Inside Outside, Upside Down

INSIDE OUTSIDE, UPSIDE DOWN The Phillips Collection Centennial Juried Invitational i

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INSIDE OUTSIDE, UPSIDE DOWN The Phillips Collection Centennial Juried Invitational

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CONTENTS 1

FOREWORD Dorothy Kosinski

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CURATOR STATEMENT Renée Stout

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CULTIVATING EMPATHY THROUGH ART Camille Brown

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AN ENDURING LECACY:

ENGAGING WITH DC’S ART COMMUNITY AT THE PHILLIPS Elsa Smithgall

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WORKS IN EXHIBITION WITH ARTIST STATEMENTS AND BIOGRAPHIES

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FOREWORD DOROTHY KOSINSKI, PHD

Vradenburg Director and CEO, The Phillips Collection

I saw a chance to create a beneficent force in the community where I live… assisting people to see beautifully as true artists see.

—Duncan Phillips

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fter an extraordinarily difficult year that has shaken the world, The Phillips Collection presents an exhibition that celebrates the strength and resiliency of the human spirit. The wide-ranging works assembled in this exhibition reflect Washington’s vital artistic community. From the start, museum founder Duncan Phillips was a stalwart champion of living artists through acquisitions, presentation, publications, and training. Together with his wife, Marjorie Phillips, the museum’s associate director, and an artist in her own right, Phillips promoted local artists in more than a dozen annual sales exhibitions devoted exclusively to artists of the region. This support extended to a host of acquisitions, a practice we continue today, adding richness and strength to the evolving collection. As we mark 100 years, we are proud to build on this legacy in presenting Inside Outside, Upside Down as a special complement to our centennial exhibition, Seeing Differently: The Phillips Collects for a New Century.

In the wake of this tumultuous year, we seek to highlight the voices of our artistic community. In our planning, the Phillips benefitted mightily from the input of a distinguished group of community advisors.

For their astute guidance, we gratefully acknowledge: Robin Bell, Zoë Charlton, Vittorio Gallo, Joan Hodges-

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Wu, Philippa P. B. Hughes, Anika Kwinana, Robin McClain, Mathew McCollough, Tom Minter, James L. Palmer, Christopher Wang, Beverly With, and Dorit Yaron. For her skillful facilitation of the advisory meetings, we thank Swarupa Anila, consultant and vice president of exhibition and gallery development, Royal Ontario Museum.

We would like to offer profound thanks to our distinguished panel of jurors—Phil Hutinet, founding publisher of East City Art; Abigail McEwen, associate professor of Latin American art, University of Maryland, College Park; Elsa Smithgall, senior curator, The Phillips Collection; and Renée Stout, DC-based artist—for their thoughtful review and commitment to this important project. Special appreciation goes to the esteemed Renée Stout who, as guest curator of this show, approached this project with empathy, creativity, and deep consideration.

The publication benefitted from the expertise of many: thanks to Magda Nakassis and Vivian Djen for their meticulous editing; Ann Lipscombe for her elegant design; and Renée Stout, Elsa Smithgall, and Camille Brown for their thoughtful essays. We gratefully acknowledge Elizabeth Manegold and everyone at Kodexio for developing and assisting us with the digital platforms in support of this project.

We are grateful for the enthusiastic embrace of this project from the Phillips board of trustees and the entire Phillips staff, who worked diligently to ensure its successful realization. We extend our sincerest thanks to: Micha L. Winkler Thomas, director of strategy and operations; Robert Harris, security operations manager​; Klaus Ottmann, chief curator and deputy director for academic affairs; Vesela Sretenović, senior curator of modern and contemporary art; Trish Waters, registrar for exhibitions; Kathryn S. Rogge, exhibitions coordinator and manager of academic initiatives; Karen Schneider, head librarian; Alec MacKaye, installations manager; Bill Koberg, chief of installations; Carson Garhart, preparator; Elizabeth Steele, head of conservation; Patricia Favero, associate conservator; Oscar Flores-Montero, curatorial intern; Nehemiah Dixon III, director of community engagement; Anne Taylor Brittingham, director of learning and education strategy; Miguel Perez, head of public programming; Donna Jonte, manager of art and wellness and family programs; Cherie Nichols,chief financial officer; Wendy Ponvert, director of development; Bridget Zangueneh, director of institutional giving; Victoria Potucek, grants manager; Karen Bassiri, director of corporate relations; Elizabeth Temme, director of major gifts; Victoria Hagar, director of membership; Vivian Djen, head of editorial and design; Jennifer Mitchell, media relations manager; Ann Lipscombe, design and digital communications manager; and Lia Seremetis, manager of partnerships and marketing.

A special debt of gratitude to Elsa Smithgall, senior curator, for her vision, dedicated leadership, and adept oversight of this project. We extend heartfelt appreciation to curatorial assistant, Camille Brown, whose dedication, exceptional skills, keen insights, and good humor contributed to all stages of the exhibition and publication’s success.

Inside Outside, Upside Down is generously supported by the Henry Luce Foundation, which contributed a lead gift to our centennial exhibition. For their significant contributions, we also thank the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, Charles McKittrick, Jr., the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, the Ednah Root Foundation, the Frauke de Looper Trust, and the Robert P. and Arlene

R. Kogod Family Foundation. The exhibition further has been made by possible by the Carolyn Alper Fund for Contemporary Art and The Phillips Collection’s Exhibitions Endowment Fund, which is generously supported by the Sherman Fairchild Foundation, Michelle and Glenn Engelmann, Robert and Debra Drumheller, and The Marion F. Goldin Charitable Fund.

We appreciate additional support from Sam and Ruth Alward, Barbara Brown Hawthorn, Helen and David T. Kenney, and Ronald Stern and Elisse Walter. Special thanks to our key academic partner, University of Maryland, a global leader in research, entrepreneurship, and innovation. The walls of the exhibition beautifully enhance the presentation of the works thanks to our continued in-kind support from Farrow & Ball.

The call received many quality submissions too numerous to accommodate in our limited space.

Though in no way intended to be comprehensive of the achievements of artists in the region, the exhibition’s dynamic works by 64 artists are testament to the vitality of art in Washington, DC. We offer sincerest thanks to each one for their unique contributions: Cathy Abramson, Simone Agoussoye, Maremi Andreozzi, Carol Antezana, Desmond Beach, Julia Bloom, Michael Booker, Kimberly Brammer, Nikki Brugnoli, Florencio Campello, Carlos Carmonamedina, Sandra Chen Weinstein, Peter Cizmadia, Wesley Clark, Dominick Cocozza, Robin Croft, Sora DeVore, Sarah Dolan, Mike Dowley, Nekisha Durrett, Tae Edell, Bria Edwards, Kate Fleming, Chawky Frenn, Amelia Hankin, Michael Hantman, Leslie Holt, Michael Janis, Jane Kell, Jean Jinho Kim, Katherine Knight, Ara Koh, Kokayi, Gary Kret, Kate Kretz, Catherine Levinson, Kirsty Little, Kim Llerena, Aaron Maier-Carretero, Timothy Makepeace, David Mordini, Barbara Muth, Werllayne Nunes, Zsudayka Nzinga, Jennifer O’Connell, John Pan, Judith Peck, Shedrick Pelt, Kristina Penhoet, Marta Pérez García, Lydia Peters, Junko Pinkowski, Dominick Rabrun, Mojdeh Rezaeipour, Marie Ringwald, Janathel Shaw, Joseph Shetler, Nicolas F. Shi, Tim Tate, Julio Valdez, Jessica Valoris, Ian White, Richard L. Williams Jr., and Colin Winterbottom.

To these artists and to everyone who has joined together to support our artistic community this past year, we salute you.

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CURATOR STATEMENT RENÉE STOUT Guest Curator 3

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nside Outside, Upside Down offers a slice of the turbulent past year—one of the hardest that many of us have ever faced. The Phillips Collection invited artists to submit recent work produced between March 2020 and February 2021 that spoke to the struggle and resiliency of the human spirit in the face of the global COVID-19 pandemic and recent social upheavals.

Throughout the jurying process, it was clear that the impulse to create during this period of great pain, fear, and uncertainty, served as a lifeline for so many, making the timing of this invitational, coinciding with the museum’s centennial celebration, all the more poignant.

As I spent time examining the 65 works, I often returned to the artists’ statements; five themes emerged from the palpable emotions contained within them: Innocence Interrupted recognizes the young children whose lives were upended by the constant fear and uncertainty brought on by so much violence and unfathomable sickness and death. But it goes beyond that to address the disruption, alteration, or even termination of many young adults’ lives, individuals simply trying to come into their own and make their way in the world.

Days of Reckoning and the Right to “Be” speaks to the forced realization that our country is at a major crossroads. Many of the systems that once represented a long-established societal “order” are no longer adequate and have become increasingly out of touch, obsolete, and even detrimental to a population whose needs and sense of awareness are constantly expanding and evolving. Diverse groups of people are asserting their right to define who they are outside of the narrow frameworks designed to exclude them.

Bearing Witness represents the artists who are compelled to document the times in which they have lived, offering evidence or “proof” for us and for future

generations. This intensely “eventful” year had echoes of another tipping point in United States history: 1968,the year of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Now, just as they did then, artists have stepped up to make sure that we record, reflect, and remember.

Introspection and Reflection examines what happens when Washington, DC, one of the busiest and most influential cities in the world, is forced to come to a standstill. These works speak to a reality in which some of us had to sit quietly with ourselves for months on end, while others had to confront the dynamics of their relationships—within an immediate family unit, with a community, or with the world in which we live.

Hope and Healing ultimately illustrates what artists, art historians, art educators, and art institutions have been saying all along: art has the ability to help us process and heal in times of pain and great loss, allowing us to celebrate the simple joys in life.

Taken together, the works in this exhibition affirm the human need to make sense of traumatic experiences and ultimately transcend them, either by creating from that place or in spite of it. In this way, these 65 works offer a collective call for healing. They invite us to appreciate the beauty in the world, find comfort in our family and friends, and unearth the things that are revealed when life requires us to sit still with ourselves.

Duncan Phillips’s conviction in the healing power of art is what brought this museum into being 100 years ago. This juried exhibition devoted to artists of the greater DC region, whether self-taught or trained professionals, new to the art scene or seasoned veterans, shows The Phillips Collection’s ongoing commitment to its founder’s vision to create a space for the DC community to not only find solace in the wonderful collection of art, but also express itself at a time of great need.

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CULTIVATING EMPATHY THROUGH ART CAMILLE BROWN

Curatorial Assistant, The Phillips Collection 5

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t is difficult to find the language to describe a year that has yielded so much death, division, reflection, and reckoning. We have collectively lived through a period of extended isolation, punctuated by police and gun violence, the pervasive spread of misinformation, and a global pandemic that has, to date, claimed more than four million lives worldwide. In the face of these devastating events, one cannot help but ask: Why should we turn one of our most valuable currencies, our attention, toward art? I believe the answer lies in its indelible connection to empathy.

Empathy can be defined as the ability to understand the emotions, circumstances, needs, or experiences of others. What is art if not a contained, personal revelation of these same ideas? The 65 works included in Inside Outside, Upside Down comprise a collection of reflections on the past year that range from the personal to the political, the specific to the universal.

For example, in Your Hand, artist Marta Pérez García crafts a vivid, dragon-esque hand to consider the global spike in domestic violence as women were forced to

isolate with their abusers. Wesley Clark uses a first aid cross made of nails, bolts, and screws to describe the experience—or The Feeling—of routinely seeing racialized violence against Black Americans contrasted with the absence of justice. In Galactic Center of Mass9 stars v.1, blue rings chart the orbital paths of stars light-years away as Timothy Makepeace reflects on the nature of place and time, and how our positionality shifts our understanding of the world. Individually, these works constitute personal intimations from an exceptional year; together they encapsulate the vast range of emotions and experiences felt concurrently by so many of us.

True empathy begins with an offering, a presentation of a thought, an idea, or an experience. While we cannot determine the way this offering is received, we can ensure that the opportunity for connection and community remains open. Art can serve as decoration, a reprieve, a challenge, or a call to action. I view each of the works presented in Inside Outside, Upside Down as an invitation to step outside of oneself, even if only for a moment, into the unique condition of another.

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AN ENDURING LEGACY: ENGAGING WITH DC’S ART COMMUNITY AT THE PHILLIPS ELSA SMITHGALL

Senior Curator, The Phillips Collection 7

Until the mix-60s, there was very little contemporary American painting of any kind to be seen in Washington. . . . The Phillips was a major force in changing this by opening its galleries to show the works of younger American painters.

— Sam Gilliam

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ince opening the doors of their home in 1921, Duncan Phillips and his wife Marjorie hoped to create a museum that would inspire, encourage, and support the local arts community and thereby nurture a vital cultural life in Washington, DC. At the time, opportunities to see the latest developments in contemporary American painting in the nation’s capital were few and far between. And The Phillips Collection, which offered a unique domestic setting and approach that juxtaposed works by living artists alongside historical works from the 19th century, became a cultural magnet for the DC community— an artist’s “oasis” to borrow the words of celebrated painter Gene Davis.

The Phillips’s early, long-standing engagement with local artists—through its collection, acquisitions, exhibitions, and training—is little known today.* Inside Outside, Upside Down has roots in this early history, specifically in a series of sales exhibitions exclusively devoted to artists of the Washington area.

Between 1935 and 1952, the Phillips organized popular annual sales exhibitions to promote art of the region.

As suggested by the Phillips’s press release for the inaugural exhibition, the series auspiciously filled a gap left at the end of the Public Works of Art Project, a Depression-era economic recovery program intended

to support artists across the country. As chairman of the committee representing the DC region, Phillips appreciated how the “federal subsidy had brought to light artists of talent who had been unknown or neglected and who needed sustained support from their own museums and fellow citizens.”

A successful series of sales exhibitions ensued, which offered works available for purchase without commissions taken by the museum. Setting the example, Phillips regularly acquired works from the exhibitions while simultaneously spurring budding private collectors to make purchases of their own.

Washington Star writer Jane Watson Crane was struck

by Phillips’s commitment, noting in her review that “a surprising number of institutions devoted to promoting art have a slim record when it comes to purchase, or encouragement of sales. . . . A notable exception is the Phillips Gallery, which has consistently bought paintings, particularly by artists of Washington and vicinity for many years.” After a decade of acquiring works by local artists, Phillips dedicated the year 1946 to showcasing a selection of 41 of his purchases. Among them was a lively Parisian street scene, Place du Tertre, by artist and Howard University professor of art Loïs Mailou Jones. In 1948 Phillips added a second painting

by Jones to the collection; by 1979 the museum would 8

organize a solo show of her paintings and watercolors.

After learning of the death of Marjorie Phillips in 1986, Jones wrote to her son, then the museum’s director, Laughlin Phillips, to express her condolences as well as her profound gratitude: “To have two works in The Phillips Collection and to have had over the years encouragement from your gallery has meant much to me in carrying on my career over 50 years.”

Beginning in the 1950s, a flurry of commercial galleries invigorated DC’s art scene, offering area artists newfound opportunities for promotion. Perhaps this precipitated The Phillips Collection’s shift, in 1952, away from sales exhibitions to a mix of curated solo and group shows that presented the work of local artists.

Following Duncan Phillips’s death in 1966, Marjorie Phillips, as director, continued the museum’s longstanding commitment to DC art, particularly that of the Washington Color School. In 1967, after acquiring Sam Gilliam’s bursting red color-soaked canvas Red Petals, she organized his first solo museum show. Four years later, works by Gilliam and 24 of his peers took center stage in a “small loan exhibition of Washington Artists” organized to mark the museum’s 50th anniversary.

Through visits to the city’s galleries—Franz Bader, Henri, Jefferson Place, and Pyramid—Marjorie Phillips handpicked 40 works by such artists as Gene Davis, Thomas Downing, Howard Mehring, Kenneth Noland, Alma Thomas, and Anne Truitt. “There is a feeling of colour and excitement in the main gallery,” she enthused in her personal reflections on the exhibition’s opening night. Its effect was palpable on Washington Post critic Paul Richard, who acknowledged “the color paintings on display…would never have been painted here if it had not been for the gallery that Duncan Phillips founded a half a century ago.”

Another anniversary is upon us as The Phillips Collection turns 100. While the museum and the cultural landscape of Washington have changed considerably 9

since the days of our early annual sales exhibitions, we are pleased to once again affirm the museum’s long-standing commitment to support Washington artists with this 2021 juried invitational, Inside Outside, Upside Down. In the past decade alone, we have been pleased to present and acquire significant works for the collection by Washington-area artists at various stages of their careers: Zoë Charlton, David Driskell, Helen C. Frederick, Joseph Holston, Barbara Liotta, Maggie Michael, linn meyers, Nara Park, Ellington Robinson, Renée Stout, and Lou Stovall, among others.

Moreover, over the course of our centennial year, the Phillips is pleased to unveil three dynamic, site-specific works by contemporary DC-based artists: Victor Ekpuk created a sacred space with his script drawings in the museum’s entrance vestibule. Nekisha Durrett has activated the bridges of The Phillips Collection, connecting the museum’s Goh Annex building to the original House with bold patterns of color that draw inspiration from Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series.

And Wesley Clark’s geometric designs energize a new creative space at the museum’s satellite campus, Town Hall Education Arts Recreation Campus (THEARC) in Southeast DC. Finally, we culminate the year with two fall retrospective exhibitions, each celebrating the legacy of beloved DC artists and educators David Driskell and Alma Thomas.

After a turbulent year, Inside Outside, Upside Down affirms our founder’s belief in the necessity of art in times of crises: “It is certain that art would die if it should cease to be expressive of the changes wrought by Time in our consciousness.” May the experience of this show help rebuild and strengthen our ties to one another and to our vital Washington artistic community. *The Phillips’s contributions through its esteemed art school warrant their own study and are beyond the scope of this short essay.

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FEATURED ARTWORKS Most works in the exhibition are for sale, and contact information is listed. The Phillips Collection is not facilitating sales nor taking any commission.

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CATHY ABRAMSON b. 1951, Middletown, NY; lives in Chevy Chase, MD

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

The pandemic year has been a time of routine, of repetition, of sameness. The street scene could have occurred any day during the past year, but this particular moment happened last fall in Mount Pleasant, near the site of the old Heller’s Bakery. Three people are waiting, socially distanced, masks on, phones in hand. They are also awaiting the next wave, waiting for the vaccine, waiting for Godot, waiting for To-Go. And yet, there is a sense of emerging: from apartments, from between parked cars, and from solitary life. The occasion warrants a sassy look, ripped jeans, and lunch from the hottest café. Maybe there is an end to this endless year.

