During this conversation, the artist will discuss her creative practice in the context of collection and arrangement. She will invite visitors and attendees to browse her personal collection of inherited and found photographs and other objects to consider the ways that everyday Black folks have used these collections as a way to transmit knowledge, enact care, and cultivate beauty and joy in the face of rupture and structural limitation.
This event will also include live painting by Denise Maurice and music by Art & Design post-doc, Blair Smith aka lovenloops in conversation with themes and concepts in Everett’s work.
Artist & Homegirl Information/Bios:
Jen Everett
Jen Everett is an artist from Southfield, Michigan, currently working in Saint Louis, Missouri. Her undergraduate training in architecture informs her approach to research and making. Jen’s work considers the relationship between rupture and Black interiority through an investigation of the materials we collect, the information we hold in our bodies and where the two may converge. Her work has evolved from an image-based practice to one that includes installation time-based media and writing. Jen received an MFA from Washington University in Saint Louis where she was a Chancellor’s Graduate Fellow in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. Jen has shown at art spaces including SPRING/BREAK Art Show New York, Leo Model Gallery at Hampshire
College, Vox Populi in Philadelphia and Gallery 102 in Washington DC. Her work has been presented during lectures at the Saint Louis Art Museum, and Harvard University and published in Transition and SPOOK magazines. She has been an artist in residence at the Vermont Studio Center, Atlantic Center for the Arts and ACRE.
Denise Maurice
Denise Maurice is a long time SOLHOT homegirl and artist based in the Atlanta, GA area. She has been writing and painting since a young girl and has created several pieces for SOLHOT in the celebration of Black Girlhood and Black Girl Genius Week. She has also presented and shared her artwork in Virginia and Atlanta.
Blair Ebony Smith aka lovenloops
Dr. Blair Ebony Smith is a Post Doctoral Research Associate with Krannert Art Museum and Art Education in the School of Art & Design at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign.
