Aaron S. Coleman (Indianapolis, IN) is a multi-disciplinary artist, Associate Professor, and Kenneth E. Tyler Endowed Chair at the Herron School of Art and Design in Indianapolis. He received his MFA from Northern Illinois University in 2013. Aaron has participated in international residencies and exhibitions and has received numerous awards for his work in printmaking, sculpture and installation including the 2021 Black Box Press Foundation’s Art as Activism Grant. He is a 2022 Joan Mitchell Foundation Fellowship semi-finalist and the recipient of the 2023 New Voices Fellowship from the International Print Center New York. His work can be found in the collections of The Janet Turner Print Museum, the Ino- cho Paper Museum in Kochi, Japan, The National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, The Yekaterinburg Museum of Art in Yekaterinburg, Russia, the National Library of France, and the Artist Printmaker and Photographer Research Archive in  the Museum of Texas Tech University among many other public and private collections. Aaron’s hobbies change from year to year but currently include the cultivation of rare, terrestrial, African orchids. He is a husband, dog lover, and workaholic.

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Amber Robles-Gordon (Washington, DC) has over fifteen years of exhibiting, art education, and exhibition coordinating experience. She received a Bachelor of Science, Business Administration in 2005 at Trinity University, and subsequently a Master’s in Fine Arts (Painting) in 2011 from Howard University, Washington, DC. At Howard University she received annual awards and accolades for her artwork. She has exhibited nationally and in Germany, Italy, Malaysia, London, and Spain. Robles-Gordon is proficient in American Sign-Language and has traveled throughout the US, Latin America, the Caribbean, Europe, Northern Africa, and Southeast Asia. Her exhibitions and artwork has been reviewed and/or featured in the Washington Post, Washington City Paper, Washington Informer, Examiner, WAMU American University Radio, WPFW 89.3, MSNBC the grio, Hyperallergeric, Ebony.com, Houston Chronicle, Miami Herald, Huffington Post, Bmore Art Magazine, Callaloo Art & Culture in the African Diaspora, Sugarcane Magazine, Support Black Art, Bomb Magazine and other various publications.

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Andrea Fear (Warren, IN) is a contemporary artist working in Warsaw, Indiana. She’s known for her abstract, colorful and dynamic sculptures made from non-traditional materials. She designs and fabricates her sculptural works by hand for local hospitals, community centers, corporations, and private collectors.

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Antonio McAfee (Richmond, IN) is a photographer whose work addresses the complexity of representation by appropriating and manipulating photographic portraits of African Americans in the 19th century, funk and R&B musicians, and transitioned family members. He received his BFA in Fine Art Photography from the Corcoran College of Art and Design. Shortly after, he earned his MFA in Photography from the University of Pennsylvania. He received a Post-Graduate Diploma in Art in Arts and Culture Management from the University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg, South Africa).

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April Bey (Los Angeles, CA) delivers audacious critiques of the mainstreaming and monetization of radical politics through a wide range of media. Bey’s experiences living and working in Los Angeles after growing up in The Bahamas (New Providence) guide the social critique of American and Bahamian culture, feminism, generational theory, social media, AfroFuturism, AfroSurrealism, post-colonialism, and constructs of race within supremacist systems. Portraying icons and anti-heroes of both cultures in bold, bright compositions across painting, printmaking, video, and installation allows for ambiguity in our assessments of their impact and legacies. Bey’s use of mass-produced objects and reproductive media underscores how images come to define reality in a world we experience increasingly through virtual means.

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Ash Robinson (Indianapolis, IN) is an American artist and designer based in Indianapolis, Indiana. Robinson attended Herron School of Art & Design, where she received her BFA in Furniture Design. Informed by functional design, she attended San Diego State University for graduate school and began experimenting with a wide range of mediums and concepts. Robinson considers her multi-media approach as a representation of our eclectic society. She has been featured in numerous exhibitions including Cause & Æffect: Art that Speaks Out, Indiana State Museum and The Simplicity of Being: Identity & Personhood in a Complex World, New Delhi, India.