BIOGRAPHY

Cathy Abramson’s oil paintings focus on the urban landscape and urban life. Before turning to fine art, she worked as an art director, graphic artist, and book illustrator in Washington, DC, and Maryland. Since graduating from the Compass Atelier Master Artist Program in 2017, Abramson has been working as an oil painter in her studio at Artists & Makers Studios 1 in Rockville. Abramson has had ten solo shows, several two-person shows, as well as work in many juried and invitational exhibits. She is currently a gallery artist at DISTRICT Arts in Frederick, MD, and International Visions Gallery.

Abramson had work in Superfine Art Fair with Gallery O on H in 2018. Her work is in the Washingtonia Collection of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. In 2018 she participated in The Doors of Make Room and was featured in a segment on WUSA9 about low-income housing and art. In 2016 she was listed as a finalist in the portraits/ figures category of the Artists Magazine Annual Art Competition and her work appeared on the home page of Professional Artist magazine. She began her career working as the art director for Washington Monthly, a political magazine.

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WAITING FOR TAKEOUT (TO-GO) 2021, Oil on canvas, 24 × 36 in., Courtesy of the artist $3,900; Sale info: Cathy Abramson, cabram02@gmail.com 14

SIMONE AGOUSSOYE b. 1989, Washington, DC; lives in Arlington, VA

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

Beauty Mark is a painting of my younger sister, a 16-year-old girl living inside outside, upside down.

This work speaks to the identity and the presence of young Black girls living during one of the most difficult and challenging times in their life and in history. A Global Pandemic.

COVID-19. Social Distancing. Being a Woman in America. Being a Black Woman in America. Black Lives Matter. These combined social elements leave one wondering what the future holds. Similar to the beauty mark found on this young Black girl’s face, it stands alone but makes a powerful impact. Just like this one Black girl in this dark, seemingly scary world, she can still and will have a powerful impact. Despite all of these disturbing circumstances and all of the ugliness we have seen in 2020, beauty still exists—even if it is as small as this Beauty Mark.

The sense of darkness that the year 2020 brought is represented in this painting by the black acrylic paint used as the background. It was also important to depict the texture and the different layers that this young lady is made up of by the heavy application of oil paint for her hair and clothing. Painting black on black was important to stir the emotion of the viewer.

BIOGRAPHY

Born in Washington, DC, Simone Agoussoye has been honing her skills in portrait artistry for the past several years. Known for her creative depictions of people, Agoussoye blends her traditional skill in portraiture with fresh, unique and unconventional techniques to bring her artworks to a new level.

From a young age, Agoussoye was creating and painting something, mainly portraits.

She grew up in a family of 12 children. Her parents were very supportive when it came to Agoussoye’s artistic expressions and her grandmother also had a major influence on her interest in art. At the age of 7, Agoussoye knew that when she grew up, she wanted to be an artist and ever since then made conscious choices to lead her to that dream. Throughout her journey, her work has been inspired by artists like Frida Kahlo, Andy Warhol, and more.

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BEAUTY MARK 2021, Acrylic and oil paint on canvas, 48 x 36 in., Courtesy of the artist $2,650; Sale info: Sierra Lewis, sierra@simoneagoussoye.com, 202-271-0218 16

MAREMI ANDREOZZI b. 1971, Winston-Salem, NC; lives in Alexandria, VA

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902), Lucretia Mott (1793–1880), and Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) need little introduction as leaders of the women’s rights movement.

Stanton’s “Declaration of Sentiments” presented at the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention launched the national women’s suffrage movement. Mott was one of the main organizers of the Seneca Fall Convention. Anthony was a brilliant political strategist and orator who worked tirelessly to promote equal pay for equal work, women’s education, the rights of working women, and fair divorce laws. All three died before women received the right to vote with the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920.

The Suffragists is dedicated to the unflagging efforts of countless suffragists of the past and those who work to ensure equitable voting today. The voice of women in the electorate is as important today as it was during the time of the suffragists. Challenges to equitable access, confidence in voting accuracy, and efficiency in the democratic process continue to be exploited issues. Voting is a civic engagement that still requires constant attention and passionate participation.

BIOGRAPHY

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Maremi Andreozzi grew up in Alexandria, VA. She earned a BFA from Cornell University and an MFA from Clemson University. She has exhibited at a variety of venues throughout the East Coast. In August 2019 she was an artist-in-residence at an international artist residency in Chianti, Italy. Her 2019 solo show, Hidden Histories, at Tephra Institute of Contemporary Art/Signature was favorably reviewed by the Washington Post and Burnaway. Her most recent shows include Lady Lineage at the Delaplaine Arts Center in Frederick, MD, and May You Live in Interesting Times at Adah Rose Gallery in Kensington, MD. Her work was recently added to the collection of the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, in New Brunswick. She is represented by Adah Rose Gallery and lives and works in the Mount Vernon area.

THE SUFFRAGISTS 2020, Acrylic on canvas, 18 × 24 in., Courtesy of Adah Rose Gallery $2,500; Sale info: Adah Rose Gallery, adahrosegallery@gmail.com, 301-922-0162 18

CAROL ANTEZANA b. 1994, Fairfax, VA; lives in Falls Church, VA

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ARTIST’S STATEMENT

Las Gringas is a photographic self-portrait analyzing the balance between being both Bolivian and a first-generation American amid political turmoil and uprisings in both countries. Disagreements about politics have been a specter for many families and the differences are ones of morality, core values, and character, creating tension and division.

I was always taunted by my family for being “una gringa” because I cannot speak Spanish perfectly, yet there was no importance in keeping our Indigenous language, Quechua, alive.

As a child of immigrant parents, the act of balancing, adopting, and assimilating cultures can be daunting; there are deeply rooted racial double standards in both countries.

Through redefining my identity, I am striving to decolonize my mind—my attempt at breaking the intergenerational trauma in my family.

BIOGRAPHY

Carol Antezana is a Bolivian American photographer based out of Northern Virginia who uses personal experiences about trauma, ancestry, and womanhood to create profound bodies of work. She uses the process of self-portraiture as an emotional and psychological coping mechanism. Antezana is a graduate of the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, where she received her BFA in fine art photography. She just completed her Darkroom Artist Residency at Capitol Hill Arts Workshop, where she created a series called Mother’s Aguayo.

LAS GRINGAS 2021, Digital photographic print, 20 × 16 in., Courtesy of the artist $500; Sale info: Carol Antezana, carolnantezana@gmail.com, 703-867-7296 20

DESMOND BEACH b. 1978, Baltimore, MD; lives in Silver Spring, MD

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

As James Baldwin put it: “To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.” This has always resonated with me as a Black man. My lifelong pursuit is to genuinely and honestly express my lived experience through art-making.

The African storytelling tradition is a thread that runs through my work. Honoring my immediate ancestors as well as those of the African Diaspora is a priority. My highest goal is to turn the terrible into the beautiful. My work is inspired by recent and historical developments about the African American experience as well as anti-Blackness.

I am inspired by images of Black people during the Middle Passage, in the Jim Crow South, and by their representation in today’s mass media. My artwork frequently addresses the racial stereotypes that affect Black people. The work’s deliberateness remixes, reclaims, and reexamines the Black struggle. The works of art serve as a forum for illuminating the existence of the nameless, grief, celebration, and resistance.

The police slaying of unarmed Black people has evoked anti-racism protests throughout the United States and abroad. Despite experiencing trauma due to implicit bias and murder, African American communities find ways to celebrate, mourn, and resist.

The #SayTheirNames project sees the artist as an activist, preacher, healer, and prophet, allowing Black people to fully embody their thoughts, feelings, emotions, and images as artwork. The body of work symbolizes one’s sense of duality—Black, American; two thoughts, two souls, two feelings, unresolved strivings, and contradictory beliefs in one’s dark skin, which is held intact solely through its purposeful power. In #SayTheirNames 2, the work combines a historical portrait of an enslaved Black man named Jack in the foreground and protest images from demonstrations—from 1968 and Black Lives Matter—collaged on fabric.

BIOGRAPHY

Desmond Beach is an artist and educator based in the Washington, DC, area. He earned his MFA from the Rinehart School of Sculpture at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) and his BFA from MICA. He has been a visiting lecturer/artist at institutions such as Coppin State University and Emerson College. Beach has been a fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and Skidmore College as well as an artist-in-residence at the Women Housing Correlation in Baltimore, and Pyramid Atlantic Art Center in Silver Spring, to name a few.

Beach is an interdisciplinary artist, the middle son of three boys born in Baltimore, MD. He is a project artist, meaning that his work takes its point of departure from specific problems or tragedies. Beach finds inspiration for his work from growing up in Baltimore during the 1980s and 90s and his lived experience as a Black man. He creates sacred spaces for the spirits of his immediate ancestors and those of the African Diaspora to rest. Beach is also interested in sharing the reflective moments of everyday life. He connects with the viewer through a wide range of mediums, including sculpture, costume, fiber arts, installations, performances, and mixed media. He believes that his work as an artist is a calling.

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#SAYTHEIRNAMES 2 2021, Fabric and paper, 25 × 21 1/2 in., Courtesy of the artist $500; Sale info: Desmond Beach, desmondbeach52@gmail.com, 240-583-1743 22

JULIA BLOOM b. 1958, Belleville, NJ; lives in Washington, DC

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

The pandemic, stay-at-home orders, social distancing protocols, and demands for social justice exploded in the spring and summer of 2020 and greatly influenced my life and work. I live in Washington, DC, and while sheltering in place, I retreated into the nostalgia of my youth and began typing letters using a vintage Royal Quiet Deluxe manual typewriter. The sound of the clicking metal keys offered me the comfort of an earlier, seemingly simpler time.

In time, I incorporated the typewritten pages into my art practice. Typing repeated phrases about coronavirus, social distancing, social justice, and human interaction led me to type more personal stream of consciousness diary entries. In these entries, I write about the details of my day-to-day and also about my fears, vulnerability, grief, trauma, fatigue, anxiety, and depression—all the disruptive emotions I was feeling in the present tense, yet partially assuaged by a soundtrack of clacking keys from a much more soothing, bygone era.

Using compressed charcoal, I began to draw bold shapes on my typewritten pages that partially redacted my texts. These charcoal shapes and stains are like protective clouds that block and screen some of my most intense, intimate thoughts and feelings by allowing me to hide them in plain sight of the viewer. This work highlights a powerful employment of nostalgic machinery as a vehicle for my current art practice.

BIOGRAPHY

Julia Bloom is a Washington, DC, artist who makes drawings, paintings, and sculptures that explore the abstract, overlapping, organic, and imperfect lines and shapes in the spaces around us.

Bloom’s exhibitions include Micro-Monuments, a two-part exhibition at the Salzlandmuseum in Schönebeck, Germany, and the Harvard Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, DC; Sculpture Now 2014 at the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, Washington, DC; and solo shows at Addison/Ripley Fine Art in Washington, DC. She has been awarded six grants from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities (DCCAH), a grant from the Virginia Commission for the Arts, a fellowship from the Morris & Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation, and multiple residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her work is in several private and public collections, including the University of Virginia School of Law in Charlottesville and the US Embassy in Lima, Peru. The DCCAH Art Bank Collection recently acquired five of her drawings. She is represented by Addison/Ripley Fine Art and also runs Freight Gallery, a pop-up exhibition space in a historic freight elevator.

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FEBRUARY 4, 2021 2021, Compressed charcoal on manual typewriter text on paper, 12 × 9 in., Courtesy of the artist and Addison/Ripley Fine Art $450; Sale info: Julia Bloom, julia_bloom@me.com, 202-276-5430 24

MICHAEL BOOKER b. 1985, Tupelo, MS; lives in Laurel, MD

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ARTIST’S STATEMENT

Constant confinement and solitude because of the pandemic has resulted in an imbalance of emotional stability in an otherwise safe place: home. Over the last 12 months, a lack of human interaction, which we take for granted, combined with unjust racial inequality and police brutality, highlighted on a national level, has disrupted the status quo—for better and for worse. With so many names being turned into hashtags and symbols for change, I feel anger toward myself for not feeling more outraged. The prevalence of violence and injustice has had a numbing effect over time. Working on these fineliner pen drawings became a form of therapy, a coping mechanism, and a way to add my voice in protest. They provide an opportunity to search for a nuanced visual reflection of the contemplative and vulnerable states that ebb and flow each day. This inner turmoil is a struggle felt by not only me, but others who are looking for ways to cope but do not know how.

BIOGRAPHY

Michael Booker is a mixed-media artist originally from Jackson, MS, who currently resides in Maryland. He received his BFA in painting from Mississippi State University in 2008 and his MFA in studio art from University of Maryland in 2012. He has exhibited in various galleries across Alabama, Maine, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Virginia, and Washington, DC. His work has been acquired by the David C. Driskell Center in College Park, MD. Currently, he is an associate professor of art at Montgomery College’s Takoma Park/Silver Spring Campus. He is represented by Morton Fine Art in Washington, DC.

THE DREAMER THAT THOUGHT 2021, Fineliner pen, color pencil, and watercolor on paper and Yupo, 40 × 30 in., Courtesy of the artist $4,500; Sale info: Amy Morton, mortonfineart@gmail.com, 978-223-8536 26

KIMBERLY BRAMMER b. 1983, Marlton, NJ; lives in Washington, DC

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

The pandemic hit. I immediately lost my job. I lost my income as well as the caregiver for my children, leaving my husband and me scrambling to make sense of everything.

Connecting virtually became my world overnight, much like the rest of the modernized world. Being a therapist, I created a private practice and began supporting individuals in a virtual therapy room. I, however, was going through all the emotions that my clients were going through. Uncertainty was all around us and I was not immune to the fear and loneliness that the pandemic brought. I found myself scared and lonely despite having a loving and supportive family surrounding me.

My most authentic connection was unexpected; it was my personal virtual therapy room.

It was there I could be real, be seen, be lost and confused, and ultimately be rebuilt. This drawing is the image that I see whenever I am the client in my own therapy. Jennifer, my therapist, is pictured in the center of the artwork. I placed the representation of myself hidden behind the furniture. I chose to show myself without a picture since looking at my image was a distraction from looking inward in my therapeutic work. The journey of looking inward has not been easy. It’s heavy lifting to be honest and vulnerable with another. It’s given me more compassion and empathy when working with my own clients in our virtual therapy room. The theme of this show, Inside Outside, Upside Down, resonates with my art. When the world was turned upside down, I was forced to look inward for hope, joy, love, and connection. My work in my personal therapy helped me find more of it than I knew there could be. This portrait shows the deep connection that I, ultimately, have with myself through the other.

BIOGRAPHY

Kimberly Brammer is a portrait artist in the Washington, DC, area. She lives there with her husband and two young daughters. Painting and drawing portraits allow her to explore the complexities of humanity through art.

Brammer earned her BA in studio art, with a 2D concentration, at Messiah College in Mechanicsburg, PA. She has always been drawn to the interaction between emotions and artistry. This led her to get a master’s in art therapy and counseling from the George Washington University in Washington, DC. She owns a private practice in DC and creates art as part of her self-care. In her spare time, she enjoys hiking, rock climbing, and swimming with her family.

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HEALING THYSELF THROUGH CONNECTION 2020, Pastel and charcoal, 18 × 24 in., Courtesy of the artist Not for sale 28

NIKKI BRUGNOLI b. 1981, Pittsburgh, PA; lives in Warrenton, VA

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

RISE was born out of an experimental series I started in August 2020. The reality of the pandemic has meant a reorientation of HOME—home as both living and working space; spending much more time at home; or losing the ease of “traveling back home” to see my family of origin/extended family in Pittsburgh. In a reflection of these shifts during the pandemic, I created new rituals and practices to find, identify, and conjure a sense of grounding within my work, thus giving shape to a collection of moments in 2020–21.

RISE aims to be a physical embodiment of reach, longing, expansion, and, in many ways, the unattainable. As an artist, I look to the horizon, which is always in sight but never within reach: the infinite and finite. It beckons and draws me into the immediate present, while simultaneously stretching my memories and imagination for other places in time.

The repeated silkscreen image in RISE was taken from a specific landscape connected to my home that has my son embedded in it. He stands alone in the garden we created in March 2020. Tilling left us tired and blistered, but we loved working together in the dirt, planting seeds, and waiting to see what would take root in a new landscape. When the photo was taken, it was late summer, the garden bursting with life and wild with weeds and mosquitoes. My son gazes up at the sky.

This fleeting moment captures a kind of isolation, mystery, and independence. It nods to the resilience so many of us discovered during this uncertain and challenging time.

BIOGRAPHY

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Nikki Brugnoli—artist, educator, and curator—received her BFA from Seton Hill University (2004) and her MFA from the Ohio State University (2007). Brugnoli serves on the faculty at Flint Hill School in Oakton, VA. She teaches studio art in the Upper School and runs the art school/college-recruiting program. Previously, she served on the faculty at George Mason University (GMU) and was the assistant graduate programs coordinator and graduate advisor in the School of Art. In addition, she helped coordinate Visual Voices and the Visiting Artist Program at GMU. Brugnoli was the exhibitions coordinator for the Art Lab at Workhouse Arts Center in Lorton, VA, and currently serves on the IA&A at Hillyer Advisory Committee in Washington, DC.

RISE 2020, Silkscreen, acrylic ink, graphite, and acrylic gel medium on Mylar, 47 × 65 x 2 in., Courtesy of the artist $3,500; Sale info: Nikki Brugnoli, nbrugnoliwhipkey@gmail.com 30

FLORENCIO CAMPELLO b. 1956, Guantánamo, Cuba; lives in Potomac, MD

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

The most powerful asset of a work of art lies is its visual ability to narrate a story, deliver a message, and make a point. Over the last few decades, I have used my artwork to tell stories, nearly always influenced by the events, people, and history around me. When I lived in Spain, it was the spectacular history and impact of the peoples of the peninsula.

When I lived in Scotland, it was the ancient Pictish people who predate the modern Scot.

