The Ties that Bind: The church, identity, activism,

 

 

DESCRIPTION

Please join the Office of the Dean, the Diversity Committee, and Gallery O on H for an exhibit of art and photography in honor of Black History Month. The exhibit explores the African American experience in the United States through a collection of documentary photography, oil paintings, and artwork that incorporates weaving and textiles to address issues of identity and belonging.

For over seven generations, Johns Hopkins SAIS has produced graduates who have gone on to tackle some of the most pressing policy challenges in the world. As an internationally-focused school, we push our students to find constructive, collaborative, and thoughtful approaches to solving any problem anywhere. And while the study of race in the United States is not a traditional component of the international affairs curriculum, we continue to incorporate it into our programming as the national dialogue on race in the country has intensified and evolved in recent years. It is in this spirit of seeking greater education and social change that we host this exhibit.

The works in this exhibit have been curated by Shamila N. Chaudhary, Senior Advisor to the Dean and Fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute, who has started an initiative on visual arts with policy impact in mind. For more information, contact schaudhary@jhu.edu.

We are proud to host the following artists:

Sheila Crider
Steven Cummings
Katie Dance
Jay Durrah
Amber Robles-Gordon
Nana Gyesie
Miki Jourdan
Chinedu Osuchukwu
Stacey Lewis
Chris Suspect
Lloyd Wolf
Joy Sharon Yi 


About the Artists

Sheila Crider is an independent mid-career artist based in Washington, DC. She is an active member of Washington Project for the Arts and panelist for the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities.

Steven Cummings is a photographer based in the Bloomingdale neighborhood of Washington, DC who documents the changes and growing development in the city. He received his MFA at Maryland College Institute of Art.

Katie Dance is a documentary photographer and videographer with a passion for visual storytelling from the Washington, D.C. area. She received her Master's Degree in New Media Photojournalism from George Washington University.

Jay Durrah is a self-taught artist from Western PA who has been sketching since the age of nine. He received a B.A. in Political Science from Howard University.

Amber Robles Gordon is a mixed media visual artist who works with found objects and textile to create assemblages, large-scale sculptures and installations. She completed her Masters of Fine Arts from Howard University.

Nana Gyesie specializes in street, documentary, and portrait photography. His work is shaped by inspiration he draws from lived lives, the public space, and The City, in any country.

Miki Jourdan concentrates on street and environmental portraits, working to take candid photos that bring out people’s inner humanity and the joys and obstacles they face. A non-profit librarian, Miki has lived in Washington's Capitol Hill neighborhood since 2001.

Stacey Lewis is a metro D.C. based street photographer who loves the challenge of connecting the viewer to an ordinary, familiar scene with everyday people and helping them see her subject in a different light.

Chinedu Osuchukwu is a Nigerian-American artist who graduated from The Corcoran College of Art. His work has been featured by Oprah Winfrey’s O Magazine, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Watergate Gallery. Osuchkuwu has also been an art teacher in Washington DC area schools for the past 15 years.”

Chris Suspect is a street and documentary photographer hailing from the Washington, D.C. area. He specializes in capturing absurd and profound moments in the quotidian.

Lloyd Wolf is an award-winning photographer and educator whose work has been in over 100 exhibitions and is collected in numerous museums and private collections. He has taught at Shepherd College, George Mason University, and to homeless and immigrant youth.

Joy Sharon Yi is an independent photographer and filmmaker based in Northern Virginia who uses media as a means for examining important social and historic issues. She received her Master’s degree in New Media Photojournalism at GW's Corcoran School of the Arts and Design. 

About Gallery O on H: Collecting art for 35 years led the Gallery owners, Steve and Dolly, to eventually bring their dream and passion for art to life on H St NE. What started as free shows, curated by Dolly and with not a price tag in site, has grown into a practiced philosophy of cultivating local art, artists, and events open to everyone with a passion for art. 

