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Design After Dark: Third Culture Child
July 28th, 2021 |
What is Design After Dark?
Design After Dark, an adult programming series at the Kemerer Museum of Decorative Arts, launched in April 2019.
Focusing on style and design, the inaugural season included a pop-up retro arcade, trivia nights, an art café, exclusive walking tours, and a comedy night.
In 2021, Design After Dark: Community Curated seeks to further collaborate with Lehigh Valley Creatives to connect community and history through unique experiences that center on design and art.
Our Community Curators, created experiences including performances, screenings, panels and exhibitions that all respond to a quote by late designer Sylvia Harris “Design teaches us not to make assumptions.”
Latest Event
Third Culture Child
July 30, 6:00-9:00 PM
Artists of Hispanic descent share an honest depiction of who a Third Culture Child is in an evening of art and expression.
What does “Third Culture Child” mean?
The term “Third Culture Kid” was first coined by Ruth Hill Useem, who noticed similar experiences between children who spent formative years straddling two cultures, often growing up in a culture different from the culture their parents were raised in.
On Friday, 7/30 from 6:00 – 9:00 PM, Qbah Fernandez brings together four artists who will share, through their chosen medium and discussion, their personal experience as Third Culture Children of Hispanic descent in America.
Through music, fine art, spoken word, and food sampling, the event offers a multisensory depiction of the Third Culture Child experience.
Learn more about the Third Culture Kid in this BBC story: “Third Culture Kids: Citizens of everywhere and nowhere”
Meet the Curator
Qbah Fernandez
Qbah Fernandez is a Bethlehem-born entrepreneur, music producer, audio engineer, video director, and content creator with a degree from Full Sail University. He has over 12 years of experience in the television industry and has worked for major Emmy nominated television networks as well as local stations such as WFMZ. He also is seasoned in the music industry with over 9 years of experience which has allowed him to work and travel with Latin Grammy winners and 3-time Grammy-nominated producers. Although his passion lies in production, he also proudly sits on the board of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce as its current Vice-Chair.
Meet the Artists
Devyn Briggs
Devyn Briggs grew up in Bethlehem, PA and studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, MD. She studied drawing, painting, sculpture, fiber arts, and ceramics and earned a BFA with a major in Ceramics in 2013. She then earned a master’s degree in the Business of Art and Design, studying creative entrepreneurship before opening a studio at the Banana Factory.
In addition to making art, Devyn is an educator and arts activist dedicated to fostering equity and inclusion within the Lehigh Valley arts community. She has worked in numerous areas of the art world including fine art collection management, creative start-ups, community and public art, and non-profit management. She currently works as a Career Specialist at NCC, empowering communications, arts, and design students to start successful careers. She also serves on CACLV’s Color Outside the Lines Quality of Life Committee and as an advisory board member of the Guild of Creative Citizens, a non-profit dedicated to arts equity in the Lehigh Valley.
Alyssa Garcia
Alyssa Garcia is a Philadelphia-based, award-winning singer-songwriter and pianist with an alternative pop sound. Living by the mantra “Music is the cure,” she strives to use her original music as an outlet of positivity. Garcia pens soulful tunes telling personal stories her audience can often relate to.
Luli
Luli is an empathetic multi-talented artist from Bethlehem Pennsylvania, where she continues to live and make colorful impacts amongst her peers. Born with the gift to passionately connect with the hearts and minds of people, she uses her various artistic skills to teach, heal, and engage with souls all over the world. Be prepared to dive deep, and surface the raw truth and emotion around you. Luli’s art focuses on her intimate experiences with poisonous negativity and how she uses creativity, light and joy to diminish everyday darkness and live a more peaceful and cherishing life.
Monica Salazar
Monica Salazar is an artist and illustrator and her work tends to be surreal, inspired by a world separate from the one we live in. She enjoys creating characters and giving them a personality or a role within their space. Sometimes Monica takes critical views of social issues in a dream-like manner. Surrealism and fantasy combined with real ideas help her to inform the viewer about a specific issue. She likes to use a combination of vivid and bright colors while working with a variety of mediums. She likes to experiment with a range of various materials but her favorite is wood. Monica prefers to create a piece of art that belongs to a diptych or a polyptych. By making more than one single artwork the arrangement and the display also play a very important factor of how the work is received visually.
The use of mixed media gives her great freedom of expression in a variety of themes. Prior to creating the final piece, Monica sketches her vision on a piece of paper. This sketch goes with her almost everywhere. With this sketch, her creative energies for visual art are channeled and allow her to explore the dream-like world in her mind. Monica wants all of her artwork to tell a story to the viewer. She wants to be able to communicate visually in a world that needs to be reminded constantly of the social issues we face in our lifetime. Her expression through art is how she voices her opinions and offers support to these problems we all face daily.
Gabriel Chlebove is a summer 2021 museum writing intern for Historic Bethlehem Museums & Sites. He is a recent graduate of Moravian University with his Bachelors in Biochemistry and can’t wait to get his piano tuned. His favorite pieces to play are composed by Beethoven.
