February - March 2023
Exhibition Dates
Sedona, AZ
February 1–28, 2023
Goodyear, AZ
January 31–March 31, 2023
Online Gallery
January 31–March 31, 2023
February is a time to commemorate Black History Month and a time to celebrate Vision & Sound: An African American Experience. Now in it’s eighth year, Vision & Sound features rising and established black artists, musicians, and scholars from around the state, Vision & Sound has become one of the most anticipated events in the arts community each year.
Vision & Sound was founded by my husband, Michael and myself when we perceived a lack of awareness and attention to the art of African American artists in Arizona. In 2015, we approached the West Valley Arts Council to host a small, week-long show featuring black artists during Black History Month. Over the years, Vision & Sound has grown to span several weeks and include multiple exhibits in various locations, including performances, lectures, readings, demonstrations, and more. The advent of COVID did not diminish the impact of Vision & Sound; instead, it grew to international acclaim through live-streamed events.
In early 2021, we were meeting with an old friend, Julie Richard, who had just taken the helm of Sedona Arts Center. We had been looking for a new home for Vision & Sound and Julie was wishing to develop more diverse programming. A partnership was born. Now led by Sedona Arts Center, Vision & Sound has expanded its reach into Northern Arizona while still maintaining a partnership with West Valley cities and beyond.
Early on in the development of Vision & Sound, we reached out to Dr. Lois Brown, Director of Arizona State University’s Center for the Study of Race and Democracy to act as advisors and to moderate various discussions. She is highly regarded for her expertise in cultural equity, leadership, and social change issues. We are thrilled that the relationship with Dr. Brown has developed into a close partnership that is resulting in a Vision & Sound Symposium to be held in Sedona, Arizona this year.
We are extremely excited about the artists in this year’s line-up. We hope to see you at the various Vision & Sound events around the state.
Norma & Michael Cunningham Founders, Vision & Sound: An African American Experience
Michael Cunningham
Norma Cunningham
Founders
Sedona Arts Center
Sedona Arts Center is proud to partner with the Arizona State University Center for the Study of Race and Democracy on this year’s Vision & Sound: An African American Experience. Now in its ninth year – but only its second in Sedona – Vision & Sound focuses on creating connection between African American arts and culture and communities.
This is the first catalog we’ve created for Vision & Sound and we hope you share it with others who are interested in finding out more about the African American artists in Arizona who contribute so much to our lives through their work. We are very excited about this year’s artists – bringing back some who participated previously and adding several new artists. They are highlighted here for a deeper examination of who they are, why they create and what moves them.
For 2023, we decided to take a deeper dive in to the connection between arts and Access, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (ADEI) and explore those concepts through a Symposium style event that allows participants to interact with Vision & Sound artists while examining a deeper meaning between art and inclusion. We are extremely excited about this exploration and partnership with the CSRD. We hope this inaugural Symposium will continue to grow with Vision & Sound for many years to come.
We continue our wonderful partnerships with the City of Goodyear and the City of Glendale this year and we will open Vision & Sound at Celebrate Sedona – sponsored by the City of Sedona. The City of Goodyear hosts an exhibit that will run from February through March and an afternoon celebration on February 5th with the artists and a concert by Don Williams and Company. The Glendale Public Library will host artist lectures on February 4th and 6th.
Vision & Sound is supported by so many terrific funders. Specifically, the AZ Office of Tourism, the City of Goodyear, the City of Glendale, the ASU Center for the Study of Race & Democracy, AZ Community Foundation and The Links, Inc. We also want to acknowledge inkind support from the Best Western Arroyo Roble Hotel and Creekside Villas. We offer special thanks to the staff of the CSRD and Sedona Arts Center for all their work on this program.
Julie A. Richard CEO, Sedona Arts Center
Julie A. Richard
ASU Center for the Study of Race and Democracy
The ASU Center for the Study of Race and Democracy is honored to continue its partnership with Vision and Sound: An African American Experience and with the Sedona Arts Center.