My grandparents come from three different places: my paternal grandparents come from the mountains of the ancient Celtic kingdom of Galicia in northern Spain; my maternal grandfather was adopted as a child in Sicily and then brought to Cuba; and my maternal grandmother came from the Canary Islands. And yet, as a child, it never occurred to me to ask: What’s my identity?

The year 2020 was a never-ending river of information, with multiple tributaries which will feed visual stories for centuries to come. In 2020 I was fascinated by how people worldwide expanded their identities, genders, and ancestries—a tapestry of sources ranging from DNA discoveries to the nearly instant release and availability of information, which made it deliriously easy to search, find, and document one’s ancestral footprint.

Marry that interest with a furious rekindling of political differences and ancient rancors, as well as the beginning of full acceptance in some societies of the right of people to assert their gender identification, and artists have a generational opportunity to tell a story for the future to inhale. The person in my piece could be the Eve from Genesis, as she struggles, or perhaps enjoys, searching for her identity—only to discover, as we all eventually do, that we have many identities.

BIOGRAPHY

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Florencio Campello was born in Cuba and as a child was exiled to the United States in the 1960s. He studied art at the University of Washington under Jacob Lawrence and others, and has exhibited widely in the United States, Latin America, and Europe. Nearly two decades ago, Campello began marrying technology such as video, sound, and miniaturized electronics into traditional drawings as a process to extend his narrative artwork. In 2016 the Washington City Paper listed him as “one of the most interesting people of Washington, DC.” A widely published writer with over 1,000 articles and art reviews published over the last 40 years, he was characterized by Miami’s Brickell Magazine as “a thought leader in the world of the arts on a global scale.” He is the author of 100 Artists of Washington, DC, published in 2011 and the best-selling art book on Amazon for one epic day! He is the editor of the Daily Campello Art News, which for the last two decades has been ranked as one of the top 100 art blogs in the world. His work is in the collections of multiple museums, universities, and public, private and city collections, with the notable exception of Washington, DC.

SUDDENLY, SHE DISCOVERED HER IDENTITY (MANY OF THEM) 2020, Charcoal drawing with embedded electronic component, 12 × 12 in., Courtesy of Alida Anderson Art Projects $2,000; Sale info: Alida Anderson Art Projects, info@alidaanderson.com, 301-437-1054 32

CARLOS CARMONAMEDINA b. 1982, Comarca Lagunera, Mexico; lives in Washington, DC

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

During my time living and working in Washington, DC, I have come to love the rich diversity of people, past and present, and the quotidian dramas through which they shape their neighborhoods and the collective urban character. My art seeks to document that human presence in a way that is funny and compelling.

My creative approach is a product of intensive, on-site research, talking to people, and familiarizing myself with the space. In order to get a broader picture of what I want to accomplish, I take a fluid approach to conventional stories so as to unearth the multiple layers that make up historical and cultural truths. Meandering bike rides, intimate conversations, and simple but deliberate observation are all ways to discover the community’s treasures.

The food bank at Cardozo High School, perched proudly on a hill in fast-gentrifying Columbia Heights, offers a panorama of the Howard University Founders Library, where Vice President Kamala Harris studied; the Washington Monument, our symbol of civilizational grandeur; the Trump International Hotel; and the Capitol, where during the greatest crisis of the new century, the people’s legislators rancorously approved $600 stimulus checks.

BIOGRAPHY

Since early 2016, artist Carlos Carmonamedina has produced weekly illustrations for his project DC Is My City. With more than 200 postcards to date, the collection has been featured in local media and art exhibitions.

Carmonamedina’s postcard project earned him a spot on the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s inaugural list “40 under 40: People Saving Places.” The initiative celebrates creators who are expanding our nation’s view of preservation and finding innovative ways to explore the United States’ iconic places through artistic storytelling.

Carmonamedina completed his art education in Xalapa, Mexico, and Cluj-Napoca, Romania, where he majored in visual arts and painting.

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FOOD BANK LINES AT CARDOZO HIGH SCHOOL 2020, Digital illustration and giclée print, 10 × 16 in., Courtesy of the artist $600; Sale info: www.dcismycity.com 34

SANDRA CHEN WEINSTEIN b. 1961, Taipei, Taiwan; lives in McLean, VA

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

I have always been interested in people and diversity, and my work focuses on documentary photography emphasizing social identity and culture. I am inspired by Magnum Photos and their essays on social, racial, and political subjects, and by Henri Cartier-Bresson’s fleeting candid ‘decisive moment.’ I find people are the most complex and intriguing subject and I think it’s important to document a record that reminds of our past and where our future may lead. Photography is the most effective tool in selfdiscovery, vision, and communication. The challenge is how to craft our photography in a way that makes real changes and provides the possibility for hope.

This year has seen a reshaping and refocusing of the civil rights movement in the United States. The many tragic and unfortunate events propelled by excess force from police toward people of color and resulting in African American deaths were the most recent catalyst. It has been over 150 years since slavery ended in the United States. Since then, there have been many people leading movements and overcoming adversities to continue the fight against racism. While there has been much progress in the way of civil rights, equal opportunity, and reduced discrimination, it is easy to forget the individuals who broke out of societal norms and the challenges they faced. This portrait of a young boy gazing in silence with an American flag background echoes our past to the present. I would like to use this image to encourage people and communities to continue an open dialogue.

BIOGRAPHY

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Sandra Chen Weinstein has received numerous distinguished awards, including first place in the Director’s Choice category of Center Awards; Reader’s Collection and international contest winner for National Geographic magazine; first prize in the Open Category of the Kuala Lumpur International Photoawards; first prize winner of the Robert Cornelius Portrait Award, and runner-up for the International Conservation Award in Culture.

Her work has been featured on the covers and interior pages of European Photography, FotoMazgine Germany, and the American Photography Archive Book. Weinstein’s work is in several private collections, including that of the Gordon Parks Foundation.

BLACK LIVES MATTER 2020, Archival pigment print, 16 × 16 in., Courtesy of the artist $1,500; Sale info: Sandra Chen Weinstein, sandrachenweinstein@gmail.com, 949-285-8766 36

PETER CIZMADIA b. 1982, Fairfax, VA; lives in Washington, DC

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

I invite the viewer to consider what they would do when offered the choice to make a tremendous sacrifice to benefit humanity at large. Would it be enough to be remembered, and honored?

Whistlegiver/Whistleblower is a tribute to the Wuhan doctors Ai Fen (left) and Li Wenliang (right). These doctors risked professional sanction and their own lives as part of the first response to the COVID-19 pandemic, trying to raise the alarm to the global threat. Both faced severe professional consequences, with Dr. Li losing his life.

My process of stencil painting becomes an extended meditation on my subject matter.

Long hours of studying facial features and tracing these fine details with pens, followed by intricate knife work, create a sense of responsibility to build a faithful representation.

The raw and accessible nature of spray paint and stencil is intended to evoke the rapid and improvisational nature of the early response to COVID-19, composed by colors alluding to the balance between rage and action.

BIOGRAPHY

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Peter Cizmadia is an artist working out of Washington, DC. His primary interest is in using stenciling, photography, and painting to build mixed-media artwork centered on people’s history and the American landscape. His practice is built upon a foundation of handson experience and deep research, inspired by hidden histories, remote landscapes, and reconciling the sublime with the banal.

WHISTLEGIVER/WHISTLEBLOWER 2020, Spray paint on two wood panels, 30×54×1 1/2 in., Courtesy of the artist $4,800; Sale info: Jaclyn Smith, jaclyn.neysa@gmail.com, 202-816-9344 38

WESLEY CLARK b. 1979, Washington, DC; lives in Hyattsville, MD

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

The Feeling is part of a small series of journal-like works borne of thoughts and discussions around the COVID-19 pandemic, death, the continued injustices faced by Black Americans, and the country’s leadership throughout 2020.

This work was ruggedly built as a quick, fast, but sturdily reinforced work surface used in the studio for eight years before its disassembly. That feeling of a worn, scarred, and burned existence plays out across the surface of the piece. Hints of color appear from under sections of rubbed and scuffed white paint. The faded golden and slightly cropped words “slow” and “burn” can be made out across the top and bottom of the piece, as if part of a larger written sentiment. Pieces of rusted steel are attached, furthering the industrial history of the piece while flanking a cross made from protruding rusted screws, bolts, nails, and other metal fasteners.

The Feeling describes the slow, inward burning sensation that came in waves after hearing and witnessing multiple videos of injustice (Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Dion Johnson, and more) and innocent verdicts for murderous acts committed. The cross in the center, akin to the American Red Cross logo, references the need for and giving of aid—yet finding neither from governing bodies. This cross however takes its cues from the traditional Congolese power figure, nkisi nkondi, letting our solace be found in the spiritual forces avenging our wronged and fallen.

BIOGRAPHY

Wesley Clark currently resides in Hyattsville, MD, with his wife and two beautiful children.

He received his BFA in painting from Syracuse University and an MFA from the George Washington University.

At the core of his practice, Clark creates mixed-media wood assemblages that read as familiar and are often hybrids of two or more objects/concepts. He refers to these objects as fictional artifacts, made to look as if they have lived a life prior to being on display and prompting viewers to question their importance and create their own narratives.

Clark has exhibited works at institutions such as the Katzen Arts Center, Washington, DC; Fisk University, Nashville, TN; University of Maryland Eastern Shore, Princess Anne; as well as Scope and Prizm Art Fair, Miami, during Art Basel. Clark’s work can be found in public and private collections, such as the Asheville Art Museum, the Studio Museum in Harlem, Duke Ellington School of the Arts, and Kaiser Permanente. In 2016 Clark was commissioned by the American Alliance of Museums to create a temporary public artwork.

That foray has led to several permanent public artworks located throughout Washington, DC, and Maryland.

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THE FEELING 2020, Plywood, lumber, steel, screws, bolts, and spray paint, 24 1/2 × 27 × 7 in. , Courtesy of the artist $7,000; Sale info: Wesley Clark, wes@wesleyclarkart.com, 301-674-0406 40

DOMINICK COCOZZA b. 2001, Mazatenango, Guatemala; lives in Arlington, VA

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

As a high school senior graduating during the COVID-19 pandemic, my life was quickly turned upside down by constant disappointment. It was extremely tough accepting the reality that I would miss many milestones, such as prom, in-person graduation, senior art exhibition, and final swim team competition season. Throughout the pandemic, I kept myself busy through my drive and passion for painting and drawing. As both a minority leader and emerging practicing artist, I use my strong fine arts proficiency to uplift, inspire, and engage with my local and larger global community.

My large charcoal self-portrait reflects the sense of longing that I felt at a pumpkin patch amid the pandemic in October. It represents my determination to not allow a pandemic from disrupting fall festivities that mean so much to me. With my safety mask on and pumpkin in hand, I stare into the eyes of the viewer asking an important question: What can you do to celebrate safely during these incredibly difficult times? My work explores finding normality in the abnormal and centers around engaging my community to participate in safe recreational activities.

BIOGRAPHY

Dominick Cocozza is a 19-year-old Guatemalan American fine artist based in Arlington, VA. Cocozza currently studies at the Rhode Island School of Design, working toward a BFA in painting. His ambition for artistic excellence has led him to numerous successes.

To name a few, Cocozza has exhibited his paintings in the US Capitol Building and the Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. He has also been featured in articles published by CNN and BBC News. He was most recently a 2020 recipient of the Arlington Magazine Extraordinary Teen Award. This honor caught the attention of multimedia news agency Voice of America, which led to an exciting video production spotlighting Cocozza’s story and artwork.

Cocozza is the owner of Dcocozza Studios, a fine arts company where he accepts commissioned work. He uses a variety of art mediums and his artistic style is primarily realistic. He is a leader in the young adult art field and uses his global Instagram platform (with over 9,000 engaged followers) to share his artwork, knowledge, and experience with his peers.

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COVID-19 SELF-PORTRAIT 2020, Charcoal on paper, 40 × 30 in., Courtesy of Dcocozza Studios, Arlington, VA $5,500; Sale info: Dominick Cocozza, dominickcocozza@gmail.com, 571-639-8784 42

ROBIN CROFT b. 1958, Fayetteville, NC; lives in Manassas, VA

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

With the pandemic and Black Lives Matter racial unrest, fueled by a kakistocratic president, anxious thoughts produced manic drawings. The plague, rats, blood, bullet holes, and fire populated the scenery. Reclining Figure embraced the queasy spaces and haunting trains of Giorgio de Chirico with the staccato notes of improvisational jazz. Miles Davis’s “What I Say” and R. L. Burnside’s “Shake ’Em on Down” rumbled in my hearing aids many times while listening to news reports. It was a depressing déjà vu to list the growing number of dead African American names populating news headlines.

Reclining Figure is a triptych of three sheets of unused letterhead imprinted with “Whippoorwill Hollow Farm,” a farm owned by friends. A working vacation haven each year, the imprint represents the joy of four friends renovating an old farmhouse. The typographic metaphor of “Whippoorwill Hollow Farm” appears three times in the drawing, increasingly darkened.

The “pocket note” drawing series originated from my lifelong habit of carrying a folded piece of paper and a pen or pencil in my pocket. An artist’s reminders, lists, tasks, and sketches, for many years they were discarded when the sheet was full. Upon beginning a new career in building maintenance after being terminated from 23 years in commercial art, pocket notes became increasingly tied to daily routine. Old lettering templates were dusted off for messages. Lists were kept for tasks, groceries, and art ideas. Sketches were made for measurements and repairs. Vocabulary words were written down, events recorded, and observations noted. At some point, worn pages were pushed over the edge, accepted as prosaic, journalistic drawings. They were considered art.

BIOGRAPHY

Absurdity, tragicomedy, skepticism, and drawing are the well-worn survival tools in Robin Croft’s backpack. Son of a suicide, raised in a racist environment during the inflamed 1960s, his work questions the precepts of American society, race, and religion through the autotherapy of art. He maintains that the first 12 years of self-imposed abstention from exhibition or self-promotion after college were spent figuring out that painting was really flattened sculpture, and drawing is king of all arts. His works in scrap or distressed metal and wood consumer items employ metal fasteners and wood dowels.

Filling his studio with unsold art compelled a gradual transition to working outdoors.

Croft’s stark “drawings in the wild” often go unseen by the general public due to their out-of-the-way locations. Their scale allows him to sculpt large while keeping nothing, as nature erases their footprint.

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RECLINING FIGURE (TRIPTYCH) 2020, Three-sheet triptych of ink and graphite on letterhead, 8 1/2 × 33 in., Courtesy of the artist $5,000; Sale info: Robin Croft, croft58@gmail.com, 703-881-8328 44

SORA DEVORE b. 1972, Washington, DC; lives in Washington, DC

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

During the pandemic, I have learned that I can live without many things. The greatest challenge has been maintaining safe relationships with family and friends that sustain our mental health. For years, my sister and I have gathered weekly to lavish our father with forbidden ice cream sundaes and loud action movies. Our 93-year-old father always lived a vibrant life of volunteer work, social events, errands, and so on. Abruptly, COVID-19 reduced his life to a few doctor’s appointments and vet visits, with little need for cognitive functioning. That was not okay. Courtesy of a projector, space heaters, a lot of layers, and hats with ear flaps, movie nights and ice cream sundaes commenced in my sister’s garage.

Our spirits soared.

BIOGRAPHY

Sora DeVore is a documentary/fine art photographer passionate about helping people and organizations tell their stories honestly, intimately, and creatively. Her work often focuses on Mexico, Hispanic culture, underrepresented communities, family dynamics, long-term transformations, and relationships with animals.

DeVore was an artist-in-residence for the West Virginia Commission on the Arts, documenting the Latino community and instructing Hispanic students. She has received grants from the Center of Cuban Studies, Academy for Educational Development, “I Have a Dream” Foundation, Howard University’s Center of Excellence, and Washington, DC’s Summer Youth Employment Program. These grants have aided in her pursuit of producing cohesive, emotional work and teaching underprivileged youth the empowerment and voice of photography. This work has been exhibited in galleries as well as the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, African Voices at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Charles Sumner School Museum & Archives, and Children’s National Hospital. DeVore’s Mexican work was the recipient of the Ernst Haas Competition and included in CENTER’s Review Santa Fe. DeVore created a study abroad program for the University of Maryland (UMD) in Oaxaca, Mexico, which she directs and teaches during the winter semester. She teaches at UMD and the Inter-American Development Bank and freelances for clients such as National Geographic, PBS Kids, and the Washington Post.

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MOVIE NIGHT 2020, Archival pigment print, 7 1/2 × 10 in., Courtesy of the artist $500; Sale info: Sora DeVore, sora@rcn.com, 202-361-2059 46

SARAH DOLAN b. 1987, Boston, MA; lives in Alexandria, VA

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

In this piece, I depict myself looking out of a house made from my daughter’s colorful magnetic tiles. My daughter uses these to build houses for her toys to play in. All day I play with my daughter, which is not so different to what life was like before the pandemic, except now we cannot leave. There are not as many playdates, there are no playgrounds full of children that she can play with, there are no more story times at the library, and there is no preschool. With fewer options for safe childcare, mothers have found their roles at home magnified throughout the pandemic. Many mothers are burned-out after a year of living this way.

Even though I am socially distanced from most of my peers, I am never physically alone.

There is always the sound of my child saying “Mama” somewhere near me. It is the odd feeling of being alone and not. All at once.

BIOGRAPHY

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Sarah Dolan is an artist and mother based in Alexandria, VA. She uses a wide range of processes including drawing, sculpture, fibers, and printmaking. Dolan received a BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design and an MFA from George Mason University.

Her work was recently exhibited in Home-works through Spilt Milk Gallery in Scotland, motHER/child through Sander Design & Art Consulting in Virginia, GIRLS will be GIRLS at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, and Ephemeral Systems at Adah Rose Gallery in Maryland. She has been in residence at the Workhouse Arts Center in Lorton, VA; Kunstnerhuset Lofoten in Svolvær, Norway; and An Artist Residency in Motherhood. Dolan is an adjunct professorial lecturer in the Department of Art at American University in Washington, DC.

ALONE AND NOT. ALL AT ONCE 2021, Color pencil drawing collaged onto toddler writing on paper, 14 × 11 in., Courtesy of the artist $1,400; Sale info: Sarah Dolan, sarahdolan20@gmail.com, 508-954-6334 48

MIKE DOWLEY b. 1980, Washington, DC; lives in Arlington, VA

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

November, 2020 is part of a series of sketchbook drawings that I have continued through the pandemic. As a painter and teacher, I was finding it difficult to focus on larger, more complex pieces, so the sketchbook became a way of recording ideas quickly and easily during this stressful time. This drawing developed out of the particularly intense emotions I felt during the month of November when the country was dealing with both rising COVID-19 infections and increased tension and unrest from the presidential election. I wanted to capture this uncertain and ominous moment.

