Inspiring art popping up in spirited Southeast San Diego gallery
Racquel Rhone (L) and Kim Phillips-Pea (R) stand proudly inside their first Black-owned pop-up gallery in Southeast San Diego.
By Anissa Durham
MARKET CREEK PLAZA, SOUTHEASTERN SAN DIEGO — A rose can grow from a crack in the concrete, wrote Tupac Shukur. In the Market Creek community an entire Black Renaissance has blossomed.
In the luminous shadow of the Jacobs Center for Neighborhood Innovation, three outspoken artists are working to replant a strangled arts community in a soil rich with talent.
Blossoms are beginning to appear like colorful harbingers of spring in the COVID haze of winter.
A pop-up gallery is a small but promising start to what organizers Kim Phillips-Pea, Racquel Rhone and Vee Brooks hope will one day be a field of flowers created by Black artists in an underrepresented community.
“We feel every community should have a gallery,” said Phillips-Pea. “We deserve to have it, we need to have it and we should have it.”
Southeast Art Team, the organization led by the trio, partners with the Jacobs Center on Euclid Avenue to operate the gallery, which is richly stocked with fine art, abstract art, portraits, prints, jewelry and other creations that celebrate Black culture.
Rhone said the very act of opening a gallery is important because it represents a rebirth of a Southeastern San Diego arts culture that has been obliterated by decades of poverty, racial injustice and invisibility. A once-vibrant arts scene that fell dormant is back, she said.
“We want to give artists in the community a chance to shop their work,” she said. “As Black artists in the community, we know how important representation is in Southeastern San Diego. We want people to see art that reflects who they are. It is essential for people within our community to see that we have beautiful arts and cultures all around us.”
Art galleries have taken a beating in San Diego County during the novel coronavirus pandemic. From Ramona to San Ysidro, Logan Heights to Alpine, galleries have been staggered, suspended or permanently closed. Barrio Logan’s beloved La Bodega closed recently and the ripples were felt throughout the arts community.
Purple may be artists’ least favorite color this year, as the COVID-19 stay-at-home orders have starved galleries of visitors and professional artists of customers. Market Creek’s roses in the concrete have been darkened by clouds, said Phillips-Pea, but the trio plans to press on.
Rhone agreed.
“I feel our business is so well received because so many people in the community want to see that, especially in Southeast San Diego where arts and culture tends to get left behind,” she said. “People are happy to see an art gallery for themselves and for their children.”
Dahryan “Street General” Aluqdah, a member of the Southeast Art Team, said his creativity motivates him to address the stereotypes of Black artists.
“I want us to control our own narrative,” he said. “Everybody tells our story, but we never tell our own. I want our art to reflect what really goes on.”
Rhone said her visions are cultural and geographical.
“I want to use the gallery as an opportunity to put Southeastern San Diego art on the map as much as possible,” she said. “We need to help local artists network and provide a space for Black artists to reach the next level in their work.”
Phillips-Pea said she would like to see more arts professionals paid for their work.
“We have volunteered to paint murals around the community as a way to showcase our work in hopes that we might get paid,” she said. “Even when local Black artists are paid, most of the money goes back into the supplies, insurance and facilities to continue creating artwork.”
Phillips-Pea and Rhone said they hope to learn more about marketing and selling creations by Black artists. Aluqdah said that is a wise way forward.
“You have to control your art and culture,” he said. “We have to know the business so we don’t have to sell our souls to do it.”
Southeast Art Team also wants to advocate for amateur and beginning artists in the community because of art’s power to express injustice and cleanse the soul. Too many youths in the community face sexual violence and abuse, said Phillips-Pea. She was one of those children, she said.
“Art and volunteering rebuilt my confidence and saved my life,” she said. “Without those I do not know where I would be today. I was constantly in bondage. Art redirected my focus from me thinking about that violence all the time.”
Sexual violence plagues communities of color, said Phillips-Pea. One in four Black girls will be sexually abused before the age of 18 and one in five Black women are survivors of rape, she said. The Southeast Art Team wants to change the narrative about sexual violence, she said, one youth at a time.
Rhone said all artists at any level are invited to reach out to the Southeast Art Team to discuss showcasing their work in the pop-up gallery. Artists and arts patrons should see Black expression, she said, and feel the pride, beauty and creativity of the community.
The Southeast Art Team gallery is open through the end of February by appointment. Visits may be booked through https://southeastartteam.info/.