Lois Brown, PhD, is ASU Foundation Professor of English and Director of the Center that is the only only entity at ASU and in the state of Arizona that positions race and democracy in direct relation with each other. The Center advances initiatives and creates programs that intensify engagement with race and democracy in the context of education, social justice, public history, poverty and economic opportunity, the arts, law, government, the sciences and the environment.
The Center for the Study of Race and Democracy is the only entity at ASU and in the state of Arizona to position race and democracy in direct relation with each other. We model and sustain broadly embedded and academically rooted studies of race and democracy. The Center is known within and beyond the university for its spirited and innovative programming on issues of race, democracy and the known and understudied impact of systemic and institutional racism and undemocratic practices.
The Center is a destination for those determined and willing to grapple with pressing issues such as equity in education, health, and housing; race, gender and civic discourse; race, place and public memory, and emerging technologies of democracy. We facilitate powerful and informed dialogues through programs such as the acclaimed annual programs Delivering Democracy and Social Cohesion Dialogues, our Impact Arizona series, Race, Arts and Democracy Series, the Created Equal Film and Arts Series, and our mobile writing workshops series Words on Wheels. Our programs and events feature experts and changemakers, thought leaders and accomplished professionals who engage with and inspire our audiences. Distinctive lectures, effective workshops, and meaningful collaborations are signatures of the Center.
Vision and Sound is a vital component of the Center’s Race, Arts and Democracy programming. Each year, the Vision and Sound artists inspire us with their courage, genius and innovation. Their work in diverse, experimental and traditional mediums expands our state-wide awareness and attention to the work and missions of African American artists in Arizona.
Lois Brown, PhD Director Center for the Study of Race and Democracy
Lois Brown, PhD
Symposium 2023
Understanding Culture and Race Through The Arts
Welcome
Keynote Address
“Talking Back: Visual Sounds of Resistance”
L’Merchie Frazier
Executive Director, Creative Strategic Partnerships
SPOKEArts, Boston, Massachusetts
Symposium Workshop
Race, Culture, History and the Work of Art
Lois Brown, PhD
Roundtable Conversation
Vision & Sound 2023 Artists
Moderators
Julie Richard, Sedona Arts Center
Lois Brown, ASU Center for the Study of Race and Democracy
Reflection & Calls to Action
Closing Reception
Symposium Keynote Speaker
L’Merchie Frazier, visual activist, public historian and artist, innovator, poet and holographer, is Executive Director of Creative /Strategic Partnerships for SPOKE Arts/Medicine Wheeel and formerly Director of Education and Interpretation for the Museum of African American History, Boston/Nantucket, and was recently awarded the first Museum Educator Award by the Massachusetts Council on Social Studies.
She serves the Transformative Action Project,/Violence Transformed of the Public Health Advocacy Institute at Northeastern University as Director of Creative Engagement. Her work highlights the reparative and restorative aesthetic approach to expand the historical narrative, diminishing erasure, responding to trauma, violence and crisis through artistic activities and public art that mirrors community.
Her work traces authentic evidence, providing place-based education and interdisciplinary history pedagogy, programs and workshops, projects and lectures. She delivers diversity, equity, and belonging workshops for corporations and municipalities.
Frazier has served the artistic community for over twenty years as an award winning national and international visual and performance artist and poet, in one life work “Save Me From My Amnesia”, with residencies in Brazil, Taiwan, Costa Rica, Africa, France, and Cuba.. Her artworks are collected by the Smithsonian Institution, the White House, Museum of Arts and Design, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Dallas Museum of Art, and the International Quilt Museum.
As a lecturer and workshop presenter, her audiences include youth and adults. She is a Boston Foundation Brother Thomas Fellow and Massachusetts Historical Society Fellow and is a member of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts and has recently been appointed to the Massachusetts State Arts Commission.
L’Merchie Frazier Keynote Speaker
Artist Profiles
Aaron Allen Marner is a native Phoenician currently working as a full-time and self-taught artist. He was heavily involved in art as a child. Ten years ago in Los Angeles, his passion and love for art and painting was reignited. Since then, he has been honing his craft and exhibiting work in various spaces. His art career has led to life changing opportunities and notable experiences. These include being spotlighted by the Phoenix Art Museum as an emerging artist, having solo interdisciplinary shows at Arizona State University, gaining gallery representation from Framed Gallery of Cleveland, Ohio, creating public art displays, creating his own pop-up art gallery called Pink Elephant and having his work shown in the Children’s Museum of Phoenix.