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Ashley Nora (Indianapolis, IN) has come into her own as an artist after a career as a Chemist, formal training that informs her proficient use of oil paint and ongoing, yet subtle experiments with new paint media. Nora’s work continues to draw inspiration from a recent visit to Africa and being in a space where she was not the minority, where “everyone radiated a blue aura.” She re-envisions being Black in white spaces while radiating that same aura of empowerment and intuition. Scale, imagery, fields of color, and the concept of negative space all play symbolic roles in her representations of what it means to occupy space with beauty and grace.

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Ayanna Tibbs (Indianapolis, IN) is an emerging, contemporary artist and storyteller living and working in Indianapolis, IN. She uses a combination of text and abstraction to explore the human condition and encourage the viewer to think beyond what might appear obvious in her compositions.

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Beatrice Opokua Atencah (Bloomington, IN) is a fiber, sculpture, and installation artist and an educator born in the Eastern region of Ghana (West Africa) living in Bloomington, Indiana. She graduated from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) Ghana with a BA in Industrial art specializing in Textiles in 2018. She also holds an MFA from Indiana University Bloomington She has exhibited in renowned galleries including the Artlink Midwest Regional Exhibition art Fort Wayne, IN, Tangent Gallery Opening, IDA Journal in Turkey, 2022 National society of Arts & Letters Competition and Exhibition (NSAL) at FAR Center for Contemporary (IN) Open Theme at The in Art Gallery (USA), Artist Talk magazine, UK, All She Makes magazine (USA), among others. Her underway exhibition is included in 2023 Artlink Midwest Regional Exhibition, Fort Wayne (IN).

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Bianca Walker (New Orleans, LA) is a 25-year-old, nonbinary, painter from the Bay Area, California. They were
raised surrounded by vibrant street art until gentrification began to ravage the place they once called home, leaving colored walls bare. Walker migrated to Louisiana and began their studies at Grambling State University where they were submerged in painting and Black history. As their education continued, they quickly grew tired of traditional art methods and began to use a drip painting technique that reflects their street art roots. Now developing an MFA thesis at the University of New Orleans, Walker uses these drips as an integral part of their visual language while incorporating archival imagery of the African Diaspora, activating a history they can see being erased.

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Brian Hollis (Indianapolis, IN) is a self-taught Portrait, Fine Art, Fashion, & Street Photographer originally from the Eastside of Indianapolis; known primarily for his use of film as his medium in the photography industry. He is inspired by his own personal experiences and celebrated photographers, directors, and artists alike such as Gordon Parks, Hype Williams, John Singleton, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Through the art of collaboration and community engagement, Brian is dedicated to remaining authentic to himself and connecting genuinely with like-minded individuals who share an appreciation of the light and the darkness of life as well as the many other affinities and characteristics that make human beings who they are.

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Brochevski (Amai Rawls Jr.) (Louisville, KY) creates collages using hand-cut U.S. currency in an effort to place monetary value on mental health. In his George Series, Rawls recreates scenes from art history and his own life, in which every character is played by George Washington. The surreal landscapes and vignettes that result explore a wide range of human emotions, while questioning society’s overemphasis on material gain and underemphasis on mental health.

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Caleb Poer (Bloomington, IN) is driven by curiosity and a deep connection to emotions and introspection. Inspired by his own transformative experiences in life, his artistry encompasses a fusion of mixed media, mirror paintings, and digital creations.

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Chris Hill (Indianapolis, IN) makes photo-based work that stems from his interest in the way marginalized people are depicted in public spaces. From training his lens on advertising and signage in front of businesses catering to Black customers, to integrating images from art history, Hill examines the way personhood is projected and conveyed. In Hill’s words: “I find social affirmations of existence especially important among the marginalized, who in many cases are deemed insignificant or invisible.” Photography is a starting place for Hill, who also uses paint and assorted materials to extend his images into three dimensions, making work that is at once personal, political, and poetic.

