Arts Journalism
Since 2016, I have written about visual art regularly for newspapers, magazines and other publications. My work as a journalist is motivated by the belief that both art and the press provide a key public forum for civic engagement.
For ‘Taking Space’ at PAFA, women artists are as monumental as they want to be
More than 60 artists have works on display in “Taking Space: Contemporary Women Artists and the Politics of Scale” — all from the museum’s permanent collection.
Article Title
For ‘Taking Space’ at PAFA, women artists are as monumental as they want to be
Publication
The Philadelphia Inquirer
Date
June 1, 2021
Role
Author
Image
Clarity Haynes, with her painting "Janie" (left), at the “Taking Space: Contemporary Women Artists and the Politics of Scale" exhibition at PAFA.
JESSICA GRIFFIN / Staff Photographer
Artist Clarity Haynes has grown accustomed to having her work censored on social media. The images she posts — whether of her own paintings depicting the nude torsos of women, trans and nonbinary people, or the work of other queer and feminist artists — are routinely deleted by the algorithms of sites like Instagram.
It’s a frustrating echo of a broader invisibility in mainstream culture, Haynes says. “Disabled artists, fat bodies, all bodies that do not fit in — especially if they are read as female — are just literally erased.”
This Philly artist is a rising star for his portrait of poet Amanda Gorman and other astonishing work
Shawn Theodore’s work is on display through April 11 at Paradigm Gallery, in a solo exhibition called “Night Stars.”
Article Title
This Philly artist is a rising star for his portrait of poet Amanda Gorman and other astonishing work
Publication
The Philadelphia Inquirer
Date
March 3, 2021
Role
Author
Image
Philadelphia artist Shawn Theodore poses for a portrait with an image from his solo "Night Stars" exhibition at Paradigm Gallery + Studio.
DAVID MAIALETTI / Staff Photographer
When poet Amanda Gorman skyrocketed to fame in January with her inaugural poem “The Hill We Climb,” a 2018 portrait of her by Philly-based artist Shawn Theodore got caught up in the flurry as people shared it on Instagram and sought out prints on Artsy.
The photograph casts the poet as a muse in Theodore’s signature style — an elegant silhouette in jet-black against the bright pop of a yellow wall. It was the outcome of a chance introduction to Gorman in Los Angeles, and Theodore hadn’t thought about it much again until the internet took notice.
“I mean, I knew it would blow up, but I didn’t think it would go haywire,” he says.
Philly project expands nationally to ask: Who deserves a monument?
Monument Lab is the first partner in the Mellon Foundation's new “Monuments Project,” a $250 million initiative that aims “to transform the way our country’s histories are told in public spaces."
Article Title
Philly artists are in the vanguard at MoMA exhibit on art in the aPhilly project expands nationally to ask: Who deserves a monument?
Publication
The Philadelphia Inquirer
Date
January 1, 2021
Role
Author
Image
Will Sylvester uncovered the Hank Willis Thomas sculpture “All Power to All People” at the Thomas Paine Plaza across from Philadelphia City Hall as part of the 2017 Mural Arts Monument Lab project.
MICHAEL BRYANT / Staff Photographer
As cultural organizations are reeling from the upheaval of 2020, one has seen its mission merge almost seamlessly with the zeitgeist — Philadelphia’s Monument Lab.
While the pandemic has brought delays to some of its projects, Monument Lab’s broad objective to help reimagine civic memory in public space has never felt more apt. Around
the United States, whether in the dismantling of Richmond’s Monument Avenue, the creation of Black Lives Matter Plaza, or the removal of the Frank Rizzo statue near City Hall, citizens and elected oWicials have increasingly seen a question written on the landscape: Whose stories are told there and why?
Philly artists are in the vanguard at MoMA exhibit on art in the age of mass incarceration
MoMA's show 'Marking Time' is making news globally. AAMP's 'Rendering Justice', opening this month, will also bring new visibility to people and perspectives hidden by the criminal justice system.
Article Title
Philly artists are in the vanguard at MoMA exhibit on art in the age of mass incarceration
Publication
The Philadelphia Inquirer
Date
October 10, 2020
Role
Author
Image
From the video "Ain't I a Woman" (2018) by Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter, aka Isis the Savior. Courtesy of the artist.
