In 2000, Tom Feelings gave Kwame Dawes about a hundred of his drawings of black children that he had sketched over a career of many decades and told him to respond to these with poems. Months later and many poems later, the two men agreed that "I Saw Your Face" a poem by Dawes, would be a wonderful text for a book of Feeling's drawing.

In 2005, Penguin Books published I Saw Your Face , a beautiful celebration of the resilience, beauty and dignity of children of Africa and its Diaspora. I Saw Your Face was Feelings' last collaboration before his passing in August, 2003.

That year, composer and poet, Kevin Simmonds, worked with Kwame Dawes to produce a beautiful performance of this work which has moved audiences of the young and old to appreciate the delicate art of three men of African descent straddling several generations, but sharing a love for their people.

I Saw Your Face: The Performance , is set for piano, flute, cello, viola and voice, and is complemented by the projections from the images in the book. Poet, Kwame Dawes, reads the poem during the performance, take the viewers through the journey that the work represents.

I Saw Your Face: The Performance , was first staged at the Columbia museum of Art in Columbia , South Carolina in 2005.
Program running time: 40 minutes
Personnel: 6
Technical crew: 1