While mostly working with acrylics, acrylic pen, oil and spray paint, Marner’s approach to portrait and figurative painting includes using collage style and vibrant, colorful hues while often adding geometric shapes and aspects of nature. His work conveys a sense of abstraction and surrealism and is not subjugated by one style. Texture, heavy application of acrylic paint, palette knife strokes while using a more monochromatic style has become a vast part of my creativity.
The purpose in Aaron Allen Marner’s work often is to convey his experiences but also to give viewers a sense of power and emotion. His mission is to inspire youth as well as anyone who dreams of becoming an artist and he believes that representation is essential. “Having the ability to see someone who looks like you and who is from the same community as you,” he says, “ gives individuals the motivation to pursue their passion in art.”
Bob Martin is a native New Yorker who was surrounded by Art, jazz, dance and basketball while he was growing up. He believes that “Creating Art is a real opportunity, to be honest, with no need for an explanation or a defense.’ He believes that “Art is not a prelude to what is to come . . . it has its own life” and, that as the poet-theologian-activist Thomas Merton once said, “Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.”
Martin has been creating Art and exhibiting for almost sixty years. He studied Art at the N.Y. School of Visual Arts and The Art Students League of New York with Barry Zaid, Peter Cox, Harvey Dinnerstein, David Lefell, and Ted Seth Jacobs. His most recent one-person shows and group exhibitions have been featured across Arizona in such sites as ASU Gammage, the Goodyear Library, the West Valley Museum of Art, Olney Gallery at Trinity Cathedral, Estrella Mountain Community College and the Sedona Art Center.
Aaron Allen Marner
Bob Martin
Born in Jackson, Michigan, Jenita Landrum earned her BFA degree from Arizona State University and her MFA degree from The Ohio State University. She has studied with and been mentored by artists Sam Gilliam, Rip Woods, Jacob Lawrence and Pheoris West. Her work is part of collections at the Mesa Community College Library in Mesa, Arizona, Jackson Community College in Jackson, Michigan, the King Arts Complex in Columbus, Ohio and the Dial Corporation in Phoenix, Arizona.
Landrum describes her voice in art making as a response to layered societal problems and issues that may affect black lives and gender and that encompasses a range of ethnic groups and class status. The series “Black Male Energy” and “We The People” counteract the views and misconceptions of black identity through abstraction and mixed media. Through abstraction, geometric shape and color, she dispels the perceptions of the black male as a one dimensional being. The paintings explore each man, revealing their personal inner voice on what Black man identity looks and feels like. They reveal layers of emotions, venerability, passion, spirituality, compassion, love, kindness, thoughtfulness, anger and grace.
Landrum’s “We the People” Series examines who and how black people have and are looked upon in the United States. She sees the works as narratives of self-identity that speak through personal voice, abstraction, color, and geometric forms that show how colors, shapes and mixed media can give insight into portraiture and emotions.
Born in Detroit, Michigan, Jacqueline Chanda’s talent for drawing was discovered at an early age. She earned her undergraduate degree in painting and drawing from University of California, Los Angeles. Graduate school led her to Paris, France, where she studied visual arts, art education and plastic arts, theory and aesthetics at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts and the Sorbonne University. While there, she participated in Académie de Port-Royal open studio sessions and exhibited works at the Grand Palais and the Galerie Louis Soulanges. After a successful career in teaching and higher education administration in art education, she returned to her initial love--making art—and Jacqueline is now a full-time artist living in Tucson, AZ.
Chanda has been the recipient of a Research and Professional Development Grant from the Arizona Commission on the Arts, an artist residency at Hypatia-in-the-Woods in Shelton, WA and an artist fellowship-in-residency at the International Women’s Center in Santa Fe, NM. She has participated in solo and juried group competitions and exhibitions at local, national and international levels. Publications about her art have appeared in the Cliente Magazine of the Arizona Daily Star, Sonoran Arts Network Art Review, Tubac Gallery Guide, Lovin’ Life After 50 and The Desert Leaf Magazine.