In 2007, Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter was arrested on the first day of the ninth month of her pregnancy. Three days later, after receiving little to eat and no prenatal care at Riverside Correctional Facility in Holmesburg, she went into labor. What followed was a nightmare: 43 hours of labor culminating in an emergency cesarean section, all while shackled to a hospital bed..
Dance Performances in Historic Churches Revive Spiritual Histories
The Grounds that Shout! project put Reggie Wilson in the role of curator as well as choreographer to present his own work alongside the dances of seven Philadelphia choreographers and companies who created the performances.
Article Title
Dance Performances in Historic Churches Revive Spiritual Histories
Publication
Hyperallergic
Date
May 20, 2019
Role
Author
Image
David Brick’s May I Enter the Space? (Note: The male dancer in the photo is Jaime Maseda, not David Brick, who ordinarily dances the piece with his daughter but was replaced by Maseda on May 3, when the photo was taken.)
PHILADELPHIA — When choreographer Reggie Wilson debuted his work … they stood shaking while others began to shout at Danspace Project in 2018, he cited an unusual source of inspiration: a Black Shaker eldress named Rebecca Cox Jackson who led a small community of worshipers in Philadelphia in the 1850s and ’60s. Struck by the linkage between ecstatic Shaker dance, a visionary black woman preacher, and the dual identity of Danspace’s home, St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery, as both an arts space and an active church, Wilson layered the ideas into his choreography.
A Photographer’s Portrait of Addiction and Recovery
Jeffrey Stockbridge’s images reinsert those with opioid addictions into public discourses, picking up where mass media has failed.
Article Title
A Photographer’s Portrait of Addiction and Recovery
Publication
Hyperallergic
Date
March 11, 2019
Role
Author
Image
“Matt & Gato” (2012), courtesy of Jeffrey Stockbridge Studio.
PHILADELPHIA — Perhaps the only people with the right to look at images of suffering of this extreme order are those who could do something to alleviate it … or those who could learn from it. The rest of us are voyeurs, whether or not we mean to be.” Susan Sontag’s words in Regarding the Pain of Others (2003) refer to photographs of war, but they resonate with a present-day tragedy on US soil: opioid addiction.
The Ghosts of Cotton in the American Landscape
John E. Dowell takes as his subject one of the most influential plants in US history.
Article Title
The Ghosts of Cotton in the American Landscape
Publication
Hyperallergic
Date
February 20, 2019
Role
Author
Image
“It’s Just Cotton,” Courtesy of John E. Dowell
In his latest body of work — including 35 photographs, an installation, and an altarpiece — artist John E. Dowell takes as his subject one of the most influential plants in US history. His exhibition at the African American Museum in Philadelphia, Cotton: The Soft, Dangerous Beauty of the Past (through February 24), grapples with a poignant dissonance in American landscapes — the sense that the natural environment is at once banal and pregnant with meaning, charged with histories of race, enslavement, and migration. This dissonance shows up in several recent art projects about race: think of Rico Gatson’s 2018 video of the route, from country store to courtroom, inscribed by Emmett Till’s murder, or the new National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, where jars of earth from lynching sites are displayed.
Artist Zanele Muholi Helps Women Launch into Photography with a New Philadelphia Residency
The Women’s Mobile Museum, a residency created by photographer Zanele Muholi, mentors Philadelphia-based women in photography arts.
Article Title
Artist Zanele Muholi Helps Women Launch into Photography with a New Philadelphia Residency
Publication
Hyperallergic
Date
October 9, 2018
Role
Author
Image
“Guardian” (2018), digital c-print, Afaq, Visual Activist/Justice Educator
PHILADELPHIA — Afaq is accustomed to the reactions inspired by her turban. Often, she says, people reach out to touch her head without permission—or they just ignore her, assuming that a black woman wearing a turban doesn’t speak English. It surprises people to learn that Afaq has spent most of her life in Northeast Philadelphia. Growing up, outside of a small community of other refugees from Darfur, other kids called her “burnt chocolate.” Fellow Muslims, primarily of Arab descent, didn’t recognize her turban as a hijab.