Lucy Gellman Photo
Katro Storm paints the first horizon line.
Local artist Katro Storm painted a setting, peach-colored sun — and passed on the story of emancipation to young ears who hadn’t heard it before.
That was the story Monday afternoon on the New Haven Green, as Storm led “Painting with Katro: Celebrating Juneteenth!” as part of the International Festival of Arts & Ideas. Held at the green’s outdoor festival center, the event attracted a handful of kids and families, who painted tree-studded sunsets for an hour.
December Casbarro works on the first part of her horizon line.
Not just sunsets, said Storm at the event — vivid African sunsets, intended to conjure roots half a world away. Juneteenth is a commemoration of the day in 1865 when soldiers from the Union arrived in Texas to announce that the Civil War had ended, and told the remaining 250,000 slaves in Texas that they were free. That marked the official end of slavery in the United States — although it was followed by Jim Crow and The New Jim Crow.
As a few kids trickled in early for the session, Storm spoke to some of them about the holiday, breaking down his story for the youngest of the bunch. Africans were taken forcibly to the U.S. in ships. Once in the country, they were imprisoned as slaves. There was a war to let them go, and they became free at the end of it. One day a year — June 19 — is that celebration of freedom.
Rays Kisaku, who arrived with his father from Congo last year.
He added that talking about Juneteenth is a habit he recently picked up after learning that his 21-year-old niece, Ranasjea Smith, didn’t know about the day. As he saw it approaching in June of this year, he said he felt “that we had to do something,” and partnered with Arts & Ideas to make it happen.
Amid a whirl of brushes, paint blobs, and impromptu palettes, Storm wasn’t able to talk to the whole group about the meaning of the day. So he attempted to show it instead, with a sunset that came together one stroke at a time. Before him, pint-sized attendees took note, painting thick bands of orange and yellow, slithers of brown and black, white and pink shiny suns glistening from the page.
Close to finished.
With Storm’s direction at the front of the tent, the kids added trees, each taking on its own leafy, fat or knotted shape. As Storm watched them, he said, his celebration of freedom doubled as gratitude for freedom of expression.
“I need these kids to help me remember how to paint again,” he said. “Their expression helps me, and I think when I express myself it helps them.”
Of Juneteenth, he added that “I wish it was more popular … more of a household term.”