Announcing “Seed to Stars” Open for Viewing in the Windows of Downtown Olympia’s Goldberg Building
The Exhibition is Curated by Black Well Red Thread Collective
Photo courtesy of Black Well Red Thread Collective.
Olympia Artspace Alliance invites the community to the latest Art in Olympia Storefronts project, curated by Black Well Red Thread Collective. The Olympia Artspace Alliance invited members Shameka Gagnier, Cholee Gladney and Aisha Harrison to curate the downtown Art in Olympia Storefronts after the Collective created the installation Starbridge to Your Door in June 2020.
Each artist has interpreted the Seeds to Stars theme, with some exploring representational justice and spiritual healing while others are connecting the cycles of the natural world with the cyclic nature of violence and resilience in our communities. “We hope the windows collectively communicate the solidarity we feel bringing together this exceptional group of Black artists,” said Black Well Red Thread Collective.
The Collective said Seeds to Stars is a work about possibility and about gathering and planting our ancestral seeds as resources for future protection, strength, and growth. Our ancestors were connected to nature and the land as an anchor, as nourishment, as a source of strength through struggle. We continue that connection as we cast seeds of hope to grow within ourselves as future ancestors. The cycles of ancestors and descendants are eternal, like plant growth cycles, from seeds to seedlings to plants that eventually produce more seeds.
“As curators, it was important for us to carry forward the theme of ancestral strength and connection from the Starbridge installation, so we sought proposals that drew from ancestral resources centering growth, potential and the resilience of our communities, offering a vision of collective liberation, cultural wealth, and regeneration as well as visioning how to become the best possible future ancestors we can be,” said Black Well Red Thread Collective.
The exhibit opened for viewing mid-August and will be up through mid-November 2021.
Who: Olympia Artspace Alliance and Black Well Red Thread Collective
What: Seeds to Stars, an art exhibit that is part of OAA’s Art in Storefronts project featuring the work of Bakari Davis, Shameka Gagnier, Cholee Gladney, Aisha Harrison, Travis Johnson and De’Ja Marshall
Where: Windows of the Goldberg Building, 403 Capitol Way S, Olympia
When: The Exhibit is Open for Viewing mid-August Through Mid-November
Black Well Red Thread Collective Artist Statement
We have been in community and conversations for years, and our relationship has become a kinship. Over the last two and a half years we have been meeting specifically to workshop our individual art practices. We are mothers, partners, teachers, and creatives who work in multiple disciplines. Within our circle we have found many layers of commonality that feeds and drives our work. This has gifted us with a depth of collective engagement when approaching each other's work. Within this container we have formed a collective and installed our first collaboration as Black Well Red Thread Collective. A huge part of our praxis is community engagement and place based practice; whether that takes place in the future, in honoring our ancestors or within the various intersections we walk. Our hope is to create pathways to new possibilities, remedies, and future - in collaboration.
Learn more at https://www.blackwellredthreadcollective.com/
Meet the Artist: Bakari Davis Project: Najja
Artist Statement: I am a visual artist, musician, and poet. I tell hidden stories through my art/writing that need to be revealed in this society we live in. This project, Najja, reflects self-discovery and spiritual healing; a vision that embodies the seeds to stars theme of growth, ancestral energy and survival of the indigenous people. I am my ancestors, using sacred energy and spiritual intuition to approach life situations, the collective bond, and the roots, just as nature interconnects everything in the cosmos. I am interested in compassion, diversity, and the universal experiences of humanity that can move us out of racism with collectively open hearts and a deep attachment to nature. Pushing beyond physical life, I want my work to challenge you and make you think deeper. I integrate my journeys across the world and the unknown with sound and colors, storytelling about my senses. My art shows my memories of the past, present and future.
Artist Bio: Bakari Davis is a musician, storyteller, healer, traveler and visual artist who was raised in Northwest America by a single mother of two that occasionally moved around due to financial issues. Life was too volatile and in perpetual displacement for Bakari who was conditioned to spend his childhood in 6 different cities and over 10 schools for him to identify with any place he can call home. Racism, equity, toxicity, injustice; he has witnessed them all since the onset of his being. There was nothing there to hold on to except telling stories in his head, wandering outside alone and building a solid relationship with nature. He depended on pre-technology indigenous history that channeled his energy to approach his life situations using his ancestral knowledge within a limited circumference of reality. That was not enough, for there had to be something that bonded humankind to the roots, as nature interconnects everything in the cosmos! In that unpredictable journey without an influential figure in place, there was only the road and nature to rely on; and the pen and paper to tell the story; the challenges, emotions, surprises and expectations as they manifested themselves in his infantile solitude. Yet, he had to be a role model for his younger brother who was growing faster than other kids. Bakari was destined to adopt love, patience and perseverance from the mother; empathy and responsibility from the brother. He found compassion, diversity and universalism out of racism that collectively opened the heart with a deep attachment to nature and exploring other cultures and human conditions around the world. His favorite subjects as a kid were writing and art, hidden talents that exploded in time as his mind kept on reflecting self-discovery and spiritual healing that had to be communicated in original musical format and diaspora art. Bakari stands relaxed and in control to share his cumulative concept of existence in the universal podium of ART!
Meet the Artist: De’Ja Marshall Project: Outgrowth II
Artist Statement: I am a firm believer in visual art’s capacity to serve as a powerful conduit in the integration of inspiring marginalized communities through imagery with creative representational justice. Complicatedly, this series is a work in progress and is the second iteration of a more long-winded exploration of the concept of existence as resistance and its breadth. For as long as my work has been produced with the level of intention it hosts now, I have delved deeper and deeper into what resistance means to me and what role representation plays in it. I cannot remove the context of my identity from my art, nor do I aim to. Therefore, intersectionality inadvertently informs this series.
