We must contribute our share to building tomorrow even when the sky is cloudy and the vision of its outcome is momentarily obscured, for it is precisely at such times that the arts can expand our vision, deepen our understanding, and increase our empathy for others. We are bound to participate dynamically and energetically in shaping an edifice that expands our civilization and makes us larger people. Artists must help us visualize the possibilities before us. The National Center of Afro-American Artists strives to do its part in motivating, inspiring and sustaining spiritual, social and intellectual engagement worthy of the legacy which is ours.
We are part of a whole—shareholders in a universe that preceded us, and will stand after we’re gone. We have no options. A vision of this truth is captured in the traditional black spiritual “Sending up my timber every day” in which a chorister sings of building a future edifice a little at a time each day. The chorister contributes a share to building the heavenly edifice even though the vision of it is sometimes obscured. We, like the chorister, may find ourselves sometimes at loggerheads, unsure how to go forward, disappointed with ourselves and our brothers and sisters yet compelled to move forward. In just such moments, we need to step aside and reflect as we digest the distilled wisdom that our forebears passed to us through the arts in equal parts of joy and sorrow.
The planks that are the proverbial timber of the song are everywhere around us—in the caution telling us to “Cancel Violence”, in the joy that infused “Black Nativity” while lifting us above political and social disappointments of the moment, in the abiding lessons of ancestral values embodied in symbols such as the Sankofa bird in which the past offers guidance for the future. Just as importantly we need artists and philosophers, teachers, men and women of courage, all helping us envision and build the world we want to live in and that we want to give our children.
Edmund Barry Gaither
Executive Director
National Center of Afro-American Artists
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