Working from memory/imagination, I drew a vast, dark cavern with just a small amount of light in the distance. This is how this moment felt for me. While there was a small amount of light (or hope), it was still off in the distance, and held uncertainties of its own.

BIOGRAPHY

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Mike Dowley lives and works in Arlington, VA. He is currently professor of painting and drawing at Northern Virginia Community College and a lecturer in studio art at Georgetown University. He has shown his art locally and nationally, including at the Arlington Arts Center; doris-mae, Washington, DC; Art at Kings Oaks, Newtown, PA; Blue Spiral 1, Asheville, NC; and Atlantic Gallery, New York. His work has been selected for exhibition by William Bailey at Yale University, Joan Young at the Guggenheim, and Matthew Higgs at White Columns. He was the recipient of a residency grant from Vermont Studio Center in 2017. He received his MFA in painting from Savannah College of Art and Design and his BA from Georgetown University.

NOVEMBER, 2020 2020, Pastel/crayon on paper, 14 × 11 in., Courtesy of the artist $450; Sale info: Mike Dowley, dowleym@gmail.com, 703-597-5514 50

NEKISHA DURRETT b. 1976, Washington, DC; lives in Washington, DC

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

Golden brown and tough as leather on one side, velvety soft on the other, fallen magnolia leaves possess an often uncelebrated radiance and resilience. For many, the magnolia flower is the showstopper. However, it is the magnolia leaf that, long after the flower’s death, withstands rain, wind, and the lawn mower—bedeviling gardeners who find them a hassle to compost or discard. Even after death, the leaf refuses to be erased and forgotten.

During the spring and summer of 2020, I collected fallen leaves from a towering magnolia tree in Rock Creek Cemetery in my Washington, DC, neighborhood. Experiencing the impacts of two pandemics at once—COVID-19 and continued police brutality against Black bodies—I used the cemetery as a space for processing my anxiety and grief. Inspired by the #SayHerName movement, I began to perforate the names of dozens of Black women murdered by law enforcement into the surfaces of the leaves.

BIOGRAPHY

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Nekisha Durrett currently lives and works in Washington, DC, where she creates bold and playful large-scale installations and public art that aim to make the ordinary enchanting and awe-inspiring while summoning subject matter that is often underrepresented or overlooked in visual culture. She earned her BFA at the Cooper Union in New York City and an MFA from the University of Michigan Stamps School of Art and Design as a Horace H. Rackham Fellow. Durrett has exhibited her work throughout the Washington, DC, area and nationally. She was recently featured in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery’s prestigious exhibition The Outwin 2019: American Portraiture Today. Her recent installations include Messages for the City, in collaboration with For Freedoms in Times Square, New York, and Magnolia, a series of leaves perforated by the artist with the names of women murdered by law enforcement, on view at the 2021 Atlanta Biennial at Atlanta Contemporary.

ELEANOR BUMPURS KILLED BY POLICE ON OCTOBER 29, 1984 | AGE 66 2021, Magnolia leaves, poplar, velvet, acrylic, and LED lighting, 19 1/4 x 19 1/4 x 5 5/8 in., Courtesy of the artist $3,000; Sale info: Caitlin Berry, cb@caitlinberryfineart.com, 646-361-0312

INDIA KAGER KILLED BY POLICE ON SEPTEMBER 5, 2015 | AGE 27 2021, Magnolia leaves, poplar, velvet, acrylic, and LED lighting, 19 1/4 x 19 1/4 x 5 5/8 in., Courtesy of the artist $3,000; Sale info: Caitlin Berry, cb@caitlinberryfineart.com, 646-361-0312 52

TAE EDELL b. 1981, Daegu, South Korea; lives in Reston, VA

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

The Heavens Witnessed challenge coin originated from outrage felt over the continued absence of justice for Breonna Taylor. Challenge coins are medallions given to members of law enforcement and emergency medical services to signify membership, strengthen solidarity, and honor significant events. Heavens Witnessed coin bearers demonstrate a commitment to accomplishing a singular mission: holding the Louisville Metro Police Department accountable for Taylor’s death.

The coin’s reverse side bears the celestial map over Louisville, KY, at the time of Breonna Taylor’s death. By marking the moment of her fatal shooting, the map is a reminder that the heavens witnessed Taylor’s death and that the truth endures well beyond the Louisville city limits.

The obverse side features the scales of justice with the Hanged Man tarot symbol as the scales’ pillar. In tarot, the Hanged Man appears when one’s approach to life has reached its limits. By placing his figure as the supporting pillar, a mandate is issued for the complete abandonment of current law enforcement practices so that the nation’s justice system might reach balance. “8:46” refers to the initially reported amount of time during which a police officer knelt on George Floyd’s neck, resulting in his death. Like Floyd, Taylor’s fatal shooting was the result of law enforcement’s unchecked use of excessive violence on the Black community. The Heavens Witnessed challenge coin demands that the Louisville Metro Police Department be held responsible. We demand justice for Breonna Taylor.

For this project, 100 coins were minted as a fundraiser for Black Lives Matter Louisville.

Coins were individually purchased or sponsored and sent to Louisville law enforcement and local government. By November 2020, 54 coins were mailed to the Kentucky attorney general, Louisville Metro Police Department, Louisville mayor, and Kentucky governor with $1,530 donated to Black Lives Matter Louisville.

BIOGRAPHY

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Tae Edell is a conceptual artist working in the Washington, DC, metro area. Born in Daegu, South Korea, and adopted by Americans as an infant, she addresses topics of race, access, and belonging. She has a BA in art history from James Madison University and is working toward an MS in museum leadership at Drexel University. Edell currently works at the Smithsonian American Art Museum as a curatorial assistant.

HEAVENS WITNESSED 2020, Painted brass and enamel, 1 1/2 in. diameter; 3 mm thick, Courtesy of the artist Not for sale 54

BRIA EDWARDS b. 1993, Washington, DC; lives in Lanham, MD

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ARTIST’S STATEMENT

I do not tell my models what to wear or how to pose. Their natural stature conveys a sense of empowerment, confidence, and pride in their African American culture. In a world where there is so much negativity surrounding the Black community, my aim is to change the narrative and be a positive influence. I want the true essence of who we are to be reflected in my work.

BIOGRAPHY

Bria Edwards is originally from Washington, DC, and holds a BFA in graphic design from St. John’s University. As a true creative, she does not limit herself to the bounds of the computer screen and works with a wide range of media. She feels at her best when working hands-on with materials, exploring her talent, and perfecting her craft.

OBSERVE 2020, Oil on canvas, 48 × 36 in., Courtesy of the artist $1,500; Sale info: Bria Edwards, bria.edwards.rt@gmail.com 56

KATE FLEMING b. 1992, Washington, DC; lives in Arlington, VA

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

I am a painter and a printmaker. When the pandemic hit in 2020, I was in the middle of a yearlong trip to make paintings in all 50 states. While on the road, I made small oil paintings on paper, painted in one sitting, from life. I wanted to capture the American landscape while setting aside nostalgia, preconceptions, and beauty. I made dozens of paintings of our national aesthetic: sprawl.

Returning home and cutting my travels short, I wanted to continue to capture something essential and plain about the American experience—and I wanted to find a little humor in all the darkness. The paintings I made in the past year—over 100 of them—are lighthearted, teasing, and a little melancholy. I painted rolls and rolls of toilet paper (all we could talk about from March to May), carelessly knocked-over lawn chairs, dropped ice cream cones, and spilled glasses of milk. An image need not be serious to convey meaning.

BIOGRAPHY

Kate Fleming is a painter, printmaker, and muralist based in Arlington, VA. After graduating from the College of William & Mary in 2014, she went on to receive an Arlington County Cultural Affairs Spotlight Artist Grant to paint her first mural: a 100-foot-long wall in Arlington. She has completed residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in Amherst; Penland School of Craft in North Carolina; and Capitol Hill Arts Workshop in Washington, DC. Fleming painted for POW! WOW! DC in 2018.

In 2019 she and her partner, photographer Tom Woodruff, created “The 50 States Project”: a mobile artist residency traveling across the country. From November 2019 to March 2020, Fleming and Woodruff painted and photographed in 17 states while living in a camper van, before returning home due to COVID-19. What began as a road trip to paint and photograph communities in all 50 states has now grown into something much bigger: a study of before and after in a country irreversibly altered by the events of 2020. Fleming and Woodruff are now back on the road, continuing to document our country. They plan to finish their trip by the end of 2021.

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T.P. NO. 3 2020, Oil on paper, 5 1/2 × 5 1/2 in., Courtesy of the artist Not for sale 58

CHAWKY FRENN b.1961, Zahlé, Lebanon; lives in Arlington, VA

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

As a Lebanese immigrant fleeing a war-torn country in 1981, I saw the United States as a land of opportunity, a beacon for democracy, and the pinnacle of human rights. Through years of living and observing our American ideals and politics however, I have learned that even in the “Land of the Free,” basic human rights were always fought for, never given by the ruling powers.

Hypnagogia, a transitional state of consciousness between wakefulness and sleep, with vivid sensations of floating, falling, and impending threat, alarmingly reflects the political, economic, religious, and moral predicaments that shamelessly emerged in 2020.

The painting questions the identity as well as the core principles and values the United States upholds. Unscrupulous policies legalize corruption and assault basic rights with vindictive measures. Self-righteous patriotic mantras oppress dissent, generate prejudice, and grant immunity to war criminals. Religious dogmas consecrate submissive beliefs, bless compliance, and sanctify hatred of those with different convictions. Economic policies advocate unrestrained greed, cruel exploitation, and callous consumption over environmental, human, and civil rights. Justice systems, afforded by the rich and the privileged, sanction laws authorizing mass incarceration of the marginalized and supply legalized slavery to private, for-profit prisons.

With a history rooted in structural racism, momentous struggles and critical resistance endeavor to ensure the rights of Native Americans, African Americans, people of color, women, LGBTQ, veterans, immigrants, prisoners, and refugees. In recent times, latent hypocrisy brazenly reappeared, exposing the inside outside and turning upside down the values that made the United States great.

BIOGRAPHY

Born in Lebanon, Chawky Frenn immigrated to the United States in 1981. He graduated with a BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 1985 and an MFA from the Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University in 1988. He is currently associate professor at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA. Frenn’s work has been shown in galleries and museums across the United States and abroad in France, Germany, Italy, Lebanon, and Paraguay. His work is included in the collections of the Housatonic Museum of Art in Bridgeport, CT; Springfield Museum of Art in Ohio; and in private collections.

Frenn was a recipient of the Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Award in 2017 and the Teaching Excellence Award from George Mason University in 2009. He has authored two books, 100 Boston Painters (2012) and 100 Boston Artists (2013), published

by Schiffer Publishing. His work has appeared in 100 Artists of Washington, D.C. (2011) by Florencio Campello and Male Nude Now (2001) by David Leddick. Fine Arts Consulting and Publishing in Beirut, Lebanon, published Art for Life’s Sake (2006), a monograph of Frenn’s work.

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HYPNAGOGIA 2020, Oil on canvas, 48 × 36 in., Courtesy of the artist $14,800; Sale info: Chawky Frenn, chawkyf@gmail.com, 202-251-2603 60

AMELIA HANKIN b. 1976, Saint Albans, VT; lives in Springfield, VA

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

The series of drawings is a nod to the poem “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers” by Emily Dickinson. It is a poem that, throughout the years, I have read many times. But this particular year, its message and metaphor felt more raw, weighted, and powerful. The human capacity for hope, depicted in the poem, inspired me to create drawings about renewal—captured in the imagery of nests. The nests are solo and unattended, depictions of tangled structures built to nurture new life and growth. The bird is absent, but its work is done. The nests represent the human need for hope, and the calm, quiet resilience of the human soul.

Overall, my work uses familiar objects that have been assigned meaning, emotional weight, and purpose: folded paper that predicts the future, feathers that catch our dreams, nests that represent hope and renewal, and repeated butterfly wings that represent change. By the impositions of context and tradition, these images form connections with birth, regeneration, and death. Brought together, they acknowledge the microcosmic forces outside of our authority, which impact our lives in small but tangible ways.

BIOGRAPHY

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Amelia Hankin received her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. She has exhibited at the Chazan Gallery at Wheeler, Providence, RI; Columbia College, Missouri; Eastern Oregon University, La Grande; 808 Gallery at Boston University; Ellen Miller Gallery, Boston; International Print Center New York; Janet Turner Print Museum at California State University, Chico; Ridderhof Martin Gallery at the University of Mary Washington Galleries, Fredericksburg, VA; RISD Museum, Providence, RI; University of Richmond Museums, VA; and Xavier University Art Gallery, Cincinnati, OH. She received an artist’s travel grant to study Eastern woodblock printmaking techniques at Kyoto Seika University in 2005. Since then, Hankin has attended residencies at Pyramid Atlantic Art Center, Vermont Studio Center, and the Women’s Studio Workshop. She has received grants from the Adolph & Esther Gottlieb Foundation, Artists’ Fellowship, and Haven Foundation. Hankin is the artist-in-residence in screen printing at American University in Washington, DC.

NEST ON WREATH 2020, Charcoal, carbon pencil, and graphite on archival paper, 20 × 25 1/4 in., Courtesy of the artist $3,200; Sale info: Ellen Miller Gallery, ellen@ellenmillergallery.com, 617-620-9818 62

MICHAEL HANTMAN b. 1984, Baltimore, MD; lives in North Potomac, MD

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

When COVID-19 became a threat to us all and lockdown occurred, I was in shock. It created a palatable fear, an invisible enemy. My way of survival was to channel these emotions into creative endeavors.

Sheltering in place has provided me with extra time to experiment and to turn past ideas into something real. For me, art-making has become a therapeutic process. It serves as a glimmer of hope during a time of doubt.

BIOGRAPHY

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Michael Hantman creates detailed worlds of fantastical proportions. He incorporates old and new symbols as motifs, and his works reference ideas from films, books, comics, and real life. Hantman’s works are filled with images of confusion, hope, depression, imagination, and exuberance.

UPSIDE DOWN 2020, Graphite, digital, acrylic, and newspaper collage, 20 × 15 in., Courtesy of the artist $950; Sale info: Michael Hantman, mhantman@gmail.com, 410-960-5935 64

LESLIE HOLT b. 1969, Bethesda, MD; lives in Hyattsville, MD

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

During her last psychiatric hospitalization before she died, my mother asked me to bring her volume D of her World Book encyclopedia set. She wanted to study more about the ducks she fed daily during her morning smoke in the courtyard of her assisted living facility.

She often used the inside covers of books to quickly jot down notes. She filled the title page of the encyclopedia with clusters of notes, including phone numbers, lists of medications, diagnoses, doctors’ names, and test results. Her handwriting was normally a point of pride—pristine and elegant. But these words are scribbled and sometimes illegible, powerful evidence of her earnest struggle to make sense of things through the fog of sedation and paranoia.

I incorporated some of these notes in this piece. In addition, I stitched a message on the back of the canvas—a phrase from a poem by Adrienne Rich: “without tenderness we are in hell.” On the front of the canvas, this message is illegible.

It was a horrible year, but this inward dive was very fruitful. It helped me look at hard things because I had space and quiet, and everyone else was grieving, too.

BIOGRAPHY

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Leslie Holt is a mixed-media artist who exhibits nationally and is represented by David Lusk Gallery in Memphis, TN. Her recent work combines acrylic paint and embroidery to make visible the often-private states of extreme emotion caused by war, loss, or mental illness.

Her work has been reviewed and highlighted in New American Paintings, the Washington Post, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Star Tribune, Nashville Scene, and The Tennessean, among other publications. In addition, Holt is the creator of “Neuro Blooms,” an art and mental health advocacy project that promotes visibility and awareness of mental health conditions. She is the codirector of Red Dirt Studio, a warehouse studio for a group of independently practicing artists and creative professionals in Mount Rainier, MD.

BIPOLAR STAIN (WITHOUT TENDERNESS WE ARE IN HELL) 2020, Embroidery and acrylic on raw canvas, 36 × 36 in., Courtesy of the artist $4,000; Sale info: Leslie Holt, leslieholt31@hotmail.com, 314-479-1072 66

MICHAEL JANIS b. 1959, Chicago, IL; lives in Washington, DC

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

How We Take Care of Each Other is about connection. It speaks to how our current situation prevents connection as we self-isolate and avoid contact with anyone who is potentially infected with COVID-19. This goes against our nature. Humans are social creatures and our relationships have been built and held together by complicated nonverbal language, beginning between parent and child.

What epitomizes the height of this pandemic? Emptiness. It’s embodied in the unusual quiet in normally noisy, bustling neighborhoods. Silence—not merely the absence of noise, but also the inescapable presence of judgment, longing, and paranoia. It is the fear that we may be transmitting the virus as we seek the comfort of others. The fabric of society is held together by physical contact, even in its smallest forms. Touch is as important a social condition as anything. It reduces stress. It makes people trust one another.

Some of the glass circular panels touch on subjects of how the virus is transmitted, and on how COVID-19 cases are heavily concentrated in the African American population. The imagery in the panels is created by manipulating and fusing finely crushed glass powder, or frit. This painstaking technique is accomplished by scratching through the powder layer— the sgraffito technique.

As lockdown restrictions are lifted, we are slowly attempting to make sense of where we are as a society. Social isolation may be the best tool to keep the virus under control, but this clashes directly with our need for social connections, which help us resolve anger and rage while we are at the mercy of injustice and uncertainty. In these conflicts, we need to remind ourselves that rants and accusations will not move us forward; compassion, empathy, and recognition that we are all in this horrible situation together will inspire us.

BIOGRAPHY

After a 20-year career as an architect in the United States and Australia, Michael Janis returned to the United States with a focus on working with glass. In 2005 Janis became the codirector of the Washington Glass School and Studio in Washington, DC. Awarded a Fulbright scholarship in 2012, Janis went to the University of Sunderland and taught at the United Kingdom’s National Glass Centre, where he became an artist-in-residence at the Institute for International Research in Glass.