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Christopher Newell (Indianapolis, IN) is a Chicago-born photographer and educator. He earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography from Herron School of Art + Design in 2020. Christopher’s experience playing instruments, drawing, and acting inspired him to pursue photography during college. His personal work now focuses on portraiture, documentary, street, and fashion photography, utilizing his fine art skills.

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DELISHA (Chicago, IL) currently resides on the Westside of Chicago where she creates paintings of child-like perspectives and narratives. Inspired by Bill Watterson’s comics, and the late great Dr. Seuss, DELISHA definitely does it for the kids. She speaks of their dreams and nightmares, their potential and their sadness, and would rather view them as “little people sorting out their emotions”, and not just as “children”. Her imagery of children and toys speaks of those experiences hidden in the adult psyche in detail, evoking imagination in us all.

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Desirae Brown (Lafayette, IN) is currently an MFA student in Liberal Arts. Her work responds to her experience growing up as a multiethnic child and addresses her mother’s influence on her in their single-parent household, being a woman and a single mother herself, bi-ethnicity, and social class. Her work aims to generate space and discussions around these themes individually and collectively.

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Estéban Whiteside (Washington, DC) is a self-taught artist. Whiteside’s hard truths through childlike, reductive forms reveal the difficult realities of American society. Boldly colored, these paintings initially allow for an aesthetically playful escape however, upon further investigation reveal a sharp and critical insight of today’s world. This juxtaposition, what Whiteside refers to as Concrete Oppressionism, targets topics and their subjects to reveal the absurdity of American culture removing any room for interpretation. The obvious parodies are irreverent symbols intended to further reduce the weight of the truth which is too heavy to analyze in any other visual form.

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FINGERCREATIONS (Indianapolis, IN) creates artwork that captures the essence of his subjects and their intense emotions while embodying his unique artistic expression. Mostly known for his celebrity portraits, Kenneth credits God for his talents, and uses his spirituality as an inspiration. Kenneth is a self-taught visual artist and continues to use his unique medium of oil pastels, drywall, and broken glass while creating with just his “fingers”. He has been featured at Saks Fifth Avenue, BrunchNGrooves, Belles N Blow Ties, CCI First Fridays, The Indianapolis Children’s Museum, Indianapolis Arts Center, and The Indianapolis Public Library, Meet The Artists & Hip Hop Anthology, Fox 59, and the Indianapolis Star. He is also a member of the Indianapolis-based art collective The Eighteen Art Collective which grew in popularity after the creation of a Black Lives Matter mural on the historic Indiana Avenue in 2020. The collective was later featured in the Indianapolis Museum of Art with an exhibition titled: WE. THE CULTURE: WORKS BY THE EIGHTEEN ART COLLECTIVE.

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FITZ (Indianapolis, IN) is a self-taught artist born and raised in Indianapolis, IN. He is fueled by the desire to maintain a style that cannot be boxed in. He is a cartoonist, surrealist, and and creates abstractions from pop culture to tell stories in the hopes that they can be relatable to a universal audience.

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Gary Gee (Indianapolis, IN) is an artist whose multifaceted work is centered in drawing, but extends to painting, ceramics, mixed media, murals, and installation. As a young person, Gee was inspired by the character J.J. Evans on the show Good Times—an artist with a signature style and sense of humor—whose on-screen paintings, Gee discovered, were actually created by the artist Ernie Barnes. Drawing from a wide range of cultural references, from early rap and hip hop culture to German Expressionism, Gee’s work reflects his interest in urban architecture, art history, and travel. His ongoing series of hand-cast ceramic heads and skulls demonstrates his continuing fascination with materials, incorporating multiple layers of glazes and luster finishes, along with acrylic and spray paint ornamentation.

