A festive cultural embrace

At Dawn Sutherland’s contemporary ranch-style house high up in Baldwin Hills, a large teak kinara, the special candleholder for Kwanzaa, dominates the dining room table not far from a Christmas tree that fills a corner of the outdoor atrium.

“For years, I have celebrated Christmas,” she explains, “and I have also celebrated Kwanzaa because it’s a good time to reflect on the [seven] principles. It makes a good transition to the new year.”

There is no conflict. One is a religious holiday while the other is an African American cultural holiday held Dec. 26 through New Year’s Day. Created nearly four decades ago by Maulana Karenga, chair of the black studies department at Cal State Long Beach, Kwanzaa encourages those who mark it to embrace: unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity and faith.

Sutherland, wearing traditional African dress, welcomes guests to her annual celebration with “Habari gani,” the Swahili greeting for “what’s the news?”

“Ujima,” they respond, reciting in Swahili the third principle, the one for that day.

She entertains regularly in the light-filled home she purchased last March to show off her paintings, masks, woodcarvings, sculptures, exotic fabrics and dolls.

Collecting art and displaying it throughout her home is a way of life for Sutherland, an executive with Xerox, whether she’s living in Los Angeles, London, New York or a village in Ghana.

Using more than 350 pieces, many from her trips to Africa, she infuses art into every room -- including her three bathrooms, a kitchen with cabinets filled not with dishes and glasses but with dolls and ethnic pieces, the laundry room and even the garage.

“This looks like an art museum,” Dadisi Sanyika says to fellow drummer Baba John Beatty.

During Sunday’s Kwanzaa gathering, they study a large painting of a West African celebration. Drawn to the colors, the liveliness, the spirit of the piece by Nigerian artist Buchi Upjohn, the men look for themselves among the many figures dancing, singing, drumming.

“Which one is you?” Beatty asks.

“This is the one. The one with the open mouth,” Sanyika answers, pointing to a man wearing orange who is pounding a talking drum. “That looks like Baruti,” he adds, indicating another drummer, a much younger man wearing a leopard print.

Anthony Baruti Galloway, 14, agrees when he sees the picture in Sutherland’s step-down living room, with its single piece of furniture, a piano.

She keeps furniture to a minimum -- a couple of black sofas in the family room; a circular table sans chairs in the dining room; beds, of course; and in the study, two chairs and a desk -- so as not to distract from the art.

For that same reason, she prefers off-white walls. Jakarta white with a hint of tan to be precise, matching similarly neutral Berber carpet, whitewashed hardwood floors and white-patterned marble tile.

Unafraid to mix stripes, patterns and color, she explains not everything has to match.

A mahogany bust of a woman from Senegal sits near a king chair from the Akan people in Ghana. A framed, antique paramount chief’s robe from West Africa hangs near a painting of an East African Masai girl, done in acrylic on jute, by Chinzi, a Nigerian artist. It’s next to a painting by New York artist Rondell Witherspoon of an exuberant black woman exalting in a hot, red dress.

Baskets and woodcarvings are everywhere, providing a perfect backdrop for the table laden with the symbols of Kwanzaa.

A basket of tangerines, apples and bananas represents the harvest. The candleholder stands for common roots and holds seven candles, one for each principle. Ears of corn mean children. A special mat epitomizes a foundation; the unity cup is to be shared by all; the gifts, often handmade, symbolize labor and love; and a flag displays the colors of African liberation -- red, black and green.

“We always have books on the table to represent the importance of knowledge,” Sanyika, the drummer, says as he explains the traditions.

He speaks surrounded by wood giraffes from Zaire, an ornate owari game and masks.

“Dawn does wonderful things with art,” Daryl Walker says as he stands with his wife, Tarita, near a painted walking stick carved by his father-in-law, Otis Hollingsworth, out of wood aged for seven years then hand-finished.

Their children Alexis, 3, and Kyle, 1, run with 11-year-old Lindsey White past an Upjohn painting of a woman drumming toward another piece by Chinzi, one depicting an African woman, dressed in blue, braiding a girl’s hair.

“It symbolizes womanhood, if you look at women all over the world, the responsibilities of mothers,” explains Marie Deary, a bookstore owner from Long Beach whose parents are from Nigeria. “Here you have an African woman who’s carrying a baby [on her back] and she’s braiding her daughter’s hair. In corporate America, we call it multi-tasking. In developing countries, it’s a way of life.”