The Fuller Craft Museum in Massachusetts mounted a solo show of Janis’s glass panels and sculpture in 2011. The museum also recently acquired one of his works for its permanent collection. Janis’s artwork is included in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Fort Wayne Museum of Art, and Florida’s Imagine Museum, as well as the US Department of State artwork collection at the American Embassy in Bucharest.

In 2016 the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities awarded Janis the 31st Annual Mayor’s Arts Award for “Excellence in the Arts.” The American Glass Guild will feature Janis as the keynote speaker for the organization’s 20th Anniversary Conference, held in 2021.

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HOW WE TAKE CARE OF EACH OTHER 2020, Glass and glass powder imagery, 60 × 48 in., Courtesy of the artist $8,000; Sale info: Michael Janis, mjanis2@aol.com, 202-309-3412 68

JANE KELL b. 1963, Harrogate, UK; lives in Washington, DC

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ARTIST’S STATEMENT

I feel this painting captures something of the weird, overwrought atmosphere of the first few weeks of COVID-19. It was painted in a rather dark, makeshift corner of my bedroom during snatched moments in March 2020. At the time, I was very worried about our three adult daughters in the United Kingdom. I persuaded two of them to fly to Washington, DC, although we did not really have room for them in our small house in the Palisades.

One of them was using my studio as a bedroom. They were also trying to keep up their university studies on Zoom, in spite of the five-hour time difference. Meanwhile my husband was working from home, although there was no room for him to have an office, so he was perpetually roaming the house with his laptop under his arm, trying to find a quiet corner. Tensions were running high and I was finding it frustrating not being able to work. I found myself drawn to a stash of old reference photographs taken by my late father. He had taped two photographs of this view together to create one image and there was something appealing about the heavy sky and the mysterious road disappearing into the distance. When I painted the picture, I felt there was a desolate and haunted feeling which captured how I, and perhaps others, were feeling at the time. There was so much fear and uncertainty about the future. In the painting, there is a brooding sky and a sense of foreboding. I had no idea where the road depicted was, or would end up; it really was a “road to nowhere.”

BIOGRAPHY

Jane Kell is a British artist living in Washington, DC. She has a degree in the history of art and worked for many years in London in arts PR and publishing. Both her parents were painters and there was a lot of art in the family home. When she started painting in 2010, it was with small still lifes and landscapes in oils. From the beginning, it felt very natural, and within two years she was working full-time as a painter. Since 2015 she has taught an adult art class in London, and in 2017 she won a place on an artist residency in France where she painted en plein air for the first time. She works almost exclusively in oils and her paintings are now larger-scale and more abstract. She paints both figuratively and abstractly, believing that the two practices support each other. In 2019 Kell relocated to Washington, DC, where she set up a home studio. In 2020 she staged her first US solo show with the Amy Kaslow Gallery in Washington, DC. She is currently the artist-in-residence at the gallery and will have a follow-up solo show there in December 2021.

ROAD TO NOWHERE 2020, Oil paint and pastel on canvas, 30 × 30 in., Courtesy of the artist $2,200; Sale info: Jane Kell, Janekellartist@gmail.com, 202-549-1428 70

JEAN JINHO KIM b. 1956, Seoul, South Korea; lives in Leesburg, VA

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

In Standing Tall, five pieces stand alone, but together they create a complete work. During the pandemic, many of us are isolated, but making an effort to sustain our relationships is more important now than ever. Finding ways to support one another in new and creative ways can be challenging, but is essential for our well-being and growth.

The new normal that we are looking forward to may not be the same as before the pandemic, but we are hopeful for days where COVID-19 does not dominate the news, gathering with friends and family is not considered high-risk behavior, and planning for the future seems possible again. Standing Tall aspires to stand together as a community even though we may be apart physically.

BIOGRAPHY

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Jean Jinho Kim was born in Seoul, South Korea, and moved to the United States after graduating from high school. Currently, she works in Washington, DC. Kim uses a wide range of materials, from acrylic paint to found objects, to create two-dimensional paintings and three-dimensional installations. She earned her BFA in painting from West Virginia University in Morgantown and her MFA in studio art at American University in Washington, DC. She has participated in residency programs in Berlin, Germany, and Seravezza, Italy. Kim has exhibited her work in several solo and numerous group exhibitions in Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, South Korea, and the United States. Her work has been reviewed by the Washington Post, Korean Time!, and Korea Daily.

STANDING TALL 2021, Aluminum tubing and wooden probes with base, 72 × 44 × 48 in., Courtesy of the artist $20,000; Sale info: Jean Jinho Kim, jjhkim56@gmail.com, 703-508-5234 72

KATHERINE KNIGHT b. 1980, Spartanburg, SC; lives in Washington, DC

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ARTIST’S STATEMENT

I make self-portraits to better understand the many roles I play in my life: daughter, friend, wife, mother, sister-in-law, professor, colleague, and advocate. When the pandemic hit, I suddenly became my household’s sole wage earner. This drawing represents the love-hate relationship I developed with my devices as the social, professional, and educational lives of me and my family were reduced to their tiny screens: grateful for the opportunity to connect with loved ones and keep working safely from home, afraid for my students and community members who were unable to do the same, frustrated by our isolation, bored by the monotony, worried as my son gradually disengaged from his school and friends, grief over the headlines, powerless to do anything about any of it, and comforted, ultimately, by humor and a few hours spent in the studio.

BIOGRAPHY

Katherine Knight grew up in Columbia, SC. She received a BA in studio art from Centre College in Danville, KY, and an MFA in painting from American University in Washington, DC. She has completed additional studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Slade School of Fine Art at University College London. Her work has been exhibited at the Ou Gallery on Vancouver Island, Canada; Gallaudet University in Washington, DC; SHRINE’s virtual Group Show (Room 5); and Indie Grits Film Festival, where her short film, Sunday Mornings, won the Southern Lens Award. Knight’s international artist residencies include the Ou Gallery and the Burren College of Art in County Clare, Ireland.

She is associate professor of painting at Montgomery College’s Takoma Park/Silver Spring Campus and lives in Washington, DC, with her family.

TECH FATIGUE 2021, Pencil, gouache, and collage on paper, 24 × 18 in., Courtesy of the artist $750; Sale info: Katherine Knight, kmknight2@gmail.com, 502-352-3588 74

ARA KOH b. 1995, Seoul, South Korea; lives in Washington, DC

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

I speak Korean, English, and clay. My studio practice is a form of translation. Working with clay is a vehicle for memory, honesty, and reflection. I translate the invisible and the amorphous into something visible and solid. A balance between polarities: light and heavy, dense and loose, ephemeral and concrete. There is room for awe and even for childhood trauma, fading or relived. My sculpture encapsulates the dialogue of internal memories and external landscapes. Making is reliving fading traumatic memory as a landscape painting.

Questioning how architecture and landscape hold humanity, I think about my body contained in spaces, my body as a container, and the space being contained in the larger body of humanity. That experience questions the self in relationship with space. This body of work claims my position of authority—a space that is my own space. It asks about my identity as an artist, a daughter, and a human in the most honest and genuine way.

BIOGRAPHY

Ara Koh was born in Seoul, South Korea. She received her BFA in ceramics and glass from Hongik University, Seoul, in 2018, and was an exchange student at California State University, Long Beach, in 2016. Koh graduated with an MFA in ceramic art from New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 2020.

Koh’s works are installations claiming space. Her sculpture brings a fresh reveal to the ageless themes of body, architecture-shelter, and landscape. The intensity of labor, repetitiveness, and palliative obsessiveness manifest in her work as an understanding of the universe. Her works have been exhibited worldwide. Koh has received numerous awards, including the Minister of Foreign Affairs Honor by the South Korean government.

Her works have been collected by the Daekyo Culture Foundation, Winell Corporation, and many personal collectors.

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INQUIRY OF BREATHING 2020, Ceramic (stoneware), 23 × 45 × 12 in., Courtesy of the artist $6,000; Sale info: Ara Koh, araangelakoh@gmail.com, 562-481-1650 76

KOKAYI b. 1969, Washington DC; lives in Washington, DC

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

When Letting Go Is Love embodies the chaotic juxtaposition of emotions experienced during the global pandemic, which exposed systemic inequalities and structural racism throughout the United States. My hope is that this work exhibits the resilience of not just a business owner facing the shuttering of her business, but that of a Black woman creative and business owner facing a tsunami of “othering” in a single calendar year. Yet that resilience, which has been held within the intangible historical memory of Black people, specifically within the Black woman, is a testament to fortitude—to an adherence to hope and the sheer will of a people who refuse to quit.

BIOGRAPHY

Kokayi is a multidisciplinary artist based in Washington, DC, who uses analog and digital technologies—photography, sound, film, performance, and anything else he can get his hands on—as mediums to tell stories. He crafts narratives out of the detritus, which globally those from the African Diaspora have been made to systemically inherit, to create work that asks the viewer to participate and perpetuate in the intangible cultural heritage of Black Americans.

Kokayi’s love of imagery and sound has led to his most recent work, interpreting images and sound into various mediums in order to explore the idea of synesthesia and cultural trauma. This is exhibited in his works HUBRI$ (as a Halcyon Arts Lab Fellow) and Distant Wavves.

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WHEN LETTING GO IS LOVE 2020, Photograph, 18 × 24 in., Courtesy of the artist $1,500; Sale info: R. Byron Horde, byron@untitledinteractive.com, 510-908-3655 78

GARY KRET b. 1953, Wyandotte, MI; lives in Chevy Chase, MD

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

Exploring the frustrating, disappointing, and sometimes tumultuous aspects of the human condition has been a consistent theme in my work. Now more than ever, it is essential that we take the time to consider these aspects and be more thoughtful and reflective in our lives. While creating a work of art can be a solitary and highly introspective undertaking, publicly exhibiting that work invites an audience to participate in that introspection and look deeper within their own lives. Renounce is one of a series of biographical sculptures that portrays a shared experience of feeling powerless. We all have a desire to be accepted and to be a part of something larger than ourselves—only too often falling short and enduring denial, accepting that denial, and, ultimately, reaching isolation.

The bronze components depict a feeling of frustration and shame, exclusion, rejection, and supplication. They characterize our trial of being held back and deterred, of only getting so far. The marble elements become barriers. They illustrate the force of authority and domination of institutional judgment and events beyond our control.

BIOGRAPHY

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Gary Kret was born in Wyandotte, MI, in 1953. He received a BFA from Aquinas College in Grand Rapids and an MFA from Yale School of Art in New Haven. He was the recipient of the Fannie B. Pardee Prize and Polish Heritage grants. His work has been included in numerous regional gallery exhibitions and is held in several private collections.

RENOUNCE 2020, White marble and cast bronze, 5 1/2 × 6 × 8 3/4 in., Courtesy of the artist Not for sale 80

KATE KRETZ b. 1963, Grove City, PA; lives in Silver Spring, MD

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

This piece is part of The MAGA Hat Collection, a series begun in early 2019.

I made this series to aggressively confront the Americans who were complicit in the Trump administration’s cruelty, negligence of duty, and attempted destruction of our democracy. MAGA hat-wearers love to coyly claim that the iconic red symbols they sport on their heads are innocuous. I cathartically rip these hats apart to reject this claim, then manipulate the pieces into objects that function as corrective physical manifestations of the truth.

I made Social Murder when the coronavirus hit our country, and I realized that, once again, it was the most vulnerable among us who were going to suffer from Donald Trump’s policies.

When the people you love are in peril, the standard human response is to impulsively rush to save them. Although our former president put his hand on the Bible and swore to protect the American people, Trump’s instinctive response was not one of love for his citizens, but a move to protect his own power. He lied outright to the American people about the threat to their lives. Other countries shut down to preserve as many lives as possible. Ours prioritized the economy, viewing humans as collateral damage. The United States instantly split into those who could afford to work from home and others who never had that option: risk your life at work or lose your paycheck. We think of “killing” as something that requires an action, but the half million Americans who died from this president’s incompetence, deliberate denial, lies, and inaction are no less dead than if he lined them all up and shot them in the middle of Fifth Avenue.

BIOGRAPHY

Kate Kretz earned a certificate from the Cours de civilisation française de La Sorbonne in Paris and a BFA at Binghamton University, State University of New York (SUNY), garnering the SUNY Foundation Award for Excellence in Fine Arts, Harpur College Departmental Honors in Art, and Harpur College Academic Honors. She earned her MFA at the University of Georgia. Kretz’s work has been exhibited at the Frost Museum in Miami; Huis Van Gijn in Dordrecht, Netherlands; Katonah Museum of Art in New York; Kunstraum Kreuzberg in Berlin; Museum of Art Fort Collins in Colorado; Museum of Arts and Design in New York; NSU Art Museum at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, FL; Racine Art Museum in Wisconsin; San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles in California; Telfair Museums in Savannah, GA; Tsinghua University in Beijing; and Wignall Museum of Contemporary Art at Chaffey College in Rancho Cucamonga, CA. Kretz has received three Maryland State Arts Council grants (in crafts and in painting), a North Carolina Arts Council grant, a South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship, a Florida Visual Arts Fellowship, and a Millay Colony for the Arts residency. She received the SECAC Award for Outstanding Artistic Achievement, is a James Renwick Alliance 2020 Distinguished Artist, and remains part of the Fulbright Specialist Program until 2023. She was an associate professor and BFA director at Florida International University for 10 years before joining Montgomery College, where she was recently awarded the Shoenberg Fellowship to complete her first book, on finding visual voice.

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SOCIAL MURDER 2020, Deconstructed counterfeit MAGA hats, thread, and cotton, 5 × 5 3/4 × 4 in., Courtesy of the artist $5,000; Sale info: Kate Kretz, kkretz4art@aol.com, 336-266-9678 82

CATHERINE LEVINSON b. 1936, Topeka, KS; lives in Bethesda, MD

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

COVID-19 turned the world from outside to inside and made everything upside down and dark with loneliness, isolation, loss, and death. The vaccines brought new hope. My painting expresses this hope through the brightness and vibrancy of colors with new green growth, a glorious sky, and a path forward—all symbolizing a way out of Inside Outside, Upside Down.

BIOGRAPHY

Catherine Levinson has enjoyed a dynamic and varied career path that has merged her interests in art, education, and social work. While attending the High School of Music and Art in New York City, she found her passion for art. She graduated from the City College of New York, magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, majoring in art. With an interest in education, she taught high school art for several years. Levinson then had the opportunity to design brochures and exhibits while working for the US Weather Department in Washington, DC. In the early 1960s, she had the privilege of living in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where she studied at the Museu de Arte Moderna.

Once again, Levinson’s interests in education and art merged. She earned her master’s in special education/learning disabilities and social work. As a clinical social worker and psychotherapist, she used art extensively to connect with young children. As she created a collection of her work, she has been fortunate to have numerous shows and gallery representation, including Chevy Chase Art Gallery, Marin-Price Galleries, and Gallery NK.

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THE SKY IS GLORIOUS, BURNING THROUGH WITH SUNLIGHT. THERE IS NEW GREEN GROWTH FOR ME TO SEEK OUT AS I FOLLOW THE PATH FORWARD. 2021, Gouache, 15 x 2o in., Courtesy of the artist $1,000; Sale info: Catherine Levinson, cjlev1226@aol.com, 301-641-4596 84

KIRSTY LITTLE b. 1965, London, UK; lives in Chevy Chase, MD

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ARTIST’S STATEMENT

The year 2020 was the weirdest year of my life, and I am sure yours. From the frantic rush of my first solo show to the gradual repression of a life that I understood, life became vacuum-packed. I struggled initially to make sculpture, sliding into greeting card–making to connect to friends and family. Finally, I picked up my drill and began making again. My latest works try to represent my sense of hopeful joy for the future. Working with wood, wire, and wax settles me into a rhythm. I endlessly repeat gestures: I pierce the wood, cut the wire, dip in molten wax, force into my drilled holes—hundreds of times. Patterns and shapes evolve from these actions, decisions taken almost without conscious thought. Each work consolidates gradually, becoming a whole sculpture. They echo with the energy of the wire, somehow reminiscent of a mini-tsunami vibrating in our midst.

BIOGRAPHY

Kirsty Little was a circus owner and aerialist based in the United Kingdom for two decades prior to moving to the United States. Her artwork focuses on womankind, supporting the #MeToo movement and the struggling environment. She makes fine art sculpture with porcelain, explores the convergence of wood and wire, and engages in art activism through single-use plastic installations. Her plastic installations, one of which is a commission from VisArts, have been on display at Red Dirt Studio, Harmony Hall, Katzen Arts Center at American University, and Honfleur Gallery. She received a Prince George’s Arts and Humanities Council environmental grant, but as her original idea was truncated due to COVID-19, Little instead created a huge plastic installation on her house.

(RE)SURGE 2021, Mahogany, steel wire, and wax, 9 × 16 × 5 in., Courtesy of the artist $1,000; Sale info: Kirsty Little, kirstylittle9@gmail.com, 202-492-7145 86

KIM LLERENA b. 1984, Lebanon, NJ; lives in Washington, DC

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

Until this year, most of my practice occurred during lengthy road trips across the country. My recent work seeks out fragments and remnants of our national experience, deconstructs our visual landscape, highlights past failures and hopeful futures, and connects the historical with the contemporary.

Over the past few years, cities around the country have seen monuments to the Confederacy dismantled—some by stalwart protesters, others by official order. On July 1, 2020, General Stonewall Jackson and his horse were removed from their concrete pedestal after the mayor of Richmond ordered the removal of all such statues from city land.

Hopefully, moments like these, borne of a collective effort to reverse the glorification of a bloody and racist American history, reveal the power of protest and foretell a more progressive United States in years to come.

BIOGRAPHY

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Kim Llerena is a nationally exhibiting photographic artist. She was a DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities Fellowship Program grantee in 2021; a Flash Forward Competition top 100 winner selected by the Magenta Foundation in 2019; one of 100 photographers invited to CENTER’s Review Santa Fe in 2019; a semifinalist in the Print Center’s 90th Annual International Competition in 2016; and a finalist for the Trawick Prize in 2014. She holds an MFA in photographic and electronic media from the Maryland Institute College of Art and a BA in journalism from New York University. Her work often investigates our constructed relationship to place and our methods of communicating within and about our physical surroundings.