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Harriet Watson (Indianapolis, IN) draws inspiration from being adopted as a young child. She grew a passion for non- conformity and a rejection of societal expectations for biracial females. Many of her early works are self-portraits, depicting herself in different environments, often surrealist with vibrant colors, and using oil or acrylic paint. After spending two years at Ohio Wesleyan University studying art and psychology, and nearly two years at Herron School of Art and Design, she finished her degree at Indiana University, Bloomington, with a BA in psychology in 2020. After graduating from IU in 2020, Harriet worked alongside 17 other Black artists from Indianapolis to create a Black Lives Matter mural on the historic Indiana Avenue in downtown Indianapolis. Harriet enjoys painting portraits with acrylics and draws inspiration from Black female artists from the 70s, such as Adrian Piper and Faith Ringgold. Harriet believes that art is necessary for society to understand each other by expressing themselves without shame or stigma, and that art can be used as a universal language to reach that goal.

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India Cruse-Griffin (Richmond, IN) is an accomplished Midwestern artist and educator who earned her Bachelor of Science in Art Education from Ball State University. Her love of art, family, and community came at an early age when her Mother concentrated on the family being close, exposure to the arts, and strong family beliefs. India’s art is exhibited throughout the Midwest including museums, hospitals, art galleries, universities, both public and private, across the country. India has served as an Indiana Arts Commissioner, Legislative Arts Advocacy Council, Humanities and Racial Equality member, Art Museum Board, Art Teacher, and on several state and local committees. Her works are brilliant with color and feature multi-layered, multi-textured representations of the people in her life, inspired from her childhood memories growing up in Indiana.

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Jay McKay (New Orleans, LA) is a self-taught artist who uses bold bright color palettes in his works to signal both joy and hope, while also exploring subject matters of childhood nostalgia, love, and the celebration of culture.

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John Moore (Indianapolis, IN) strives to create transformative art, combining symbols, colors, philosophy of the ready-made, and letters to critique the status quo and encourage the viewer to pause and reflect. Moore’s style includes color blocks, geometric patterns, and thick lines influenced by the graphic style of Pop art. He wants his art to be familiar but different and prompt conversations that can reshape us and the world around us.

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Joshua A.M. Ross (Indianapolis, IN) holds an MFA in Art from the University of California, Irvine, and a BFA in Photography from Herron School of Art in Indianapolis, Indiana. Ross’s work explores the interplay between drawing and photography through notions of performance, occasioning sculptural and spatial interventions. His artworks incorporate creative participants, fabrics, and bodily limbs as critical focal points interlaced with representational and abstract scenes. In tandem with his completion of a residency at Wells College, String Room Gallery, New York, 2022, and Massachusetts Liberal Arts College, Artist Lab, 2021, Ross opened solo presentations titled Stumbling Stumbling and come inside. Other recent notable exhibitions Ross’s work has been featured in include Shadow Tracer at the Aspen Museum of Art in Aspen, Colorado, 2022-2023, Loitering is Delightful at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, 2019-2020 Slippers at Queens LA, 2019 a series of performances titled Telathon at Human Resources Los Angeles, 2019.

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Julian Jamaal Jones (Noblesville, IN) inherited an appreciation for quilting, fashion, and art from his great grandmother Elsie. To create his own colorful, abstract, and gestural quilts, Jones often begins with sketching, working quickly and intuitively to process the sense of alienation he experiences as a Black man in white spaces. The resulting works bridge the mediums of drawing, textile, and sculpture, while also memorializing Black culture through the historical language of African American quilting.

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Justin A. Carney (Indianapolis, IN) is an artist and educator who uses autobiographical photography to question how death and grief affect familial connections—the bonds that keep a family together and cause them to separate, and how grief shapes an individual. Much of Carney’s artistic practice deals with confronting and exposing grief surrounding death to create an avenue for not only himself but also for others to find healing and cope with the deaths in their lives. Carney is originally from Baltimore, Maryland. He received his MFA in Photography at Indiana University Bloomington. He holds a BFA in Photography from Pennsylvania College of Art &. Design. He is the recipient of the Bloomington Arts Commission 2022 Emerging Artist Grant. He has been awarded the First Place Single Image Award from LensCulture Art Photography Awards 2023 and the Best in Show Award in the 2020 Emerging Vision, Colorado Photographic Arts Center Biennial Student Show. Carney’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally.