Kenney Auditorium, School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University

1740 Massachusetts Avenue, NW 

Washington, DC 20036

Photo credit: Chris Suspect

Exhibits Showcases East of the River Artists

Between the two galleries housed in the Anacostia Arts Center and the Honfleur Gallery on Good Hope Road, there’s no shortage of art that conveys the level of talent that lies East of the River in Wards 7 and 8.

he 11th annual East of the River Exhibition at the Honfleur Gallery features three female artists who have their own distinct styles and inspirations, but the pieces on view have a strong affinity between them and come from similar creative places. Each artist makes an individual statement about spirituality, identity and the repetition of forms and textures, but together they create a continuum.

Asha Elena Casey, Sheila Crider and Amber Robles-Gordon’s work meld together in this annual exhibition as if they were created to be contained in one space. Both Crider and Robles-Gordon work in mixed media, employing the use of fabric, jewelry, photographs and other materials that fold into their works, conveying traditions, personal statements and statements on race and inclusion.

Crider, who received multiple Small Project Grants from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities, is a familiar fixture in the arts scene in Anacostia, having recently created a public art project at the new St. Elizabeths. Her work at Honfleur stems from a project that she intended to result in quilting. Instead, her “Paducah Residency Project” made use of the quilt batting in a unique way with braided lengths of fabric representing humanity, interconnectedness, binding and chains.

Similarly, Robles-Gordon’s “Let Me Tell You About the Baes and the Bees” series, which usually employs found objects, relates to Crider’s work in the repetition of chains, although Robles-Gordon uses jewelry and strands of pearls to create the same verticality of mixed textures.

Casey, the most junior of the three women, uses the repetition of a central image in “Petra in White” and “Petra in Black,” layering on deep and varied textures around the face of a black woman.

hile the exhibition creates a rhythm that draws on related elements of the three artists’ works, next door at the Anacostia Arts Center’s Blank Space Gallery, the inaugural DC Artist East Exhibition is an eclectic amalgam of different media and approaches by more than a dozen artists who live East of the River, some familiar to exhibits there and around the city, and others who are exhibiting for the first time. The artists included in this exhibit are members of an online community of creators living and working East of the River.

emy Aqui, a photographer who has lived in Anacostia for the past four years, is showing his enhanced photography for the first time at the center. He joins more familiar names such as photographers Jonathan French and Bruce McNeil and mixed media artists Jay Coleman and Malik Lloyd in this expansive show, which takes up every bit of wall space in the broad, light-filled lobby and hallways.

fter fellow artists encouraged him to show his work, Aqui entered two of his photographs into the exhibit which were selected by Anacostia Arts Center’s creative director.

ne of his photos, “Townhouse in NW,” shows a very different view of what might normally be an everyday part of Washington’s landscape. The multi-textured house has a large banana tree in the front, and, according to Aqui, is reminiscent of a tradition in his former home of San Francisco, “where a new homeowner is accepted into their neighborhood by having a tree presented to the new neighbor as a welcoming gesture.”

”I attempt to turn photos of mine into colorful imagery of work [such as old postcards] depicting a fading neighborhood landscape,” he said, describing the surreal façade of the house’s bright, tropical colors.

third exhibit by photographer Vincent Brown looks at the plight of the homeless in D.C., taken with his iPhone, titled “City Under Siege” in the Vivid Solutions Gallery. Although he had intended his work to be focused on other aspects of life in Washington, Brown was taken aback at the prevalence of homeless people on the streets, which then demanded his focus.

art of the annual art exhibits at this stretch of Good Hope Road also includes the bestowing of the annual East of the River Distinguished Artist Award. In 2012, the East of the River Distinguished Artist Award was created to celebrate the exemplary caliber of artists from Ward 7 and 8. This year, the award went to James Terrell for his brightly colored abstract paintings included in the exhibit in the Blank Space Gallery.

Is acrylic painting “Kind of Blue” was inspired by jazz trumpeter Miles Davis and the song it is named for. The East of the River Artist Award provides prize money for the artist to use to further their creative career.

ll three exhibitions are on display until Aug. 5 at the Honfleur Gallery at 1241 Good Hope Road SE and the Anacostia Arts Center at 1231 Good Hope Road SE.

For more information, visit www.archdc.org or call 202-631-6291.