Short-sleeves and Soliloquies
It was t-shirt weather this Wednesday in the West End and the perfect day to dedicate a striking new mural which now graces the soon-to-open Pearl Cleage & Zaron Burnett Center for Culture and Creativity (formerly the Fulton County West End Performing Arts Center). In vivid shades of blue, purple, red, and gold, the mural features detailed stencil-work as well as a joyful larger-than-life depiction of the the center’s namesakes beaming in candid quarter-profile portraits.
Cleage and Burnett are Atlanta literary and cultural icons, with legacies that trace to the city’s Maynard Jackson years. Burnett, a poet and novelist, organized the famous Live at Club Zebra! series. Cleage is a prolific and widely celebrated playwright and Atlanta’s first Poet Laureate (Pearl’s ties with the West End Community are also multigenerational - her father, Albert Cleage, founded the Shrine of the Black Madonna).
Cleage recited a poem to mark the occasion, entitled “Poem for Young Artists”, which she dedicated to the recently deceased Atlanta artist Radcliffe Bailey. In it she exalted “artists and magicians, painters and poets, writers and rappers, singers and sax players and interplanetary time-travelers in silver spaceships with dreadlocks to their knees, all searching for the blindingly beautiful moments when we be who we be and see who we see, in all our fierce fragile fabulous humanness”
The mural’s creator, Muhammad Yungai, honored the new center’s namesakes by using poetry to elaborate on the vision and process of his work. He also honored and acknowledged the support of his family, including his wife and daughter as well as his mother, who has been the Executive Chef at West End’s famous Soul Vegetarian for 40 years.
The Mayor was on-hand and in high spirits as he thanked those involved in making the new center a reality, including District 4 Councilman Jason Dozier and also Camille Russell Love, who is retiring from her role as Executive Director of the Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs and for whom the event was her final official act.
Guests were invited to walk around and explore the space and to share their thoughts and ideas about how it can best serve the community. The sense of possibility was palpable, and everyone who attended left knowing full well why “The West End is the Best End” - it’s the people.
Visit the photo gallery and see for yourself!
P.S. If we can get permission to share it, we’ll gladly upload the video of Pearl Cleage reciting her poem.