Thank you for the grace. Open Stu at @ncartmuseum was special. Flashing back to one of healthy collection of moments this year that made me feel like anything was possible for myself and art and building cultural power with my community. We succeeded in creating an environment that was in conversation with the exhibition “The Time is Always Now” curated by @ekoweshun . Grateful to the Museum team, friends & family @mars.is.bored for the program partnership, @uncle_kette for second shooting, @blackasthecosmos for spinning, @wattyinnagenius for the equipment save and all my people for everything.
FOR PICS look for the partiful message with a link or the email newsletter that I sent this morning. Don’t forget to photo credit if you use and contact me if you want or need to publish 🤲🏾
Thank you @corey.lamar for documenting and cutting this recap!!!
This is one of the first new sculptural things I’ve done a while. Pictured me adding pine tar as a preservative, and a blood of sorts…a representation of the cost of artificial intelligence and other extractive environmentally degrading industrial and commercial processes. On view at the @peoplessolidarityhub
📸 x @meg.stein.art
Life in the pod. Self portrait from time spent at @vacenterforthecreativearts in October this year. My time spent was an incredible reminder of what possible when you are in practice.
Swamp Jam is a celebration of environmental justice work, past present and future. An open door for those looking to make an impact in their communities. A space that places art, artists and culture as essential to the world we are building.
Join us in conversations, share meals, dynamic participatory workshops, lots of play, and immersive art, dance performances and of course music! We will engage ideas around local and national climate policy, building backyard solutions for everyday life, and creative pathways into environmental justice work. We will also have space to process the grief around what we have lost and honor the possibilities for what we can still create together.
Lock in with us as we share more over the next week about the nitty grittier of the program!
Swamp Jam is an all day festival-convening-celebration of environmental justice work, past present and future. An open door for those looking to make an impact in their communities. A space that places art, artists and culture as essential to the world we are building.
Join us in conversations, experiential learning, shared meals, dynamic participatory workshops, lots of play, and immersive art. We will engage ideas around local and national climate policy, building backyard solutions for everyday life, and creative pathways into environmental justice work. We will also have space to process the grief around what we have lost and honor the possibilities for what we can still create together.
Last but not least we gone jam with a lineup of local and internationally recognized artists. Details coming soon…😏
RSVP link in bio🤲🏾 and follow @groundedpossibilities for more information
Come join us this Saturday to hear Durham artist Derrick Beasley (@brobeas ) sit down to talk with TSA Greenville member and Mike Brown Gallery owner Michaela Pilar Brown (@michaelapilarbrown ) about their multidisciplinary practices and other shared interests in the context of our current exhibit, Surviving the Burn: Room to Breathe, imagined and created by Beasley. Through their practices, the Artists offer us alternatives. Beasley imagines a Black masculinity aligned closely with the nonhuman world to heal a post-apocalyptic humanity. Brown harnesses her habit of collecting to look at the construction of identity and in the process builds a counter-narrative to American history which re-centers Black female subjectivity. Communal and personal in scope and topics, their work also shares a general concern with relationship to the landscape.
Gallery open from 11-6
Reception 3-6
Talk at 5
Surviving the Burn; Room to Breathe, explores a speculative future shaped by a reframed Black masculinity - one that exists in a deep, reciprocal relationship with the non-human world. Spanning painting, sculpture, photography and film, artist Derrick Beasley maps a future where people have embraced ways of being that challenge expected ideas of survival and identity. The exhibition asks - and answers - who survives "the burn" - and how communities adapt, resist, and thrive in its aftermath.
DERRICK BEASLEY is an artist living in Durham, NC. Beasley's practice includes sculpture, photographic collage, painting and social practice. His work immerses viewers in a speculative vision and material reality of the world he is designing. Beasley is a graduate of North Carolina A&T State University Sociology program and the Georgia State University Masters in Public Administration Program.
MICHAELA PILAR BROWN is an independent curator and multidisciplinary artist using photography, installation, collage, painting and performance. She studied sculpture and art history at Howard University. Brown in a 2024 Joan Mitchell Foundation Fellow and the 2018 grand prize winner of Artfields juried art competition, among many other awards and honors.
🚨Room to Breathe is the latest iteration of my Surviving the Burn series of offerings. This collection of works is a look into the future when we survived both the climate and socio-political catastrophe we face now. This specific show is a vignette that speculates on the lives of Black boys and men and the rituals we will create to survive the burn and for new men to born! (s/o @blackmenbuild - ✌️to the 9’s).
I couldn’t be more proud of myself and this show is a milestone for me for a couple reasons. This is my first solo offering outside of North Carolina (emerging). I am also sharing works across several mediums including sculpture, painting collage and textiles. This is one of few non photo-forward shows I’ve put together.😎. If you can find yourself in Greenville South Carolina, make your way to @tsa_gvl for the opening on Saturday October 18th. I’ll be giving a talkback that night and will be in conversation with @michaelapilarbrown 🤲🏾 and of course wine and cheeses.
Special thank you to @paintingafterartisdead for bringing this all together! 🙏🏾
Next week is SwampJam! Me and @monetisart have conjured a slate of incredible programming including installations, screenings and workshops from our inaugural Grounded Possibilities fellows. With Swamp Jam we are making the case that culture matters! We invite you into our practices of loving our environment and one another in a way that we find essential to build the new world! It’s fee. Lunch is free breakfast is free and the concert in the evening is free! I hope you will es o and join us 🥹🤲🏾
Some notes: Swamp Jam is in North Durham at the beautiful @avila Center. We have plenty space to learn rest and create and be in community. Also it’s a long day so we have space to freshen up if you want to stay. What I’m saying is we are going to great lengths to create a place for folks to be well and plot on greater wellness together. RSVP link and more details in bio!!
More wetlands all 2025!
Thanks to @oysterscarolina for hosting fun in the sun side of our Grounded Possibilities planning Retreat! #swamptour #ncwetlands
