Patrick McGowan“Once upon a time there was a gentleman named Barack Obama,” Sande Webster, owner of the Sande Webster Gallery in Philadelphia, said. “I thought that they were going to tear him apart. It was later that I realized that he might be the most brilliant president we may have ever had.”
The local art gallery located at 2006 Walnut St., played host to the exhibit, “Yes We Did: An Obama Celebration.”
The exhibit was an artistic take on the journey of Barack Obama’s journey to the White House.
The inspiration for the exhibit came to Webster from a piece that a couple were buying from artist Larry Walker did before the primaries.
It was a simple but powerful collage with the word “vote.”
“After that I decided that it would be very interesting to get an artist point of view,” Webster said.”We are in a historically important time and the artist express that very well.”
She received a dozen pieces of art ranging from sculptures, photographs and collages, from a simple black and white photo of Obama in front of a sea of college students to a No. 1 pencil with his name on it.
Seeing Obama overcome the racial boundaries set by our country long ago was something very important to Webster, who participated in the civil rights movement.
“I marched in Mississippi for civil rights,” Webster said. “And to think about how we weren’t afraid, I think that’s how it was for the people who were working for him. It was something you would just do because that’s where your spirit was at the time.”
“All the things we did during the Civil Rights Movement, the million man march, all those crazy things, what did it all mean,” Webster said. “I realized it was such a historic time and that it would be wonderful if people would be willing to buy a piece of history that they could pass on to their children.”