STONEWALL JACKSON (DISMANTLED), MONUMENT AVENUE, RICHMOND, VIRGINIA 2020, Archival pigment print, 20 × 16 in., Courtesy of the artist $800; Sale info: Kim Llerena, kim@kimllerena.com, 301-461-5722 88

AARON MAIER-CARRETERO b. 1987, Silver Spring, MD; lives in Washington, DC

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

I create narrative paintings that use the visual language of caricature and cartoons to better understand my connection to latinidad, whiteness, Jewishness, and maleness. I work from memories, personal photographs, and journals to make paintings that critically examine the way in which my family and I have bought into an American belief that to be white (or closer to it) is to be more important, more beautiful, more worthy of love.

My goal is to expose and challenge problems such as domestic violence, physical abuse, racism, and self-hatred that proliferate unchecked for generations behind the carefully constructed facade of suburbia.

During the pandemic, studies found that the stay-at-home orders increased domestic abuse cases while also limiting access to support options for victims. not in front of the kids is a painting I created from personal photographs and memories to shine a light on the victims and survivors of domestic violence, especially children. Even when parents try to hide domestic violence, there are direct and indirect ways that children still absorb it.

BIOGRAPHY

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Aaron Maier-Carretero is a Latino visual artist born and raised in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC. He obtained his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. He has exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, National Arts Club, Queens Museum, SculptureCenter, and Washington Project for the Arts. Maier-Carretero lives and works in Washington, DC.

NOT IN FRONT OF THE KIDS 2020, Oil on canvas, 55 × 72 in., Courtesy of the artist Not for sale 90

TIMOTHY MAKEPEACE b. 1961, Karachi, Pakistan; lives in Washington, DC

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

When the pandemic began, I had been working on a series of charcoal and pastel drawings inspired by the construction of the new James Webb Space Telescope, which will replace the Hubble Space Telescope. I was one of several artists selected by NASA to create artwork of this amazing piece of technology, to help publicize it before its launch in 2021.

Contemplating all the new discoveries that would soon be revealed, I made a series of works that were inherently forward- and outward-looking. Then, the planet shut down, my world shrank, and I began to struggle with my artistic vision of exploration. As we entered lockdown, my reaction to physical confinement was to start thinking more expansively about place, time, and our relationship to both. This journey of the mind has helped me escape the pandemic-induced boundaries of my studio.

This new body of work, about the orbital mechanics of stars, explores a fundamental question of mankind: Where are we? What is at the center of our galaxy and where is our place in this universe? Knowing where one is, in relation to the center of things, can shift perspective, understanding, sense of place and self—and is fundamental to the paradigm of power in religion and politics.

The elliptical shapes in these works represent the orbital paths of the stars closest to the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, 26,000 light-years away—our center of gravity. These ellipses are based on 3D mathematical models made from the data collected from several large telescopes over 10 years and are, in a way, modern maps of the core of our galaxy. Although data-driven, the works’ apparent abstraction is partly inspired by the constructivist movement, with its vocabulary of geometry, proportion, and optical play.

BIOGRAPHY

Timothy Makepeace’s artwork explores the interaction of engineering, science, architecture, and nature. His subjects range from decaying industrial structures in the natural landscape to the newest NASA space telescope bound for solar orbit.

Makepeace examines the environmental and aesthetic impacts of industrial architecture and the forces nature exerts on man-made structures, focusing on the inherent, but often ignored, beauty of both. His recent space telescope works describe the exquisite geometry of the scientific instrument, the process of constructing it, and what the telescope will image after its launch.

Influenced by constructivism—a movement that emphasized building, science, and euclidean geometry—Makepeace investigates the interplay between realism and abstraction. He is both a photographer with a sculptor’s eye and a sculptor with a photographer’s eye; as such, the works reflects a degree of physicality. His most recent works use these disciplines as a foundation for new large-scale, photo-based charcoal drawings.

Makepeace is a Washington, DC-based artist who received a BFA from Cornell University.

He studied sculpture at the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design and photography at the Smithsonian Institution, and has exhibited widely.

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GALACTIC CENTER OF MASS- 9 STARS V.1 2020, Sumi ink and acrylic paint on paper, 43 × 43 in., Courtesy of the artist $10,000; Sale info: Timothy Makepeace, makepeace@verizon.net, 301-717-7574 92

DAVID MORDINI b. 1968, Moline, IL; lives in Arlington, VA

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

I, like many artists, was emotionally paralyzed at the start of March 2020. I would travel daily to the studio only to sit and stare at the wall. The roads were empty except for the occasional ambulance. Compassion for and fear of others sunk in, as humanity waited in horror for information and a message of hope. We watched daily as those afflicted by this mysterious pandemic gasped for air, alone, separated from their families.

In addition to the pandemic, breathing both physically and metaphorically became a struggle for the nation as it witnessed a fellow human being suffocated by another.

Nervous twitches took over as I sat speechless, confused, and in stillness. Struggling to swallow, I reflected on the emotional and physical pain. The world sat with racing heartbeats as we all desperately worried about loved ones.

Traditionally a sculptor, I felt the need to express this experience in a different way. Human interaction had turned from hugs to video monitors, and video seemed appropriate for such reflections. It was a year of learning and adapting. Breathe with Me was part of this adaptation and is my first video performance.

BIOGRAPHY

David Mordini is an artist who lives and works in the Washington, DC, metropolitan area.

He received his BFA from the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design in 1995. His first solo exhibition, Heads (1996), at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, explored themes of the uncertain self and an ambivalence toward identity. His work was part of the permanent collection of the Corcoran and is now held at American University. He has served on the boards of the Washington Project for the Arts and Washington Sculptors Group.

In 2015 Mordini cofounded Otis Street Arts Project (OSAP), and he is now its sole proprietor and director. This Maryland-based art space features artists’ studios, galleries, and a workshop/makerspace. OSAP has quickly become an important community gathering and arts exhibition space in the Washington, DC, metro area.

In recent years, Mordini has been exploring the incorporation of cutting-edge technologies, like 3D scanning and printing, into his work. He has also been returning to his punk rock culture roots, presenting edgier, more politically pointed work, often with darkly humorous themes.

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BREATHE WITH ME 2021, Video, Courtesy of the artist Not for sale 94

BARBARA MUTH b. 1959, Meaux, France; lives in Reston, VA

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

From my childhood forward, I have been an inveterate people-watcher. Observing people and anticipating their behaviors kept me safe. It also kept me engaged in life, piquing my curiosity with questions about why people behaved the way they did. These interests led me to the study of psychology, and ultimately to figure painting.

When painting, I layer one color over another, creating a history of marks and emotions. As the painting progresses, lower layers peek through, ensuring that all I have thought and felt is represented in the final work. My color choices have largely been influenced by my early adult years living in Venezuela.

BIOGRAPHY

Born in Meaux, France, Barbara Muth is a professional artist, painting full-time since 2008.

She studied psychology in college and graduate school, and worked to improve services to meet the needs of minority communities before making the transition to become a fulltime artist.

Throughout the second half of the 1980s, Muth lived and worked in Venezuela as a community organizer. Upon her return to the United States, she worked on the development and evaluation of health and safety interventions.

Until recently, Muth was an artist-in-residence at the Torpedo Factory Art Center.

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QUARAN-TEENED 2020, Acrylic on canvas, 60 × 40 in., Courtesy of the artist $6,500; Sale info: Barbara Muth, barbarajmuth@gmail.com, 703-342-6920 96

WERLLAYNE NUNES b. Anápolis, Brazil; lives in Washington, DC

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

The Muslim Ban. The family separation policy. The threat of DACA rescission. Ongoing police violence against Black people. The COVID-19 pandemic. As the defining social injustices of our time unfold in high relief, our children are witnesses, but still they rise.

With this motivation, my current paintings pay homage to the creative and resilient spirit of childhood in the face of structural adversity. The triptych portrait US depicts three children from different racial and ethnic backgrounds, from different corners of the United States that I have called home (Texas and Washington, DC). Connected through play on a tin can telephone and set against an imaginary background, the children embody the rich racial and ethnic tapestry of the United States. The portrait honors the resistance and transformative power of the simple but profound act of play in the context of major social injustices. The title is intentional in its double meaning, designed to evoke both the pronoun “us” and the acronym “US” to signal belonging within the country’s diverse population.

As with my other work, this painting counters disempowering, unidimensional narratives of disadvantage by creating a portrait of empowerment. I juxtapose individuals in their depicted contexts with colorful backgrounds to create a visual magical realism characterized by the simultaneous existence of two apparently conflicting perspectives— reality and imagination. This fusion of styles expresses the resilience and power that can emerge from harsh social realities. I use this visual strategy not to romanticize these social ills, but rather to provide portraits that reflect the complexity, agency, and humanity of people who experience marginalization.

BIOGRAPHY

Werllayne Nunes is a self-taught painter from Goiás, Brazil, who is currently based in Washington, DC. He began painting at eight years old when his father gave him his first box of oil paints. When he left Brazil to study medicine, he continued to paint and eventually decided to devote himself full-time to art. His paintings have been shown in galleries, museums, and public spaces in Brazil, Spain, and the United States.

Nunes’s years living in Brazil, Europe, and the United States have deeply shaped the central focus of his work: how structural racism operates in racially diverse societies. Integrating faces, colors, and cultural and religious traditions from Brazil and other African Diasporic countries, his paintings represent portraits of empowerment. They provide counternarratives to the media’s unidimensional and often stereotypical depictions of people who are marginalized because of their race. His work challenges these stereotypes by creating visually striking images that reflect the complexity and agency of individuals in marginalized groups.

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US 2021, Oil on linen panel, 30 × 60 × 2 1/2 in., Courtesy of the artist $15,000; Sale info: Werllayne Nunes, werllaynenunes@gmail.com, 215-200-8040 98

ZSUDAYKA NZINGA b. Aurora, CO; lives in Washington, DC

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

This painting addresses issues of class and experience during the social unrest of the summer of 2020. It is based on a photo my husband took of our youngest daughter playing at her grandparents’ house. It was amazing to me that she could be in such an innocent space. She could have a tea party with her toys while 15 minutes down the street there were riots protesting police brutality. I painted her playing with the tea set; she is “stitched” onto the canvas inside an Afrocentric interior home. The home is beautiful with ornate antique chairs, a brass tea set, art, books, plants, and lots of colors—things that reflect Black American culture and design. Everything is beautiful and in its place. It is a space of peace. And in the background, in the corner, is a digital print on vinyl of the White House surrounded by fire and CNN’s breaking news headline: “Protests Erupt.”

It is a commentary addressing the privilege of being able to continue to live a regular life while others fought physically for rights and freedoms. It challenges notions of what defines revolution and the role of each participant. Am I, as a parent, creating a peaceful, safe, beautiful existence for a Black person participating in a revolution, but in a different way? Is there internal conflict as a parent when watching violence and shielding our children? I wanted to be able to address what was going on without centering the subject on violence featuring a Black person’s body. And this is how my baby was taking it in and how I experienced that moment with her—the awareness between us.

BIOGRAPHY

Zsudayka Nzinga is a mixed-media artist and designer from Denver, CO, currently residing in Washington, DC. Her portrait work features acrylic, decorative paper, hand-dyed paper, fabric, oil bars, charcoal, pigment, and linocut stamp. She also creates sculptures.

Nzinga fuses traditional art forms passed through the Diaspora to create work which speaks to the power of history and how visual art aids in defining culture and identity.

Her subjects are Black Americans, often women, placed in regal and empowering poses and scenes. Her work mimics African American stich patterns and expounds traditional southern textile pattern methods. Her collage work is torn by hand and arranged to create colorful and highly patterned people and scenes who resemble fabric.

Nzinga’s interest in fabric and textiles is why her subjects are clothed in intricately designed patterns. The designs mimic the history and style of African Ankara fabric and introduce bright colors and patterns to high-end clothing designs. She has recently begun re-creating the designs for a clothing and home decor line using textile designs created from artwork made by Nzinga and her husband. Her pieces are intended to create a narrative and archive of Black American history, identity, and culture.

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PROTESTS ERUPT 2020, Mixed media (acrylic, vinyl, decorative hand-dyed paper, Ankara fabric, digital transfer, and ink) on canvas, 44 × 36 in., Courtesy of the artist and Terrell Arts DC $7,500; Sale info: Terrell Arts DC LLC, sales@terrellartsdc.com, 720-775-3580 100

JENNIFER O’CONNELL b. 1956, Stamford, CT; lives in Bethesda, MD

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

“April 18, 2020—A box full of blank cards sits on the bed on a Saturday morning. We are home and contemplate our lives, maybe with some regrets, tasks undone or ‘letters unwritten.’ Our time at home also reveals the beauty all around, like a shaft of light coming through a window.”

This past year has been filled with anxiety, uncertainty, stress, and sadness. But it also gave me a gift: uninterrupted time and space to work in the studio. Last spring, when there were no planes overhead and few vehicles on the roads, pollution levels plummeted. A new silence descended and the light felt different. It was brighter, more piercing. This “Hopperesque” light struck me as I glanced into our middle bedroom one morning. I sketched the scene and took some reference photos. As I was making the painting, its meaning for me emerged.

BIOGRAPHY

Jennifer O’Connell paints in oils and acrylics and welcomes the challenge of capturing the feeling of a subject or moment, whether it is a plein air landscape, interior, still life, or figure.

O’Connell also writes and illustrates picture books, including Ten Timid Ghosts, a New York Times best seller, and The Eye of the Whale: A Rescue Story, a Green Earth Book Award honoree. Her forthcoming picture book, Elephants Remember, is due for release in the fall of 2022. She has come to realize that her paintings and drawings influence and spark her book work, and vice versa.

O’Connell received a BFA in illustration from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.

She lives with her husband/photographer/editor, Kevin, in Bethesda, MD, and gives presentations and workshops about creating picture books. She has exhibited her work in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, DC.

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LETTERS UNWRITTEN 2020, Oil on canvas, 40 × 30 in., Courtesy of the artist $16,000; Sale info: Jennifer O’Connell, j@jenniferoconnellart.com, 301-537-4878 102

JOHN PAN b. 1944, Shanghai, China; lives in Rosslyn, VA

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

Empty chairs, like headstones, marching to the Tent and the Capitol, under a stormy sky.

BIOGRAPHY

John Pan, MD, is a retired physician and clinical professor at the George Washington University School of Medicine & Health Sciences (GWSMHS). After over 20 years of practice as an ob-gyn, he founded the Center for Integrative Medicine at GWSMHS in 1998. He continues to promote the principle of treating the whole person beyond the disease as the path to preserving health and wellness.

One would hope for and expect a united nation to fight a common scourge. It was not to be. Opportunities missed. Lives lost, leaving empty chairs.

As a lifelong photography enthusiast, Pan strives to employ his creative instincts and the unique qualities of the image seen through the eye of the camera to touch the viewer with what he sees.

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REMEMBER 2020, Digital photograph, 16 × 20 in., Courtesy of the artist $2,500; Sale info: John Pan, johnpanphoto@gmail.com, 240-481-5121 104

JUDITH PECK b. 1957, Brooklyn, NY; lives in Great Falls, VA

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

“When the virus came here, it found a country with serious underlying conditions, and it exploited them ruthlessly. Chronic ills—a corrupt political class, a sclerotic bureaucracy, a heartless economy, a divided and distracted public—had gone untreated for years,” wrote George Packer for The Atlantic in June 2020. The outbreak of COVID-19 revealed an emperor with no clothes in the United States: a nation whose response to a devastating crisis was more akin to that of a failed state than a superpower. The subject of State Collapse, with heavy-lidded eyes and body curled, is rendered immobile beneath the weight of this failure, buried by the helplessness and isolation so many Americans felt throughout the pandemic.

BIOGRAPHY

Judith Peck is an allegorical figurative artist based in Northern Virginia. She has made her life’s work to paint about current issues and healing, using a variety of methods and experimental techniques to achieve a diverse range of visual and tactile results that validate a strong narrative. She has received awards from the Alexandria Museum of Art, Butler Institute of American Art, Florida A&M University’s PINNACLE competition, Lore Degenstein Gallery competition at Susquehanna University, Masur Museum of Art, and Washington County Museum of Fine Arts. Her work has been shown in CONTEXT Art Miami, the Art of Paper show in New York, and in major galleries, where she has had numerous solo shows. She was awarded the Strauss Fellowship Grant from Fairfax County, VA, as well as a two-month, granted international artist-in-residence in Salzburg, Austria.

Her paintings have been featured in American Art Collector, PoetsArtists, Artists Magazine, iARTisas, Combustus, and the books Tradition and Transformation and The Ashen Rainbow, both by Ori Z. Soltes, as well as The Kress Project published by the Georgia Museum of Art. Peck’s work is collected internationally and can be found in many private and public collections.

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STATE COLLAPSE 2020, Oil on panel, 16 × 20 in., Courtesy of 33 Contemporary Gallery, Chicago, IL $5,000; Sale info: Judith Peck, judithepeck@gmail.com, 703-861-6015 106

SHEDRICK PELT b. 1982, Forrest City, AR; lives in Washington, DC

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

Out of the toughest of times comes powerful imagery—it is the solar year 2020 and the world is at a standstill. People scramble to amass toilet paper stockpiles lasting months.

The anxiety of being unable to see the boogeyman that is haunting our communities is taking a toll on our souls. Things quickly grow into a state of panic, which only intensifies after the murder of George Floyd, months into what is now a global pandemic. Through the collective trauma of the moment, we still found the emotional space to celebrate our history, Black history.

I Can’t Stand the Rain was made during the 2020 Juneteenth celebration at Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, DC. The image depicts a young Black man, Afro peppered with freshly fallen raindrops, Black Power Afro pick adorning the crown of his tilted head. A bright green bandanna covers his nose and mouth. His eyes exude strength and worry, hope and disappointment. Over his left shoulder, another man connects an almost menacing glare with the camera.

Capturing this image using a civil rights–era Pentax 6 × 7 medium-format camera, shot on Kodak Portra 400 film stock, imbued the portrait with a textured nostalgia. It pays homage to the world-changing social justice movement, lending its virtue to a community in need 60 years later.

BIOGRAPHY

Shedrick Pelt is a Washington, DC, creative originally from Huntsville, AL, by way of Harlem. Committed to culture and community, Pelt has worked as a photographer, designer, and creative director for over 10 years, primarily focused on photojournalism and portrait, music, and commercial photography.

Pelt has been a collaborator with community arts groups such as Dupont Underground, Exposed DC, Parklife DC, and Story District since 2018. In 2020 Pelt curated the popular Rise Up exhibition at Dupont Underground, where he also serves as a cultural ambassador.

