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Arts Community Community Development Jessica Harris

Marisa Williamson & “Unsettling Grounds” 

a woman near a window
Marisa Williamson during an Unsettling Grounds planning meeting. Photo Credit: Hyeyon Moon

by Jessica Harris; featured photo by Hyeyon Moon

The Unsettling Grounds mobile app is now available to download on all iOS and Android devices at https://unsettlinggrounds.com/. 

Marisa Williamson is an artist unafraid of pushing boundaries and challenging narratives. 

Perhaps that’s why her most recent creation, an augmented reality mobile app called Unsettling Grounds, has such an apt title. The piece contextualizes Charlottesville’s Woolen Mills by inviting users to engage in its history via interactive and creative experiences. Suffice to say, the app is in line with Marisa’s powerful, gripping, artistic style. 

Grappling with history and its impact is not new to Marisa. Growing up in Philadelphia, she was instilled with “the idea of history being alive and something you walk through every day.” This notion of the importance of bringing history to the present wove its way into her artistic praxis, too, as her work grapples with themes of history, race, feminism, and technology.

a woman holding up plans for an exhibition
Marisa Williamson, at an Unsettling Grounds planning meeting. Photo credit: Hyeyon Moon

Her pieces are riveting, bold, and innovative. She uses performance art, mixed media, textiles, and more to challenge narratives of the past and create living monuments to ancestors. As such, she believes that “some of the things borrowed from the world of activism can find a place in art.”

Marisa received her bachelor’s degree from Harvard University, and while she didn’t plan to pursue art in college, she soon discovered the potential that art has to challenge and transform. She later deepened her work in the intersection of social change and creativity at CalArts where she received her Master’s of Fine Arts. 

This “artivism” philosophy also aligns with her extensive work as an educator. She’s taught in just about every educational setting imaginable: elementary schools, alternative schools, and  higher education settings. “I really like taking young folks through a space and doing inquiry-based learning, asking them what they see and think about history and art… and trying to see what’s not there,” she says.

Since 2021, she’s been on faculty at the University of Virginia where she completed an artist residency in 2018. And while Marisa might not be a Charlottesville native, her work and this locale have been inextricably linked for years. She’s created site-specific work at Monticello and at the University of Virginia. Some of her more well known works grapple with Sally Hemings, an important historical figure and former enslaved laborer at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello estate, and the impact of her legacy. 

In her artist statement, Marisa shares that she hopes her work provides “insight not only into how history is understood, but how it is felt.” She strives to create works that you can teach from, and art that invites dialogue and reflection. “Slow art,” she says, “art that takes awhile to unpack or to launch or to land” is equally important to her. And her latest curated project, Unsettling Grounds, is a perfect combination of these elements. 

a group of people in a community space
The creative team at an Unsettling Grounds planning meeting at Visible Records. Photo credit: Jay Simple

It’s an app that powerfully couples art with history, and contemporary engagement with contextualization. The app officially launched in June 2023 and is an augmented reality and interactive storytelling tool, highlighting experimental and monumental works by Black, Brown, Indigenous & rural artists. Per the app’s description, “using this app, audiences will uncover hidden histories of lesser-known struggles for freedom….Unsettling Grounds makes visible and audible the hidden past.”

“The plan was to pull ideas together, and to create digital and monumental scenes that reflected history,” Marisa says. Users must move their phone – walk forward and backward, turn around, and be fully immersed in space to engage fully with the scenes and uncover the stories. While the app guides users through the Woolen Mills area, one does not need to be on-site to use it. The immersive and interactive components can be launched and engaged with anywhere. 

a screenshot from an app
A screenshot from the Unsettling Grounds application.

The process of putting together the application was a whirlwind experience. In partnership with Albemarle County, the project received grant funding from the National Endowment for the Arts in September 2022. Between last fall and the official launch, Marisa and her team have been working overtime to bring this piece to life. 

The app features work by artists Marie Tattiana Aqeel, Joumana Altallal, Myra Anderson, April Branham, Tanesha Hudson, Aidyn Mancenido, Alma Rayen Molina, Kweisi Morris, Adrienne Jacobson Oliver, and Sandy Williams IV. It was fabricated by Dream Syndicate, and received support from Amber Smith, Brandon Lee, and The Bridge PAI. “It was a good group that really challenged me. There’s a monumental thing that happened just in the group collaborating and trying to get stuff done, which I hope to make happen again somehow,” Marisa smiles. 

Perhaps equally fulfilling for Marisa was the launch event for the app, and seeing different groups of people connecting with one another and mingling in the space. “It was interesting at the launch to have the kind of vibe of underground-ness in this slightly intimate space,” she notes. The power of connection with the community was felt – both in the app and at the launch event. 

a gathering with dozens of people
The Unsettling Grounds launch event. Photo credit: Jay Simple

When asked what she hopes folks walk away with after engaging with Unsettling Grounds, she says, “I want people to enjoy being immersed in these kinds of sonic archival experiences, and I want them to be curious about getting to the bottom of it.” She also hopes users leave with the understanding that “we as people won’t be the first and we won’t be the last. And we need to live like that.” 

