About JAHHEAL MASSAC:

Jahheal Massac, presently resides in East Orange New Jersey, a native of St. Thomas, Virgin Island is an artist, poet and educator who attended Edora Kean High School of St Thomas, Virgin Islands, Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee and New Jersey City University in Jersey City, New Jersey where he obtained his Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Art and Art Education as well as his Masters Degree in Urban Education.  Mr. Massac also holds a Youth and Family Counseling Certification from HFC Institute of Los Angles, California and is currently working on his second Masters in School Administration and Educational Supervision at Kean University. 

Mr. Massac is an art instructor at Frank H. Morrell High School of Irvington Township in New Jersey teaching classes such as Fine Art, Ceramics  and Crafts , he is also an advisor for the school’s Poetry Club.

Mr. Massac book publications include a 49 pages book “Up from Your Mind, Poetry in Motion” a collections of his poems, songs and visual arts, his other publications “Unchained,” a compilation of poetry and visual arts from three of his ex-students’.   Jahheal is currently working on his third and fourth publications entitled, “In My Father’s House, There is Many Rooms” and “A Genealogy Research, From Africa to Haiti to St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Island.” 

About PHILLIP DELOATCH:

A native of Newark, New Jersey graduated from Irvington High School in 2002, attended DuCret School of Arts in Plainfield, New Jersey where he majored in Commercial Art.  Phillip is a freelance artist, he creates paintings, clay sculptures, and various other arts for local customers.  One of Phillip’s latest commissioned artwork is an oil painting in the privet collection of Coach Vincent Robinson entitled “The Basketball Player.”

Though most of Phillip’s work is in the style of  realism, he states, “I love Creating ‘Fantasy Art’ like other artists such as Russian artist - Marc Chall, Swiss-born artist Paul Klee, and the Italian artist Giorgio de Chirico who created psychological pictorial expressions that deal more with dream-like images rather than realism.”

About MANSA K. MUSSA

Mansa K. Mussa is a visual and performing artist, arts'; educator, and arts'; consultant. A native of Newark, New Jersey, he has used the camera to document the unfolding of human events for the past thirty-three years. Mussa has traveled extensively in the United States, Cuba, the Caribbean, West Africa, South Africa, and Europe. He earned a BA in Media Arts/Television Production from New Jersey City University and studied visual art with Ben Jones, traditional West African dance with Rhonda C. Morman, and photography with the late Tom Reiss.     

The artist is best known as a collagist and a photographer of concert dance.  His body of documentary work includes: The Art of Dance; Cuba Diary: A Gllimpse Inside the Hidden Republic; Eyewitness: The New South Africa; Ghana: An African Portrait; Pieces of a Dream/Nu Collage; and the historic Newark: A Day In The City Photo-Documentary. Over the course of thirty-five years his art, collage and photography have been presented in nineteen solo exhibits, including three retrospectives, and numerous national and International group exhibits. 

His photographs have been featured in print media, on posters, calendars, brochures, CD covers, postcards and videos.  They have also been published in several books, including the landmark Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers 1840 to the Present.   His work is currently on display in Altoona, Pennsylvania at the Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art  exhibit, Forbidden: Forever Cuba.  Mussa has been a photography instructor for the past thirty years.  He currently teaches for the Newark Museum, Arts Horizons, and the Boys'; and Girls'; Clubs of Newark.  He was a mentor in the ArtReach Mentoring Program at City Without Walls Gallery in Newark from 1993 to 2008, and is a member of the West Orange Arts Council's Board of Trustees and coordinates their ArtStop student exhibition program.    

In 2006 he was a recipient of the Living Legends of Dance Award from the Cicely Tyson School in East Orange, and has received two National Service to Youth Awards from the Boys'; and Girls'; Clubs of America, and served on the Boys'; and Girls'; Clubs of America';s National Photography Advisory Committe which developed a resource guide for the organization';s national photography program.  Last year  received awards from the Newark Museum';s Prime Time: 3-6 Program and the Newark Board of Education's Department of Visual Art.  

Artist's Statement
 
I am a Newark artist who has been living, working and making art in and around the great metropolis for the last half-century.  I've been called a "Renaissance Man" because of my work as a artist, dancer, photographer, musician, bagmaker, writer, and teacher.  I really consider myself to be eyewitness in the tradition of the writer James Baldwin.  An eyewitness to things seen and unseen.  For most of my career the camera, negative, and now JPEG, are the vessells that capture the essence of my memory: that which I intend to be expressed or indicated.  The photographer's encapsulated memory makes up historians by default.  Our work serves as a commentary on our personal observations of past, present and future events in our lives, our communities and, by natural extension, the world.  

As a collage artist I manipulate the image, giving it additional meaning and purpose.  This act of creating art from photography is an act of liberation.  The liberation of the creative process as it passes from the mind, to the reality of the page, the stage, or the moving picture.  It's about power and healing.  It's about power because art can be used as an instrument for change.  It's about healing because the act of creating art can be a form of enlightenment for the artist and the viewer.  Making and sharing art also requires a certain amount of courage that exposes the artist to appreciation, reverence, and ultimately, criticism.  My focus in this act is to use art to challenge and uplift the human spirit, to serve the community as an organizer and teacher, and to search for the common threads that bind us as human beings.