The exhibition featured local photography of the Black Lives Matter 2020 Uprising in Washington, DC, which garnered him extensive media attention.

Pelt has released two photo books: 2009 and Beyond (2018), featuring a decade of work with up-and-coming musicians, and We Keep Us Safe (2020), documenting civic actions in and around Washington, DC. Pelt began his career in live music photography, and has worked on the official SXSW photo crew since 2015 as well as collaborating with dozens of artists across the United States. Pelt is currently a board member at Focus on the Story and a collaborator on their upcoming photo book, Transition, which captures the 2020 presidential transition. Pelt has been featured in exhibitions at the Center for Photography at Woodstock, Dupont Underground, Exposed DC, International Center of Photography, and Washingtonian magazine, and he has been profiled by numerous radio stations and podcasts in Washington, DC, and Alabama.

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I CAN’T STAND THE RAIN 2020, Medium-format film photography, 16 × 20 in., Courtesy of the artist $450; Sale info: Shedrick Pelt, s.pelt@yahoo.com, 256-468-1523 108

KRISTINA PENHOET b. 1967, Portland, OR; lives in Washington, DC

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

By seeking perfection but finding true beauty only in the imperfections caused by chance, nature, and human interaction, I am fascinated by the challenging positive and negative experiences and emotions that make up the depth and breadth of human experience. In my work, I have considered seemingly negative events such as abandonment, betrayal, disconnection, judgment, misrepresentation, and loss, and the accompanying feelings of fear, sadness, revulsion, and anger, choosing to express them in abstract sculptural forms.

My biomorphic forms are often inspired by the human body, connecting the viewer to my work and invoking an emotional response. The repetition of forms common in much of my work is intended to enhance the emotional response of the viewers while reminding them of the universality of their experiences. I want to challenge us to be curious, seeking understanding and perhaps even beauty in the moments that make us human, which can lead to profound empathy for one another.

More specifically, How Many More? questions, through the repetitive creation and placement of abstracted visceral forms, the regard with which we hold each other in our current environment of gun violence, racism, and the pandemic. How many more will be injured, abandoned, forgotten, suffer, and die before we reframe our understanding?

BIOGRAPHY

Kristina Penhoet began working with fiber and textiles as a small child, learning to crochet and sew during her summer visits to her grandparents farm on a remote island in the Pacific Northwest. She continued to pursue her love of making during quiet moments while earning a degree in biology and working in health care. When she realized that she needed to commit to a more creative life, Penhoet attended Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, concentrating on sculpture and environmental design, and began working in model-making, film production, and stage design. Inspired by production design work and a continued interest in form and space, she pursued a graduate degree in architecture.

After 10 years of architectural practice, she rekindled her love of making and rediscovered fiber as a medium.

Originally from Oregon, Penhoet has lived in Washington, DC, for 20 years, creating a life for her family and a naughty dog that wants to be good.

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HOW MANY MORE? 2020, Fiber, 86 x 101 x 58 in., Courtesy of the artist $4,500; Sale info: Kristina Penhoet, info@kristinapenhoet.com 110

MARTA PÉREZ GARCÍA b. 1965, Arecibo, Puerto Rico; lives in Washington, DC

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

Through my work, I purport to give a voice, a stage, and a presence to survivors of gender violence who are forced to live in silence. Since the beginning of the pandemic, I have continued my work to raise awareness about gender violence and society’s blindness to it.

Academically trained as a printmaker working on color woodcut prints using the reduction process, I have added structural papermaking and sewing to my arsenal of skills to explore how social distancing can morph into isolation. Isolation compounds problems for survivors of gender violence who have to “shelter” in place with their aggressor.

With this piece, I am reflecting on the tragic irony of what has been called “sheltering” in place, where survivors of gender violence have largely become invisible, forgotten, and left to their own devices while at the mercy of their tormentors. In the confines of the confinement, their hand becomes a weapon.

The medium itself tells a story. Sewing is traditionally a women’s activity that goes back generations. Sewing is a way to connect to ancestors and to preserve the past through images of memories. My piece traces how the past is repeating itself from generation to generation. Sewing is a way for the silenced ones to transmit their stories in spite of being silenced. Sewing is the voice of the voiceless. Through both the medium and the imagery, my piece tells the story of the perpetuation of femicide.

I view my role as an artist as making the invisible visible.

BIOGRAPHY

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Originally from Arecibo, Puerto Rico, Marta Peréz García was trained as a printmaker at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University, where she received an MFA. Peréz García is recognized for her color woodcuts (reduction process) in Puerto Rico, where she has won a number of awards. Her artworks are in collections such as the Library of Congress, Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, and Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico, among others. After moving to Washington, DC, in 2008, Peréz García has been a yearly recipient of artist fellowships from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities since 2010. She was awarded Public Art Building Communities Grants in 2018 for I’m Gonna Get You, a large mixed-media installation on gender violence exhibited at the Reeves Center, and again in 2020 for an upcoming mural. Recently, Peréz García started to experiment with structural papermaking and was awarded the 2021 Vita Paper Arts Residency at Pyramid Atlantic Art Center in Hyattsville, MD.

Tu mano, la misma que una vez me acarició ahora me arrebató la vida.

Your hand, the very one that once caressed me has now taken my life.

YOUR HAND 2020, Molded cotton handmade paper and stitching with yarn, 11 x 19 x 2 in., Courtesy of the artist $5,000; Sale info: Marta Pérez García, martita_boricua@hotmail.com, 301-789-8520 112

LYDIA PETERS b. 1958, Trinidad and Tobago; lives in Bowie, MD

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

In my art, I like to create different styles while telling a story. My work goes closely with the theme of this exhibition, Inside Outside, Upside Down. I chose Stacey Abrams because of her work ethic in advocating for free and fair voting rights for the people in Georgia and around the country. In this composition, I chose a smiling Abrams to portray her personality, while adding broken glass to give a shining star appearance. The rhinestones help to pull together a professional look, while I added the clear beads for texture. Stacey Abrams is my/our shining star, hence the title: The Fair Fight Queen.

BIOGRAPHY

In her art, Lydia Peters creates abstract and mixed-media works, with her main focus on creating Black women and showing them in a positive way. She enjoys experimenting with new techniques in order to create new styles. By using color, designs and different materials allow her to explore several different ideas that constantly enter her head.

As an idea comes to Peters, she makes several sketches on that idea. This is when she starts experimenting and creating new styles. She is inspired when she is outdoors or looking at nature’s creations, like birds, trees, and the like. Once she feels relaxed, the ideas flow.

While in her creative space, she dreams of having her own art gallery. Since she explores and creates different styles, she feels that each room in her gallery would have a different style and would make great “artversations” among patrons. She would like to be known for having her own style/s of art, which she calls “Abstract Lydiaism.” She also wants young artists to know they do not have box themselves in, but should be free to exploit styles and techniques.

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THE FAIR FIGHT QUEEN 2020, Water-mixable oil paint, broken glass, clear beads, rhinestones, and resin on canvas, 40 × 30 × 1 1/2 in., Courtesy of the artist $3,160; Sale info: Lydia Peters, lydia@lydiapetersartist.com, 407-401-6287 114

JUNKO PINKOWSKI b. 1971, Kofu, Japan; lives in Alexandria, VA

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ARTIST’S STATEMENT

A compounding mixture of overwhelming events has festered during the pandemic: the unruly spread of the COVID-19 virus, the civil unrest and BLM protests, the Capitol riot, a fenced-in inauguration, and more . . . During this period, I desperately sought something peaceful and beautiful, something kind, even, that might counter the angry faces, ascending numbers of death and sadness, and the cold vacancy of the National Mall. I retreated to my artwork for a sort of therapy, compartmentalizing the hardship and unfolding simplicity in art imagery from it. The process of packing and unpacking, both literal images and psychological impressions, became a repeated ritual that yielded a slow yet steady progress against the vulgarity of the time. Art can save us, sometimes, and I am grateful for what it yielded here. A Pandemic Gestation, a nine-piece series as a way of evolving beauty from ugliness, offers a glimpse into a monthly artistic meditation that has allowed me to come out of a threatening physical, political, and psychological uncertainty into a newborn inspiration and wonder at it all.

BIOGRAPHY

Junko Pinkowski is a graphic designer, multimedia artist, and teacher of visual art and digital design. Her love of design has guided her interests in a variety of artistic and cultural pursuits. She was born and raised in Japan, though she studied design at Whitecliffe College of Arts and Design in Auckland, New Zealand. Pinkowski returned to Japan to apprentice in woodworking and traditional furniture design at the Matsumoto Technical Institute. She then moved to the United States, pursued typography studies at the Rhode Island School of Design, and began her career teaching in independent schools. She has exhibited her work in galleries across the eastern United States, from Connecticut to Tennessee. Her mixed love of teaching and practicing art continues to flourish in the metro Washington, DC, area.

A PANDEMIC GESTATION 2021, Mixed media, 9 pieces of 8 × 8 in., Courtesy of the artist $2,000; Sale info: Junko Pinkowski, junkopinkowski@gmail.com, 860-420-6226 116

DOMINICK RABRUN b. 1988, Brooklyn, NY; lives in Rockville, MD

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ARTIST’S STATEMENT

I created this multimedia video piece to represent a collage of my thoughts and actions during 2020. It is as frenetic and fractured as my existence has felt this past year. In this video, I sample artists, biochemistry, ideas, languages, and my past to try and paint an accurate portrait of time and identity during one of the hardest periods of my life.

BIOGRAPHY

Dominick Rabrun is an artist, teacher, writer, producer, director, and general maker of things. His work seeks to link and explain the fragmented sections of his unique life and experiences. On a personal level, much of his worldview was shaped by his status as a first-generation immigrant, his childhood trauma, and growing up in a deeply conservative Christian household. On a professional level, much of his processes were shaped by 12 years of experience working as an IT specialist for the US government. Top these off with natural inclinations toward technology, video games, biology, music, and art education; at the intersection of all these points, you get Rabrun’s artistic practice. His art is first and foremost an attempt to create a language or system wherein he can compartmentalize his competing inspirations. He finds that allowing them a space to inform and interact with one another serves as his greatest catalyst for creative inspiration and evolution.

DR. LA SALLE, THE SPIDER QUEEN, AND ME 2021, Digital mixed-media video installation, Courtesy of the artist $60,000; Sale info: Dominick Rabrun, hello@domrabrun.com, 301-256-5769 118

MOJDEH REZAEIPOUR b. 1986, Tehran, Iran; lives in Washington, DC

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

I started as an artist-in-residence at the Nicholson Project in SE Washington, DC, in April 2020, just as COVID-19 was deepening in its severity here in the United States. While I had proposed to do a community-based project for my on-site activation, the pandemic called for me to reshape this proposal to fit within the context of our new circumstances.

I spent many of my first weeks there in lockdown behind the lens of my camera, bearing witness to time through watching the light move across the wall, the moon move across the sky, etc. I then projected hours and hours of this collected footage onto various surfaces in the space, capturing a layered imprint as part of a silent conversation with the house itself. Meanwhile, the ambulance sirens shrieked, the birds chirped, the helicopters flew past, and I managed, in this liminal moment, to make a handful of dear friends in the neighborhood with whom I continue to be in touch to this day. To me, this work is as much about what is visible as what is not. What has shaped my learning lies at the intersection of bearing witness, being in a relationship, and surrender.

BIOGRAPHY

Mojdeh Rezaeipour is an Iranian-born artist working primarily in mixed media, installation, and film. She is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, where she studied architecture, and of Alt*Div, an alternative divinity school centering on the intersection of healing justice and art as spiritual practice. Since 2008 Rezaeipour’s various involvements across art, architecture, storytelling, and community organizing have led her to plant roots in the Bay Area, Berlin, Los Angeles, New York City, Rome, and Tokyo.

Her work and voice have appeared in publications and programs such as BmoreArt, Image Journal, The Moth Radio Hour, and the Washington Post, among others. She is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including a Studio Visit Fellowship at Takt Berlin (2018), second place for the Trawick Prize (2019), a Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship Grant (2020), a Nicholson Project artist residency (2020), and a Wherewithal Research Grant (2020–21). Rezaeipour is currently based in the Washington, DC, area, where she is a resident artist at STABLE, a VisArts Studio Fellow, and an upcoming artistin-residence at Wesley Theological Seminary.

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WATCHING TIME WATCHING GOD 2020, Video, Courtesy of the artist Not for sale 120

MARIE RINGWALD b. 1947, Bronx, NY; lives in Washington, DC

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

This is a painting of a closed, people-less warehouse—the exurban landscape we are left with during the pandemic.

BIOGRAPHY

Marie Ringwald’s art is inspired by everyday, simply made buildings that are designed for working in or holding materials, animals, and products. Her images are based on warehouses, barns, sheds, and vernacular architecture such as Quonset huts. She sketches and photographs during her travels. Images from photographs, movies, and TV have also provided inspiration. She starts by remembering a place and then abstracting essentials that—to her—evoke a personal and clear but universal memory.

Born, raised, and educated in the Bronx, NY, Ringwald has a BFA from Hunter College, City University of New York. In 1971 she moved to Washington, DC, where she started working and showing with a group of women artists. She was a professor at the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design from 1976 to 2003 and was chairman of the Foundation Department for a total of 10 years.

Ringwald has shown at the Anchorage Museum, Corcoran, Duke Ellington School of the Arts, Katzen Arts Center at American University, and Maryland Art Place. Her work is included in the collections of Fannie Mae, the Huntington Museum of Art in West Virginia, the National Gallery of Art, and the Washington Post. The US Department of State Art in Embassies program has exhibited her sculptures in South America and Europe.

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EXURBIA #2 2020, Acrylic, watercolor, and pencil on Arches cold press paper, 10 × 40 3/4 in., Courtesy of the artist $1,400; Sale info: Marie Ringwald, MarieRingwald@mac.com, 202-829-0424 122

JANATHEL SHAW b. Fort Pierce, FL; lives in Hyattsville, MD

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

I named this piece Unmasked: Hidden Warrior. It is a self-portrait. It shows me removing my proverbial mask. I am not referring to the ones we wear due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but the mask in Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poem, “We Wear the Mask.” All Black Americans know it intimately. It helps to keep us safe and grounded in a society and world that is capricious and often cruel. We have seen this in the continued deaths of African Americans.

In this image, I examine my emotional state and the price that was paid to prepare me to be resilient. It is evident in the age lines, my stance, and the direct gaze that confronts the viewer. My gaze says that I am watchful and unafraid. The metal bracelet I wear shows my pride in my ancestors, a nod to the Sankofa Bird. This spiritual bird reminds us to never forget the past so that we can move forward. In the center of the bracelet is a lone figure that symbolizes those Africans that died during the Middle Passage.

My black dress of colored sand and sparkles stands for modernity and progress. It is pretty and alluring. Yet, the surface is gritty and underscores strength borne of pain.

BIOGRAPHY

Janathel Shaw is an illustrator, ceramic artist, and educator. She was born in Florida and moved to Washington, DC, as a child. She attended DC Public Schools, namely the Duke Ellington School of the Arts. She later earned a BFA and then an MFA in ceramic arts from the George Washington University in 1989 and 1995. She also received an AA from Prince George’s Community College in 1988.

Shaw is a member of Touchstone Gallery in Washington, DC, and has exhibited there for several years. She is also a member of the Black Artists of DC. She has exhibited at the American Jazz Museum, Kansas City; Artist and Makers Galleries, Rockville, MD; Baltimore Clayworks; Cosmos Club, Washington, DC; Joan Hisaoka Healing Arts Gallery, Washington, DC; Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild, Pittsburgh; McLean Project for the Arts, Virginia; Montpelier Arts Center, Laurel, MD; Pepco Edison Place Gallery, Washington, DC; Society for Contemporary Art, Pittsburgh; and Washington Sculptors Group, and to name a few.

Shaw has also been cited or published in The Afro-American newspaper, Ceramic Review, Ceramics Monthly, Confrontational Ceramics by Judith S. Schwartz, East City Art, Studio Potter, The Trove, and the Washington Post.

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UNMASKED: HIDDEN WARRIOR 2020, Graphite, acrylic, black sand, and mixed media on paper, 35 × 27 in., Courtesy of the artist Not for sale 124

JOSEPH SHETLER b. 1984, Goshen, IN; lives in Washington, DC

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

The value of simplicity in my upbringing has greatly inspired my practice, both conceptually and aesthetically. Raised in a Mennonite family, the idea of simplicity pervades all aspects of life. One of the ways to live simply is to place little emphasis on the endless pursuit of worldly success, popular culture, and social media. I create work that reflects these values; it is a rejection of the things that I believe complicate our lives.

However, remaining focused on work in the studio became difficult in 2020.

As summer approached, health guidelines and curfews were used by the police to brutalize and oppress communities of color. With everyone stuck inside on social media, we witnessed the murders of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd. More and more scenes of racial injustice came to the forefront of our collective consciousness. I again found it hard to focus on my work. It seemed insignificant. I struggled with my privilege as a white straight male and choosing to retreat to my studio seemed irresponsible. I decided the best thing to do was listen and try to elevate voices who have been historically oppressed.

The act of listening, practicing empathy, recognizing our biases, and making conscious decisions to deconstruct them seemed to be the best way to remain objective.

The work itself is an exploration and appreciation of materials. It is filled with contradictions that make it utterly human. I see Untitled (quiet in the city) as a reflection of our COVID-19-era consciousness. Anyone present in Washington when the pandemic shut everything down noticed a change in volume. Those who could escape did, leaving behind deserted streets and an eerie calm. This vacancy provided an opportunity to see inside and outside of context, to be objective and remain present in simplicity.

BIOGRAPHY

Joseph Shetler is an American post-minimalist artist. He approaches his practice through a Mennonite lens, basing his aesthetic on Anabaptist theology and a simple way of life. His work explores themes of objectivity, simplicity, empathy, and materiality.

Shetler’s work has been exhibited throughout the United States at Goshen College, Indiana; Hillyer Art Space in Washington, DC; and Step Gallery in Phoenix, AZ, among others. Later in 2021 his work will be exhibited in Berlin. Shetler’s work is included in the collection of Arizona State University and Hesston College, and in private collections internationally. He was educated at Hesston College (AA, 2004), Goshen College (BA, 2006), and Arizona State University (MFA, 2014). He lives in Washington, DC, and is represented by Caitlin Berry Fine Art.

