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Among our roots and branches we have selected these qualities to emphasize in our image-making—

(a) the expressive awesomeness that one experiences in African Art and life in the U. S. A. like the Holiness church (which is about as close to home as we are in this country) and the daemon that is the blues, Alcindor's dunk and Sayer's cut, the Hip walk and the Together talk.

(c) symmetry that is free, repetition with change, based on African music and African movement. The rhythm that is easy syncopation and very very human. Uncontracted. the rhythm the rhythm the rhythm rhythm rhythm

(f) images that mark the spot where the real and the overreal, the plus and the minus, the abstract and the concrete--the reet and the replete meet. Mimesis.

(g) organic looking, feeling forms. Machines are made for each other like we are made for each other. We want to work to look like the creator made it through us.

(B) This is a big one...Shine -- a major quality, a major quality. We want the things to shine, to have the right lustre of a just-washed 'fro, of spit-shined shoes, of de-ashened elbows and knees and noses. The Shine who escaped the Titanic, the "li'l light of mine", patent leather. Dixie Peach. Bar BQ. fried fish, cars, ad shineum!

(z) color color Color  Color that shines, color that is free of rules and regulation, color that shines. color that is expressively awesome. color that defines, identifies and directs. Superreal color for Superreal images. The superreality that is our every day all day thang. color as bright and as real as the color dealing on the streets of Watts and the Southside and 4th street and in Roxbury and in Harlem, in Abidjian, in Port au Prince, Bahia and Ibadan, in Dakar and Johannesburg and everywhere we are. Coolade colors for

Transcription Notes:
. underlined references removed per Smithsonian guidelines