Jenita Landrum
Jacqueline
Chanda
Artist Profiles Artist Profiles
A self-described multi-media artist for more than sixty-five years, Joe Willie Smith was born in Elaine, Arkansas. His family moved from Arkansas to Milwaukee, Wisconsin during the Great Migration. He recalls that during his pre-teen years, his mother would collect chipped white plates from the restaurant where she worked and give them to him to paint. He would paint various subjects, make potholders using loops made from recycled rags and he would create flowers made from magazine pages. His mother would sell whatever he created.
Smith scours recycling centers, fields, alleys and thrifts stores for materials. Repurposing materials as media has been a lifelong pursuit. He believes that recycled materials are embedded with a sense of place, natural and cultural history. He also incorporates steel and concrete in his work using these materials as structural elements as well as the mediums. He notes that he will work with whatever medium necessary–sculpture, painting, photography, sound, performance and installation art–in order to realize his ideas. During the course of his prolific and successful career, Smith has done political graphics for the civil rights movement, owned a graphic design studio, designed information graphics for the media and produced several public art sculptures.
Patricia Bohannon leaves indelible marks on the various art communities of which she has been a part. Born in Chicago, Illinois, she spent two decades in Atlanta, Georgia and now lives in Goodyear, Arizona. She was introduced to the world of art in elementary school and she honed that interest during high school. She graduated with high honors from Chicago State University in 1987. Patricia knew that she would one day be a painter and sculptor and she has been successful creating with paints, glass, fiber clay, ceramic, metal and mixed media over the years.
During her inspiring 60-year career, Bohannon has participated in countless individual and group exhibitions, taught Art in the Chicago Public School system and in the Fulton County Board of Education. The recipient of innumerable honors and awards, she was honored recently as 2022’s Extraordinary Woman of Color during Black History Month and she was featured on ABC15’s well-known program Sonoran Living. A mother of two, she was married for thirty-nine years, has been widowed since 2000 and, at 83 years young, she is not slowing down. Her work currently is on display at Sedona Art Center in Sedona, Arizona.
Joe Willie Smith
Patricia Bohannon
Born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona, Shoreigh Williams is known for self-portraiture and for an elegantly morphed, dream-like style. Her experimentation with the scribble texture–mostly using microns and acrylic–has bled its way into a permanent style. She wants her work to take the viewer on a ride of following their intuition. Her influences include her mother Cassandra Hansent and her mentors Antoinette Cauley, Travis Rice, and Ivan Lopez.
Williams believes that “when in doubt, draw it out.” Drawing was a central part of her life as she grew up and she notes that she “drew, drew and drew . . .with no motive. . . “simply because it made me whole.” In high school, Shoreigh began customizing shoes which then led to many other commissions, relationships, and experiences.
Stephen Marc is Professor of Art in the Herberger Institute’s School of Art at Arizona State University and a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow. In 1998, after twenty years at Columbia College Chicago, Marc joined the faculty at ASU. During Spring 2022, he was honored as the third Stuart B. Cooper Endowed Chair of Photography at Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, MD. Marc received his MFA from Tyler School of Art, Temple University in Philadelphia, PA; and his BA from Pomona College in Claremont, CA.
Marc is a documentary/street photographer and digital montage artist who was raised in Chicago, IL and considered Champaign, IL his home away from home. His most recent book, American/True Colors (2020) addresses who we are as Americans from an African American perspective and was a 2021 IPPY Gold Medalist for the Best Book of the Year in the Photography category in the Independent Publishers Book Award Contest. Marc’s three earlier books include Urban Notions (1983); The Black Trans-Atlantic Experience: Street Life and Culture in Ghana, Jamaica, England, and the United States (1992); and Passage on the Underground Railroad (2009). Since 2008, Passage on the Underground Railroad has been registered as Arizona’s first and only Interpretative Program of the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom division of the National Park Service.
Stephen Marc
Shoreigh Williams
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