New Encyclopedia Celebrates Arab-American Artists

Washington — Fayeq Oweis, noted artist and professor of Arabic language and culture at Santa Clara University in California, has published a unique volume entitled Encyclopedia of Arab American Artists, which highlights 85 individuals and groups working in painting, sculpture, photography, film, cartooning, calligraphy, mixed media, architecture and theater design.

Washington — Fayeq Oweis, noted artist and professor of Arabic language and culture at Santa Clara University in California, has published a unique volume entitled Encyclopedia of Arab American Artists, which highlights 85 individuals and groups working in painting, sculpture, photography, film, cartooning, calligraphy, mixed media, architecture and theater design.

The Encyclopedia of Arab American Artists profiles individuals both familiar and obscure in the United State and elsewhere. Among the famous is Sam Maloof, a furniture designer, whose distinctive woodworking and signature rocking chairs won him a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, known informally as the “Genius Award.”

The individual artists trace their heritage to 22 Arab countries — whether first-, second- or third-generation — and many identify themselves as Lebanese, Egyptian or Palestinian Americans as much as Arab Americans.

They also reflect the diversity of the Arab world itself, whether by faith, or as members of non-Arab ethnic groups like Chaldeans, Assyrians, Kurds, Berbers and Armenians, who nevertheless identify with Arab culture.

He quotes the words of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish: “I am from there, I am from here.”