BY REV. DR. HARRY S. COVERSTON, GUEST WRITER TO THE TIMES
WINTER PARK – A crowd of about 75 people gathering at the Community Center at Hannibal Square Sunday, September 29, for an event called Puzzled Peace. It was a combination of art, poetry, drama and community history designed to launch a process to confront roadblocks to hearing the story of all Floridians, starting with the missing stories of those who are Black.
This project is the brainchild of author and artist Valada Flewellyn. She had organized an experience that began with discussions between the guests and artists, continuing with the recitation of a poem by Flewellyn after which the audience heard from the artists themselves. Attendees also entered into the creative process itself by decorating blank hardboard jig saw pieces designed to be fit together into a larger puzzle in the center of the room bearing all the names and drawings of those present.
Several aspects of this event stood out for me. First, having a chance to actually talk with the artists about their work, what inspired them, how they went about the process of creating and what they hoped to convey with their artwork was a real privilege. All of us have been to galleries and museums to see artwork displayed on walls and in free standing displays. Often they are accompanied by informational postings that give the name of the work, artist, year, media. Occasionally they include contextual information such as historical events and geographical references.
But the chance to actually meet the artists, to see their faces light up when others took interest in their work, to field questions they may well never have considered, all of that brought the art to life. It also gave the viewers the opportunity to offer their own takes on the works. I heard the artists saying over and over, “I’d never thought about it that way before.” These were joyous moments of learning and growing that involved everyone present. In my book, such is always a gift.
I was struck by the role that historical roots played in these pieces. There was the young artist who produced a vision of the head wraps he had seen his Mother and the women of his community wearing as a child, practices that go back to ancestral lands left long ago. There was the sage, white haired elder from the local community whose piece depicted the three generations in her family, the Grandfather Clock in the background pointing to that family’s multigenerational presence in this place we call home. There was the autobiographical work by the young woman which was dark and intense, a piece intentionally left uncompleted, a statement about a life just begun, a life to be lived in a time when mere survival can be a challenge. And there was a larger-than-life vivid depiction of the abolitionist saint, Harriet Tubman, called Moses for her role in delivering enslaved peoples from the captivity, her piercing eyes touching the very soul of the viewer.
Three of the pieces captured me. The first was by the director of the Crealde Art School, a man who courageously brought to consciousness his Haitian heritage in a time when such can make one a target by xenophobes. His work depicted a dashing woman in a flowing evening gown set in the Harlem Renaissance. What was most striking about this piece was his confession that he had painted it that very morning in just an hour, driven to create something original that spoke to the theme of the gathering. Amazing.
The other two pieces spoke to the current realities of life in Florida.
One depicted a human brain with a series of gears within it, loosely connected with one another. The young artist, recently graduated from UCF, said that he was intent on showing how all the pieces of our social machine must be involved if our world is to work properly. That includes those pieces which make us uncomfortable.
The other, created by a young mixed race woman raised as white who discovered a family history which included several famous Black icons, was a collection of colorful images disconnected from one another. It depicted life in a contentious Florida dominated by those with the power to ban books and educational ideologues intent on preserving the comfort levels of white Floridians. But, as the artwork evidenced, those banned ideas, those hidden aspects of history and culture, never go away. They simply bide their time in the collective unconscious awaiting their chances to emerge and be included in the larger story of Florida without which we Floridians will never know who we really are.
The conclusion of the event featured the appearance of Fannie Lou Hamer, played by an actress whose dramatization of the civil rights activist’s life forms the basis for her current theatrical production at Theater West End in Sanford. The energy from that portrayal had all of us on the edge of our seats.
The very name of this event was multidimensional and provocative. The immediate imagery of a puzzle with its many pieces served as the beginning place. The question that informed this choice is why, given the many pieces of the puzzle of Florida’s history, some of the key pieces are missing. How can a complete picture be seen without those pieces? And who would intentionally hide them and why?
Such questions leave many of us puzzled.
The second aspect of the name references the fact that in a puzzle reflecting a healthy society, each piece must be valued. Like a diamond, each puzzle piece is like a single facet, shiny and beautiful on its own, but limited in the beauty it can convey. It’s only when the facets are all brought together that the diamond comes into focus. Similarly, it’s only when all the valuable and valued pieces of the puzzle come together that the image the puzzle bears comes fully into focus.
That’s why the ritual act of having the guests inscribe their names and images on their individual puzzle pieces and adding them to the puzzle in the center of the room was an important aspect of the gathering. Each of us have something to contribute to the process of re-membering all of our history and culture. It is only when all those pieces, bearing our names and the colors and imagery we added, are fit together that a whole, completed puzzle emerges.
And this is where the play on words in the event’s name comes in. It’s not a piece or pieces that this endeavor seeks to attain, both suggesting at best a partial picture or a fragmented whole. What the project seeks is peace, a concept that our forebears knew means more than the mere absence of hostilities. Peace, shalom (Hebrew) salaam (Arabic) only exists when there is a foundation of right relation to support it. Such a foundation requires knowing our story as a people, all of it, and including all of its participants in its telling. Events like Puzzled Peace provide a start to achieving such a foundation.
At 71 years of age, I no longer have the luxury of being an optimist. My own study of history and a lifetime of engaging the powers has instilled in me the need to see things as they are, not as I wish them to be. But I remain hopeful enough to believe that a peace that flows from right relations, beginning with the repairing of the historical breaches between peoples in our state and nation, is possible. And it is events like this one that provide such hope. For that gift I am grateful.