I spend a lot of time thinking about the ways that we- within a societal context, do not do nearly enough to address the severe lack of the provision of space for Black voices
and talents, and what that lack of representation means for our communities. More pointedly, this work seeks to revitalize a conversation about what spaces Black women are expected in and how are we anticipated to show up. It begs the question, why it is that the legitimacy of Black women’s rights to self-actualization are to be decided by examinations established in white supremacist framework, internalized anti-blackness, and misogynoir. Outgrowing misguided analyses of our agency and the capacity we all hold to employ media and art as safe spaces to disseminate images that we feel are empowering, unifying, and liberating serves as the springboard from which this work leaps.
Artist Bio: De’Ja Marshall is a narrative tableau photographer based out of Tacoma, Washington. Her interest in photography was first piqued at ten years old while spending time with her grandfather’s digital camera. Over the course of her extensive photography journey, the subject matter with which she grappled through her art ebbed and flowed with the ever-changing interests of her youth. The latest iteration of her work centers QTPOC (Queer/Trans People of Color) communities and the pursuance of representational justice on behalf of her peers. As a recent graduate from the Evergreen State College in Olympia, De’Ja’s most recent work serves as a culmination of the development of her artistic praxis as an undergraduate student. It explores the nature of Black femininity and the fluidity of divine feminine energy as it persists outside of the white gaze.
Meet the Artist: Travis Johnson Project: Six Words
Artist Statement: My question, "Who was violent on your behalf? is a question that can be used as an apparatus for discourse in and around the problematic relationships with state sanctioned violence. I am interested in a discussion that can lead to an in-depth look at the mode in which violence is cultivated and utilized as a fundamental function in our culture. I am looking at the narratives that have been placed around violence to justify policing and the sustainability of this violence. I am also thinking about the historic violent actions taken by the oppressed and the oppressor. I see this question as a catalyst to point to accountability for what we accept in our culture. This question can serve as a personal question of self-contemplation or a group discussion.
Artist Bio: Travis Johnson has spent the last 3 decades developing his craft as a creative and uses his art to explore the human experience by touching on the whimsical, silly, serious, and sometimes painful side of life. He uses the subtle nuances of classic western world iconography to tell a highly illustrated and visually rich narrative.
His main artistic inspirations are: Bill Watterson, Justin Bua, Mark Bradford, Lawrence Wiener, Kerry James Marshall, Kara Walker, Michael Hafftka, Bill Turner
Along with his visual art, Travis has spent the last 25 years singing throughout the US on various tours with his family singing group Fivacious. He continues to share his music as a solo act through out the US.
Travis was born in Southern California, where he grew up with his 4 siblings in the Mojave Desert. He is currently based out of Olympia, WA.
Follow Travis Johnson on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/tijstudios42/
Meet the Artists: Shameka Gagnier, Aisha Harrison and Cholee Gladney Project: Seeds to Stars
Artist Shameka Gagnier
Shameka Gagnier presently resides with their partner and family in the unceded traditional territories of The Nisqually, Puyallup and Squaxin Island Peoples. They carry bloodlines from Central (Pure’pecha) and Northern (Cherokee Nation) Turtle Island, Africa (Northern and Western), and Europe (Ireland, England, Spain); many stories and names have been lost due to exploitation, foster care, and adoption. They are committed to working within those intersections to create and support spaces that center art, food, and nourishment for black and indigenous communities. Currently, they are a first-generation student working towards their undergraduate degree at The Evergreen State College, where they are focusing on Indigenous Studies, Multicultural Communications, and Art.
Artist Aisha Harrison
Aisha Harrison has roots in Olympia, WA going back four generations. She studied abroad in Spain during high school, prompting her to be a Spanish major as an undergraduate. She loved studying Latin American literature because of the ways in which the Indigenous people used Spanish stories and images, subverting them and intertwining them with their own, to ensure that Indigenous peoples, images, and stories survived. These camouflaged acts of resistance reminded her of ways that she navigates being of African American and European American mixed heritage in predominantly European American spaces. Aisha uses the body and sculpture as a site for exploration of the lived experiences of racism, ancestral (human and non-human) learning and connection, and the blend of histories held within her body. Her work shows reverence for real bodies (often her own) while also incorporating elements that are physical manifestations of the intangible.
Artist Cholee Gladney
Cholee Gladney is an interdisciplinary visual artist, vocalist, and writer originally from the Seattle area currently living and working in Olympia. She has an educational background in cultural studies, counseling psychology, and drawing/painting.
Through her work, Cholee is excavating new and existing archetypes that can serve as spiritual resources to move us through our most challenging moments. She hopes to create spaciousness from scarcity and transform pain into learning. Her images encourage us to know our inner worlds more intimately so that we may connect more deeply to our truest nature and to one another. She is deeply influenced by the natural world, the stars, the ancestral realm, folk art, self-taught artists, and surrealism. Cholee uses image-making as a window into the interior world- a place to process and locate a sense of wholeness and peace. Imaging is Cholee’s spiritual practice - a bridge to transformation and healing. Making use of what we are given is one of Cholee’s guiding principles, and she returns to creative practices again and again to process her experiences, to heal intergenerational injury while tending to current wounds, and to connect with divine sources of energy and clarity for supportive guidance.