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Karen R. Pope (Indianapolis, IN) credits the combined influences of 60’s television programs, 70’s music, comic books and comic strips, a huge interest in metaphysics, and the vividness of stories told by her mother and paternal grandfather in helping to inform her artistic practice as a poet, writer, and installation artist. Even before learning to read and write, she developed a fascination with how cartoons and television programs spelled out concussive sounds and guttural noises, like Ka-Pow, Boom, Bang, Ugh, Yikes, and Boo, and this helped her to cultivate a keen sense of inflection and a love of words. Partnered with her brother, printmaker Carl R. Pope, her writings have led to numerous innovative collaborations including image and text installations exhibited at Wadsworth Athenaeum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut; The Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, Ohio; The International Center of Photography in New York, New York; and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, New York. With her poetry and writing, Pope endeavors to have her voice speak from the position of witness with profound clarity as opposed to an entangled victim of circumstances.

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Kyng Rhodes (Indianapolis, IN) is called to painting by his observations of society, a long-held love of graphic expression, and his own spirituality. Formally trained as a graphic designer, Rhodes moved away from commercial work to illuminate topics he hopes to see more collective reflection and dialogue around–environmental sustainability, care, and familial relationships. Vibrant color palettes, intricate botanical borders, and stylized figures hallmark his current work, encouraging joy and optimism alongside more complicated stories about race, environmentalism, and intersectionality.

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LaShawnda Crowe Storm (Indianapolis, IN) is a mixed media and community-based artist, activist, community builder and occasionally an urban farmer. Whether making artwork or sowing seeds, she uses her creative power as a vehicle for dialogue around topics such as racial and gender violence, social change and justice. At the core of her practice is a desire to create community; any community in which the process of making art creates a space for difficult discussions with an eye towards community healing. Crowe Storm has received numerous awards for art and community activism including but not limited to: ArtPlace America National Creative Placemaking Award ($200K), DeHaan Artists of Distinction Award, Creative Renewal Award (2011 and 2022) and a three time winner of the Puffin Foundation Award. She received an M.F.A. from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has received training and certification in a variety of community-based dialogue methodologies, racial justice and community development processes.

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Matthew Cooper (Indianapolis, IN) describes his work as “equal parts creation and destruction.” His mixed media paintings begin in the hard-to-reach recesses of his own memory and come into form as three-dimensional examinations on canvas. The tedious, physical act of building up collected materials, paint, and cardboard, then peeling back the layers, mimics the emotional work he engages to source concepts and imagery. Cooper details his process, “as this shadow work is never completely done, I often repurpose old works to carve away something new from them.” An Indianapolis native, Cooper’s work to unearth personal truths doubles as work to access and amplify the collective memories and traumas of his community.

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Menika Lue (New York, NY) was born in New York and raised in Orlando, FL. She is the daughter of a Jamaican mother and Jamaican-Chinese father and has studied art since 2011. Menika uses oil paint, sculpture, and mixed media to re-create the black, female body. She pierces, bejewels, and adorns her paintings, along with creating excess room for these figures to live. Menika received the Indiana University President’s Diversity Fellowship to pursue her Masters Degree in Fine Arts. She recently graduated in spring 2020. While attending IU she also received the Mary Jane McIntire Endowed Fellowship. Menika received her Bachelors of Fine Arts from Florida state university in 2016.

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Miss Jaws (Indianapolis, IN) is Jessica Garcia, an artist originally from Florida now residing in Indianapolis with her husband and cat. She earned her BFA in Illustration from Ringling College of Art and Design in 2016 and continues to work professionally in the art field.

