// MIZE

Mize Gallery is pleased to present dreams deferred: works inspired by Black History, opening on February 8th, 2019. This show includes mixed media works by artists from the Tampa Bay area as well as Detroit, New York City, and Richmond, Virginia.

The title was selected from the Langston Hughes poem titled Harlem as a way for artists to reflect on this history. Our intention is to provide a venue for the artists and our community to have a dialogue around the state of racial relations within St. Petersburg. We look to amplify and provide space for marginalized peoples to express themselves as they choose. Our hope is to celebrate the legacy of African American greatness.

Hughes asked about dreams deferred in 1951, in an America divided by race and Jim Crow laws. African Americans did not have the same opportunities as white Americans. Yet with each question, Hughes does not let the dream die. It may turn into something unpleasant, but it does not cease to exist. The last question posed in the poem considers if the dream could explode and thus change everything surrounding it. Sixty-seven years later is there an answer to the question? Did the dream explode and bring change?

Twenty artists including Courtney Alexander, Carrie Boucher & the Justice Studio Creatives, Perry deVick, Tamesha Kirkland, iBoms, Kelly U. Johnson, Tenea Johnson, Ajamu Kojo, Valincy-Jean Patelle, Joshua Pearson, Calan Ree & Marquise Russ, Marcus Rogers, Erika Schnur, Sleep, Zulu Painter, and others will present their individual perspectives on Black History. As American history has institutionally been retold by white America, this is an opportunity to further the dialogue and allow more voices to be heard.

The gallery will be donating its profits to the Neighborhood Association of Childs Park.

www.mychildspark.webs.com

Langston Hughes Harlem
-published in the 1951 collection titled Montage of a dream deferred

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?