Contemporary photographer Adraint Bereal, the artist behind the nationally recognized project The Black Yearbook. Bereal’s multimedia collection and physical book speak to the experiences of Black students at the University of Texas at Austin, a predominantly white campus. Via Zoom, registration required.
Kevin Huizenga presents a history of his work in comics and graphic novels including his Ignatz Award winning series Ganges. Huizenga discusses his experiences working on a serialized comic and the ins and outs of big and small publishing as well self promotion for artists. Via Zoom, registration required.
New York–based contemporary photographer Jon Henry discusses his career and work. Re-composed with Afro-American mothers and sons, Henry’s photographs from his project Stranger Fruit uniquely reference Michelangelo’s Pietà. This project responds to the frighteningly regular deaths of African American men through police violence. Via Zoom, registration required.
Time and the River’s Edge presents 25 years of Patty Stone’s creative work and celebrates her teaching career at Wheaton. The exhibition, displayed on campus as well as virtually, includes paintings and prints spanning the mid-1990s through 2020. Stone’s work explores the tension between nature and the built environment through mapping, collage, and the fluidity and texture of her chosen mediums.
In this talk Patty will provide greater detail about this exhibition, her artwork and her career in general.
Sumell, an award-winning multidisciplinary artist and activist, will share her work on interrogating the abuses of the American criminal justice system. Sumell will talk about her ongoing public art project, Solitary Gardens, created to protest solitary confinement and consider alternative land use. Join us to imagine a landscape without prisons as we prepare to bring a Solitary Garden to Wheaton.
California-based comic artist Yumi Sakugawa talks about her creative practice and leads a meditation workshop on making friends with creative failure and surrendering to imperfection. This event is part of Spring into Wellness week and is sponsored by the Master Class in the Visual Arts Fund, given by a Wheaton alumna within the Evelyn Danzig Haas ’39 Visiting Artists Program.
Contemporary artist Elliott Jerome Brown, Jr. discusses his photographic installations and architectural and sculptural pieces. Brown’s work consists of compositionally obscured faces that heighten the interior landscape of the individual and the domestic spaces they inhabit. He has been featured in New York Magazine, Vice, Teen Vogue, Dazed, and more.
Interdisciplinary, multihyphenate artist Nafis White, kicks off her virtual artist residency with a discussion of her work in performance, collaborative community-assisted interventions, as well as her sculptural works created from objects commonly found in Black beauty supply stores. White has recently activated the city of Providence through her mural work, uniting a printmaking collective to respond to police brutality, voter suppression, Covid-19 and other local and global crises. During her residency White will engage Wheaton students in timely conversation as well as the production of an artwork on campus.
Join interdisciplinary visual artist April Bey as she shares how her practices and materials explore an introspective and social critique of American and Bahamian culture, contemporary pop culture, feminism, generational theory, social media, AfroFuturism, AfroSurrealism, post-colonialism and constructs of race within white supremacist systems. A brief Q&A will follow Bey’s talk. Registration is required for this Zoom event.
Dwarika is a designer, motion graphics artist, and managing director of Black Mixture, a brand strategy design company. He will discuss his creative work, his career, and his growing Black Mixture YouTube Channel.