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Donny Bradfield (St. Louis, MO) better known as Shabez Jamal, is an interdisciplinary artist based in New Orleans, LA. His work, rooted in still portraiture, experimental video, and performance, interrogates physical, political, and social- economical space by using queerness, not as a means of speaking about sexuality, but as a catalyst to challenge varying power relations. Often turning the lens on himself, Jamal utilizes self-portraiture as a means of radically redefining the parameters of racial and sexual identity. Jamal received his BIS from the University of Missouri – St. Louis in 2019 and received his MFA from Tulane University in the spring of 2022 where he was also awarded a Mellon Community-Engaged Research Fellowship. In 2020 Jamal was also an inaugural member of Harvard Universities Commonwealth: In the city Fellowship.

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Shadé Bell (Washington, DC) also known as “Shady the Art Lady,” is an accomplished artist born in Indianapolis, IN and is currently based in Washington, DC. Her distinct style blends abstraction and storytelling, while highlighting her well-known ancestral figures. Shadé has made a lasting impact not only on her hometown but also the artistic landscape nationwide with numerous shared exhibitions, collaborations, murals and solo exhibitions, including a four part installation series: Wandering through the Shade. With a profound passion for using art as a tool for healing and personal growth, Shadé’s work deep dives into the realms of resiliency, black culture, and the human experience. Through vibrant colors and expressive brushwork, her paintings tell her stories of triumph over adversity and inspire others to embrace their own creative journeys. In 2022, Shadé became the first artist with a permanent mural on Butler University’s Campus (located in the Black Affairs Hub). She was a part of the historical Murals for Racial Justice initiative in 2020. Her work has also been published in Forbes and The New York Times.

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TASHA BECKWITH (Indianapolis, IN) established an early interest in art as a child, influenced by an artist aunt. She graduated from Herron School of Art and Design, where she developed her love for painting and drawing, then moved into digital media. Today, her style embraces and combines traditional and digital tools. She is passionate about making art accessible to all, a driving force behind her affinity for public art. She recently received the Distinguished Alumni Award from Herron School of Art and Design.

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Terrible Tony (South Bend, IN) is a mixed media artist pursuing art full-time for over 5 years. He has work ranging from acrylic, spray paint, airbrush and digital design. His work has been shown across the Midwest and in New York City.

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Trotter (Detroit, MI) works in visual and culinary mediums. Real-world concepts veiled in simple childlike disguises such as anime inspire his practice. Through collague and photography works, he considers the nuance in concepts such as racism, classism and sexism between himself, his subject and the world at large. In most cases, that consideration reveals that “all that glitters ain’t gold and if you peel back a surface layer or two, interconnecting “roots” begin to wink at you from the ether”. His goal is two-fold: to create narratives and experiences that consider human reality as nuanced, and to venerate the Black body, paying homage to those who came before as well as those who live today. He co-owns a gallery alongside his partner Jantaé called Someday in Detroit, Michigan.

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Will Watson (Brooklyn, NY) interrogates the fate of our memories and affirms upbeat moments of existence, family, travel, and leisure with his paintings. Watson’s work is both autobiographical and aware of art-history and pop-culture references. Expressionist mark-making and quick, gestural paint strokes are sourced from real life, photographs, and memories. They emphasize values and life lessons passed down through generations. Painting is a way for Watson to honor the spirit of times and individuals we hope to learn more about and remember forever.

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Yeabsera Tabb (New York, NY) is a multi-disciplinary artist who works with printmaking, sculpture, fiber arts, collage, sound, and video immersive experiences. She explores themes of place, identity, freedom, and immigration, drawing inspiration from her African heritage. Her work is heavily informed by personal experience, history, nature, and ideas of individual and collective memory. Using wood, Ethiopian textiles, found objects, natural dyes, and embroidery, she illustrates the tension between time and memory, and how our identity is embedded in our environment.

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Angelbert Metoyer is a multi-disciplinary American artist working in the realm of figurative abstraction whose output over the last 30 years has been at the forefront of the afrofuturist movement. Metoyer studied at the Atlanta College of Art, the Savannah College of Art\ and Design, and Texas Southern University. Metoyer’s work is in the permanent collections of the U.S. Department of State and The Museum of Fine Arts.

