Wedged in the corner of the Arts & Crafts Cooperative, Inc., or ACCI’s, overflowing floorspace is a small white-walled cube dedicated entirely to its new exhibition: “The Freedom of Art.” ACCI’s exhibit is only one of the many free exhibits being held in the greater “Art of the African Diaspora” series, a community-run program now in its 28th year which highlights local Black artists and their work throughout the Bay Area. Art, like language, can only exist within a relation between people — artist to art-lover, person to person. While a desire for time or confidence might stop a would-be artist from producing their work, even more structural barriers serve to impede that work’s arrival in front of those who would seek it, especially for BIPOC artists. Both ACCI and the “Art of the African Diaspora” series are community-based, artist-led initiatives created to mend this unjust severance. 

This local focus enables the showcasing of a more personal kind of artistic production. Erika Stitt’s work, which takes up about half of the left-side wall, seems to center on the faces of her community members. One painting is titled “BFF,” another is called “Nephew.” The most compelling is a long, narrow canvas titled “Express Yourself” whose bubblegum-pink surface is interrupted by the figure of a young child mid-scream. Their mouth sits agape and, as if the eye of a storm, surrounded by a circular rainbow. All who have spent time with toddlers know they are prone to screaming and the expression captured by Stitt can convincingly be construed as fear or anger or joy. It matters not which — all are self-expression. That expression, like a rainbow, Stitt seems to say, is beautiful.

On display within the center of the box stand two sculptures from Lawrence Buford, one ceramic and the other bronze. The latter, entitled “Woman with Scarf,” is impressively detailed, from the cracking on her lips to the intricate folds of her headscarf. After man, cloth must be the second most common subject in all sculpture and that is for good reason. It is always so satisfying to see a substance so light be skillfully replicated in something so heavy. Note Michelangelo’s “Pietà:” It is the folds of Mary’s dress which really steal the show and Christ’s body, in its limpness, seems to be only attempting to imitate. Similarly, it is hard to tell which subject — the face or the scarf which rests behind it — Buford cares more about. He leaves her eyes vacant while giving the scarf an intricate texture that reminds one of snakeskin. 

Buford has a drawing hanging, too. Just behind his sculpture rests an image in graphite titled “Wetlands.” We view a swamp from the side of the road but above it, illuminated in a shining white, is a sunrise. Around the sun and through the clouds, we see the subtle outline of a halo. A halo can be produced only through God or through man’s violent version of him. Thus, the sketch speaks to apocalyptic proportions — either a nuclear explosion or the beginning of the divine reckoning. Most impressive is the way Buford is able to capture these brilliantly illuminated clouds in all their seemingly solid and paradoxically wispy nature. 

Within ACCI’s exhibit one can also view jewelry, photography and more paintings and sculptures. There are more than 140 other artists on display around the Bay as part of the greater “Art of the African Diaspora” project. Of course, while more famous galleries often offer a greater variety of work at a higher level of quality, they also offer work made hundreds of years ago, hundreds of miles away, which have already been seen by hundreds of people. It is a worthy enough motive to experience art within the context of one’s own community, engaging in conversation with one’s own neighbors.