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UNTITLED (QUIET IN THE CITY) 2020, Mixed acrylic ground, graphite powder, marble dust, and silverpoint on panel, 48 x 36 x 2 in., Courtesy of the artist $6,000; Sale info: Caitlin Berry Fine Art, cb@caitlinberryfineart.com 126

NICHOLAS F. SHI b. 1958, San Salvador, El Salvador; lives in Washington, DC

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

In recent years, I have focused my work on my family’s immigration history. My father emigrated from China to El Salvador in the 1920s, where he experienced extreme discrimination. Fifty years later, I followed in his footsteps and came to the United States.

As a Latino and Asian man, I am not foreign to discrimination and racist incidents, such as verbal and physical confrontations.

Recently, blaming China for the onset and spread of COVID-19 has increased the aggression on Chinese people, and other Asians, living in the United States. As a response to these growing racist attacks as seen in our country and across the globe, I am creating a series of personal portraits to illustrate how terms like the “Chinese virus” and other xenophobic remarks are dehumanizing and have led to anti-Asian sentiment and discrimination. We are not the virus, but racism is.

BIOGRAPHY

Nicolas F. Shi, a longtime Washington, DC, resident, was born in El Salvador from Chinese parents. In 1980 he left his war-torn country and came to the United States to attend college, receiving a master’s degree in architectural engineering from Oklahoma State University in 1986. He practiced architecture and engineering for more than 10 years before dedicating himself to painting.

Shi’s work is influenced by his Latin American upbringing, his Chinese heritage, and his formal education in the United States. He mixes the bright colors of Central America with the harmony and simplicity of traditional Chinese painting and the boldness found in contemporary American art.

Shi has exhibited internationally, most notable at the Biggs Museum of American Art, Dover, DE; Centro Cultural Palacio de La Moneda, Santiago, Chile; Gasteig, Munich; Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut, Berlin; Museo de Arte de El Salvador; and Smithsonian’s Anacostia Community Museum, Washington, DC. He has been selected for participation in the US Department of State Arts in Embassies program. His work is included in numerous private and public collections, including the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities Art Bank Collection, Inter-American Development Bank, Museo de Arte de El Salvador, Smithsonian’s Anacostia Community Museum, and the University of Maryland.

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I AM NOT A VIRUS 2021, Acrylic on canvas, 40 × 30 × 1 1/2 in., Courtesy of the artist Price on request; Sale info: Nicolas F. Shi, nicolasfshi@gmail.com, 202-309-2351 128

TIM TATE b. 1960, Washington, DC; lives in Washington, DC

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

The Plague of Justinian was the first known plague, in 541–549 AD. It was the first time that the black plague was seen on this planet and it was named after the Roman Emperor Justinian I, who reportedly contracted it early on in Constantinople, though he survived. It ultimately killed one-fifth of the entire population of that city over five years. The people there called it Justinian’s Plague. Justinian said that whenever he saw his reflection, he imagined the faces of those who died looking back.

This is my second pandemic as I have lived through the AIDS crisis. So many souls have been lost to both. Strange that the mind will forget so much of what only this moment has passed, and yet hold crystal clear the memory of what happened years ago . . . of men and women long since dead. Yet who can say what is real and what is not? Can I believe my friends are gone when their voices are still whispering into my ears every night as I fall asleep? I will always believe they live on in my heart and mind.

BIOGRAPHY

Tim Tate is cofounder of the Washington Glass Studio in Washington, DC. Tate’s work is in the permanent collections of a number of museums, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum. He was also the 2010 recipient of the Virginia A. Groot Foundation award for sculpture, received second place in the 2017 London Contemporary Art Prize, and is a James Renwick Alliance 2018 Distinguished Artist, among many other awards.

Tate taught in Istanbul in August 2007 and at Penland School of Craft on several occasions, where he was the featured artist for their 2018 annual auction. He was the development chair for the Penland Board of Trustees from 2014 to 2018 and is the program chair for the James Renwick Alliance. He received a Fulbright Award to study at Sunderland University in the United Kingdom in 2012. In 2018 he was asked by Glenn Adamson to speak at Yale University on “Craft and Conflict” in order to represent the Queer community and its history of art activism.

Tate participated in the Glasstress show with Ai Weiwei and Vik Muniz during the 2019 Venice Biennale as well as the Boca Raton Museum of Art Glasstress show in January 2021.

In October 2021 he will be showing at the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg.

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JUSTINIAN’S OCULUS 2020, Cast poly-vitro and paint, 31 × 31 × 4 in., Courtesy of the artist $8,500; Sale info: Tim Tate, Tim.Tate@fulbrightmail.org, 202-744-8222 130

JULIO VALDEZ b. 1969, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic; lives in Washington, DC

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

I explore portraiture as an imperfect translation of a self that can never be captured. This new pandemic self-portrait is a vehicle for exploring cultural identity, as the COVID-19 pandemic has become a cultural experience that is redefining us from the inside out, as individuals and as a people.

My paintings explore an oceanic landscape at once dreamlike and hallucinatory. I have been exploring images of water as a metaphor for consciousness and the creative process.

My creative process reflects my interest in creating a spatial uncertainty, a sense of time not yet defined. In my paintings, I use the “allover technique” to call the attention of the viewer to the entire visual field. I focus on visual aspects (transparency, color saturation, luminosity, forms, etc.) and combine them in such a way that form and content become inseparable.

BIOGRAPHY

Julio Valdez is a painter, printmaker, teacher, and mixed-media installation artist whose work has been exhibited internationally since 1986. He was part of the official representation of the Dominican Republic at the 58th Venice Biennale and recently opened a new solo show at June Kelly Gallery in New York from November 2019 to January 15, 2020. A new museum exhibition is scheduled for 2021 at the Art Museum of the Americas in Washington, DC. Valdez has presented 30 institutional and gallery solo exhibitions nationally and internationally, and has participated in more than 150 group exhibitions, biennials, and related educational programs in the visual arts.

Valdez has received numerous prestigious international awards, including an Artist-inResidence Fellowship from the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1997–98; the Silver Palette for Painting, 30e Festival International de Peinture, Cagnes-sur-Mer, France, in 1998; the Grand Prize, XVII E. León Jimenes Biennial, Dominican Republic, in 2000; and the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in 2003. A hardcover, bilingual (Spanish and English) book, Julio Valdez by Federica Palomero, was published in late 2009. In 2013 he received the Grand Prize at the International Drawing Biennial at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, Santo Domingo.

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PANDEMIC SELF-PORTRAIT III Archival pigment print on DIBOND, 20 × 27 in., Courtesy of the artist $4,500; Sale info: Julio Valdez, julio@jvsprojectspace.com, 347-239-7357 132

JESSICA VALORIS b. 1985, Washington, DC; lives in Washington, DC

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

If movement is how we resist, then stillness is how we persist. still: a rival geography is a ritual that honors my ancestors: those named and unnamed, known and unknown.

Through the creation of an incantation bowl, an ancient Judaic protection practice, still is a meditation on all the ways that my Black, Jewish, and Indigenous ancestral lineages find home and find each other in my body, and in my being. Guided by the wisdom of water and the light of my ancestors, still is a meditative call to presence.

Inspired by the Black August tradition, I devoted the month of August to engage in spiritual ritual, creative practice, and research to explore Black fugitivity and honor the lived experiences and legacy of Black people who practiced fugitivity. Stephanie Camp’s description of rival geographies, a term coined by Edward Said, refers to spaces on the margins that are sites of resistance to colonial occupation. The borderlands, the liminal spaces, the outside becomes its own kind of crossroads: where traditions and innovations meet, collide, coalesce, and conspire. still: a rival geography brings life to the multidimensionality of stillness while centering ritual as a timeless site of resistance and resilience. still: a rival geography is a part of a larger body of work called Black Fugitive Folklore. As “abolition” became a popular term following the uprisings for Black lives in 2020, public discourse erased and ignored the history of the abolitionist movement which was founded by formerly enslaved Black people who escaped, sparking a legacy of liberation and radical political resistance. Black Fugitive Folklore shifts the narrative around emancipation and freedom in the United States—rooting it in an anti-oppressive politic that resists assimilation and centers the lives and transformative legacies of Black people.

BIOGRAPHY

Jessica Valoris is a Washington, DC-based multidisciplinary installation artist who creates sacred environments thorough mixed-media installation and sound collage. Honoring and affirming the ancestral medicines that live in Black culture, Black bodies, and Black communities is at the heart of her work. Rooted in the ritual of study and play, Valoris creates portals out of sound, textile, paint, wood, and recycled materials. She employs history to help tell more complex and complete stories of resilience and self-definition.

Informed by her Black American and Jewish ancestry, Valoris explores ideas through the lens of metaphysics, spirituality, and Afrofuturism. She builds installations that cultivate deep listening and personal reflection, lift up a cosmology of liberation, complicate flattened histories of oppression, and create space for affirmative celebration and redefinition. Through meditative soundscapes, vivid color, imagery, and texture, Valoris creates pathways to heal the harms of racialized marginalization and erasure, cultivating space for culturally relevant wellness.

Valoris is a Halcyon Arts Lab Fellow. Her work has been featured at the Anacostia Arts Center, George Washington Carver Museum and Cultural Center, and at various venues including Afrotectopia NYC, Culture Coffee Too, Harvard University’s Black in Design Conference, and Takoma Bev. Co.

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STILL: A RIVAL GEOGRAPHY 2020, Video, Courtesy of the artist Not for sale 134

IAN WHITE b. 1995, Washington, DC; lives in Washington, DC

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ARTIST’S STATEMENT

This poster empathizes with the longing to be productive while lacking the motivation to do so due to the effects of isolation. With all the newfound time that isolation provided, my and many others’ immediate response was to try to get as much done as possible. A calm and quiet place started to feel increasingly chaotic. A place that previously served as a sanctuary at the end of a rough day became something else entirely. As time passed, the desire to be productive while being simultaneously burned-out from the constant tragedy happening around us grew into something much more overbearing.

BIOGRAPHY

Ian White is a graphic designer and illustrator based in Washington, DC. He is currently pursuing an undergraduate degree in graphic design at the Maryland Institute College of Art. In the Affinity suite and Adobe Creative Suite, he creates detailed settings using vibrant color to create engaging and relatable worlds.

LOST IN MY SPACE 2020, Digital print, 19 × 13 in., Courtesy of the artist $250 (frame not included); Sale info: Ian White, ianwhitelab@gmail.com, 202-423-8399 136

RICHARD L. WILLIAMS JR. b. 1994, Washington, DC; lives in Washington, DC

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

My work explores the range of experiences that exist within Black families and communities.

My influence is drawn from my family, with a particular focus on my senior family members. As a child, I would oftentimes thumb through my parents’ and grandparents’ photo albums, and was awed as I followed them through their journey from adolescence to older adulthood. I also come from a very diverse household, where each member of my family is different yet we have all been reared in a similar way. This is analogous to my work; my goal is to highlight Black communities and communities of color and show the beauty in our variety—that we are not monolithic.

I use my work to highlight the everyday contributions that Black folks provide. Whether I am capturing the first Black woman to be the owner of a community solar energy company or photographing my grandmother simply enjoying her Tuesday at home, I feel that it is necessary to show the multifaceted pieces of our existence. There is strength in our resilience, there is strength in our accomplishments, and there is also strength in our silence.

I believe that it is my duty, and the duty of those who look like me, to be solely responsible for sharing our own stories, and I use my work to embody that.

BIOGRAPHY

Richard L. Williams Jr. is a photographer, filmmaker, and graphic designer based in Washington, DC. His work focuses on community, expression, and social issues with an emphasis on street photography. The bulk of his work encompasses the lives of Black/ culturally diverse communities.

Williams was born in Washington, DC, at Howard University Hospital on April 25, 1994.

He is the third child of Richard Williams Sr. and Pamela Crockett-Williams. He has two older sisters, a twin brother, and a younger brother. He was reared and educated in Fort Washington, MD. Williams’s passion for photography began while attaining his undergraduate degree at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where he graduated in May 2016. He would explore neighborhoods in Baltimore, while also traveling between Washington, DC, and New York City, to photograph and interview a variety of folks that garnered his attention.

His goal has always been to identify and share stories that have oftentimes gone untold.

Today, Williams has been able to share many stories through his lens. His work focuses on highlighting Black communities along with communities of color. His work has been published by Bloomberg Businessweek, BuzzFeed, Dazed, Ebony, FT Magazine, Google, and Vogue.

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CLAUDETTE, ROMAN, AND RASHARD—FEBRUARY 2021 2021, Film photograph, 11 9/16 × 17 3/4 in., Courtesy of the artist Not for sale 138

COLIN WINTERBOTTOM b. 1967, Evanston, IL; lives in Washington, DC

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

On the evening that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, hundreds of Washingtonians spontaneously assembled on the plaza outside the Supreme Court. They quietly gathered to honor the great life Ginsburg had lived and to reflect on how their lives were enriched through her activism, her judicial decision, and her remarkable example.

As a fine art photographer, architecture is my muse. My genuine interests in social and political issues seldom manifest themselves in my camera work. Photojournalism is not my specialty. But hungry for inspiration since COVID-19 restrictions had slowed our lives, I thought how a new practice in my architectural work could apply to photographing gatherings in the city. In recent years, I have been fascinated with making photos from an elevated perspective: a hovering view we seldom experience but frequently imagine. I had built a kit of various cranes, masts, and poles to shoot architecture from high angles. I repurposed these first at Washington’s Black Lives Matter Plaza, where the elevated view down 16th Street NW documented the interplay of emblazoned asphalt, demonstrators, and the White House. For my work at the Supreme Court that night, I raised the camera only a few feet over my head, but it made all the difference. From a conventional vantage, we would see a few people in the foreground with the Supreme Court in the distance.

From a higher vantage, we can understand the gathering in full. We look over the shoulders of the nearest group as they look down to their memorial offerings. Beyond them we see those on the plaza as they return the gaze of those on the distant stairs. They are two groups looking to each other as they reflect and worry, their thoughts rising up to the court itself, with its imperiled promise engraved in marble: “Equal Justice Under Law.”

BIOGRAPHY

Colin Winterbottom is a fine art photographer with an interest in architecture and the urban environment. He is particularly motivated by the challenge to discover “new takes” on monumental and iconic subjects photographed countless times. Winterbottom seeks out unusual points of view and unexpected juxtapositions, rendering interpretive photographs which at times eschew strict documentation. Favoring atmosphere over accuracy, his photography evokes emotional undercurrents in the built environment.

Winterbottom’s penchant for unique perspectives drew him to historic preservation projects in which construction equipment like scaffolds and scissor lifts give access to rarely accessible views and proximity to ornamental details usually experienced from a distance. In addition to the architecture itself, he eventually began photographing the preservation processes, helping to tell the stories of the important efforts to restore the National Cathedral, Trinity Church Wall Street, Union Station, and the Washington Monument, among others.

Winterbottom’s work has been exhibited at galleries in Washington, DC, where he is based, and at the National Building Museum and the Kreeger Museum. His work is in numerous collections, including that of the Carlyle Group, Federal Reserve Bank, Nixon Peabody, Smithsonian’s Photographic History Collection, the Supreme Court, and White & Case.

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VIGIL FOR RUTH BADER GINSBURG 2020, Archival pigment print, 19 1/2 × 24 in., Courtesy of the artist $1,725; Sale info: Colin Winterbottom, colin@winterbottom.com, 202-277-3686 140

Inside Outside, Upside Down accompanies an exhibition of the same title held at The Phillips Collection, July 17 – September 12, 2021

This juried invitational is part of the museum’s centennial exhibition, Seeing Differently: The Phillips Collects for a New Century. As such we recognize the following sponsors.

The exhibition and its publication are generously supported by a lead gift from the Henry Luce Foundation.

With significant contributions from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, Charles McKittrick, Jr., the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, the Ednah Root Foundation, the Frauke de Looper Trust, and the Robert and Arlene Kogod Family Foundation

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this exhibition do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Made possible by the Carolyn Alper Fund for Contemporary Art and The Phillips Collection’s Exhibitions Endowment Fund, which is generously supported by the Sherman Fairchild Foundation, Michelle and Glenn Engelmann, Robert and Debra Drumheller, and The Marion F. Goldin Charitable Fund Additional support provided by Sam and Ruth Alward, Barbara Brown Hawthorn, Helen and David T. Kenney, and Ronald Stern and Elisse Walter Special thanks to our key academic partner, University of Maryland, a global leader in research, entrepreneurship, and innovation.

In-kind contributions provided by The wall colors in the exhibition: Cabbage White (No. 269), Down Pipe (No. 26), Inchyra Blue (No. 289), Railings (No. 31)

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Inside Outside, Upside Down is organized by The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC. © 2021 The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC Curator Statement © 2021 by Renée Stout “Cultivating Empathy Through Art” © 2021 by Camille Brown “An Enduring Lecacy: Engaging with DC’s Art Community at the Phillips” © 2021 by Elsa Smithgall First published in the United States of America in 2021 by The Phillips Collection 1600 21st Street, NW Washington, DC 20009 PhillipsCollection.org All rights reserved. The text in this publication may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publisher.

For The Phillips Collection: Dorothy Kosinski, Vradenburg Director and CEO Elsa Smithgall, Senior Curator Camille Brown, Curatorial Assistant Magda Nakassis and Vivian Djen, Editors Ann Lipscombe, Design

Cover: Desmond Beach, #SayTheirNames 2, 2021, Fabric and paper, 25 × 21 1/2 in., Courtesy of the artist Artwork page 3: Lydia Peters, The Fair Fight Queen (detail), 2020, Water-mixable oil paint, broken glass, clear beads, rhinestones, and resin on canvas, 40 × 30 × 1 1/2 in., Courtesy of the artist Artwork page 5: Wesley Clark, The Feeling (detail), 2020, Plywood, lumber, steel, screws, bolts, and spray paint, 24 1/2 x 27 x 7 in., Courtesy of the artist Artwork page 7: Sam Gilliam, Red Petals, 1967, Acrylic on canvas, 88 x 93 in., The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, Acquired 1967 Artwork page 10: Lois Mailou Jones, Place du Tertre (detail), 1938, Oil on canvas, 18 1/4 x 22 5/8 in., The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, Acquired 1944

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The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC

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