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Dr. Ablade Glover is a painter who works in oils with the palette knife to capture crowded scenes as panoramas and the hustle and bustle of towns. He squeezes rich colours straight onto canvas and uses a palette knife to build up the images. He has concentrated on marketscapes, townscapes, forestscapes, believing “the political, economic, and social climate of the nation is determined at the market.” His works are found in public and private collections worldwide.

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Betty Acquah, one of Accra’s foremost female painters, investigates her beliefs regarding the true nature of Ghanaian women. The trials, ambitions, celebrations, and successes of ordinary but inspirational woman form the central theme of her rich and florid canvasses. She maintains that women are the unsung heroines of the Ghanaian Republic. The images she depicts tell of ordinary women working courageously towards a greater Ghana. After attending Wesley Girl’s High and Holy Child schools in Cape Coast, she proceeded to the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi where she obtained a first class degree. She later pursued the M.F.A. (painting) program at Kwame Nkrumah. She has worked at the Centre for National Culture in Accra, Ghana and is currently working at the Berj Art Gallery, Accra. Acquah has participated in exhibitions in Ghana as well as abroad.

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Nyornuwofia Agorsor is a Ghanaian artist (Painter/Musician). Being largely self-taught, the style of her work is characterized by an immediacy and innocence that appeals to all, especially children. Nyornuwofia’s friendly, almost jovial canvases readily disperse their poignant messages without the dizzying pretentions and trappings of the adult world. She believes in the essence of quality family moments and spends a great deal of her time sharing both artistic and academic knowledge with her own children, an influence on both the subject matter and style of her work. She explores our differences as well as our similarities and how we can make this world the better place we want it to be.

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Patrick Turkson’s work is as vibrant in color as it is powerful in meaning. His process of working with found flip-flops and discarded plastics, examines the notions of identity, memory, and waste. Turkson’s process and work show the role an artist and art itself can play within a community- His pieces are not art, for art’s sake, but art that aims to reclaim, transform, and repair. He received his MFA degree in Painting at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana and is currently Senior Lecturer at Takoradi Technical University in Ghana.

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Lavett Ballard describes her work as a re-imagined visual narrative of people of African descent. Her use of imagery reflects social issues affecting primarily Black women’s stories within a historical context. Photos are deconstructed and layered on reclaimed wood fences; the use of fences is a symbolic reference to how fences keep people in and out physically, just as racial and gender identities do so socially.

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Móyòsóré Martins (New York, NY) combines figurative, abstract, and narrative elements drawn from his upbringing in Lagos, Nigeria, by a Brazilian father and a Nigerian mother from Ekiti state, as well as his journey from Nigeria to his Bronx studio. His work is deeply symbolic and often features cultural and personal iconography, bold brushstrokes, thick oil paint, drawings, scribbles, collaged materials, and text. The vibrant, heavily layered canvases are interspersed with spiritual elements and wishes, both manifested and fulfilled, blending his traditional Yoruba cultural roots with his contemporary vision of art.

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Dwight White II (Chicago, IL) is a multi-media artist who straddles the line between fine art, sociology, and experiential design. Raised in Houston TX, White first encountered the intersection of artistic experiences, consumer insights, and sports while attending Northwestern University as a student-athlete. Nuanced, Black human behavior and personal experiences are prevalent subjects throughout his work. He is inspired by the ways capturing truth visually engages and connects people. He enbraces his art practice as a way to document the history of connected cultural experiences. His practice extends to building strategies for growth with organizations across industries by understanding complex societal structures and current behaviors of consumers. White is the creator of Something I Can Feel (SICF), an immersive art-driven experience designed to inspire, uplift, and empower communities through visual art, music, and thoughtful programming. The annual public exhibition honors and supports Chicago’s elite creative community prioritizing social connectivity, mental health, and wellness.

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