The team’s goal is to hold artist talks or tours and bring the project more fully into the community, using it as a tool for education and dialogue. As for her personal artwork, Marisa’s hoping to head back into the studio to finish up some new and exciting projects. No matter where her work may take her, Marisa is sure to leave an indelible legacy – both in augmented and actual reality. 

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To download the Unsettling Grounds app, visit: https://unsettlinggrounds.com/

To learn more about Marisa, visit her website at: www.marisawilliamson.com

Categories
Arts Community Development Jessica Harris

Kori Price & Blackity Black Black 

a woman posing with art
Kori Price, president of the Charlottesville Black Arts Collective (CBAC) poses with art at the Blackity Black Black exhibit at the McGuffey Arts Center

by Jessica Harris 

“I don’t want to just survive as an artist. I want to thrive.” 

That phrase is artist Kori Price’s mission statement. And between her personal artwork and serving as president of the Charlottesville Black Arts Collective (CBAC), she is certainly working to do just that. 

A multidisciplinary artist whose media includes photography, writing, and weaving, Kori Price has been a creative for as long as she can remember. Born in Culpepper, Virginia, Kori is also an electrical engineer by training, and for the past three years has worked as a product manager at Emerson Automation Solutions in Charlottesville. 

However, it would be an understatement to say that by day Kori is a product manager, and by night, she is an artist. Rather, her disciplines and practices converge seamlessly into one another and impact every aspect of her life. “I’m starting to realize everything’s connected, especially with my practice as an artist–everything that I do can be a source of inspiration,” she says. 

In fact, something that makes Kori unique is the way she views artistic work from an engineering perspective. When she starts to work on a piece of art, her “engineering mindset takes over. I need these tasks and in this order to complete a piece. I have a plan…and a problem-solving mindset to create using my own art practice.” 

Perhaps it is this multifaceted thinking that has allowed Kori to flourish as an artist. A prolific photographer, her work has been shown at multiple galleries around town, including New City Arts, Second Street Gallery, and Studio IX, among others. She also creates weavings that use synthetic Black hair and writes poetry and prose. Currently, she’s writing a novel that compares feudalism with corporate America. “I don’t know anything about the Middle Ages,” Kori laughs, “but [the book] is going to have knights and kings and vassals and serfs, and it all kind of lines up with the hierarchy we see today.” 

By now, you may have come to realize that Kori is the definition of “booked and busy.” To allow time and space for all these projects, Kori is using this period of her life to focus her efforts more on her artwork and creative practice. “I want to be in art as much as I can and just be in a creative mode,” she says. “I feel like I’m in that cycle again where it’s discovery and research mode.” 

a black and white image of a field
A photograph titled “In Chorus” by Kori Price and provided by Kori Price

One of Kori’s many projects that she’s worked on the past few years has been starting the CBAC The collective was formally created in 2020 when local Black artists joined forces to curate Water: The Agony and Ecstasy of the Black Experience at the McGuffey Arts Center. Kori says that the artists who participated “enjoyed that show, and we needed that show, and we said, ‘What do we do next? How do we keep this going?’”

Needless to say, the CBAC has answered that call. The group’s efforts the past three years have included an exhibit titled Lay My Burdens Down, artist gatherings and shows, and film screenings at the Alamo Drafthouse. In a break from the heavier themes of their previous exhibits, their latest show Blackity Black Black at McGuffey Art Center is an unabashed celebration of all things Black.

an art exhibit of hair installations
One side of Kori Price’s piece “Did you just touch my hair? II” on display as a part of the Charlottesville Black Arts Collective’s Blackity Black Black exhibition at the McGuffey Art Center, photograph provided by Kori Price

The exhibition features thirty-five Black artists whose media run from photography and weaving to spoken word and mixed media pieces. This blend of artists mirrors the non-monolithic nature of Blackness, amplifying numerous perspectives and inviting viewers to understand various identities and experiences.  

This multiplicity of Blackness can be found in Kori’s personal work as well. She aims to amplify Blackness broadly through her pieces, and for her work to challenge audiences to think outside of traditional and expected confines and exist in – as she calls it, the gray area. “I’m trying to put viewers in the middle of whatever it is that I’ve created,” Kori states. “I want us to be in a gray area together.”

photography on a wall
Installation pieces and photographs of Black women’s joy from one of Kori Price’s past exhibitions titled “You can’t compromise my joy.” Photograph provided by Kori Price

Aligned with this notion of complexity, the Blackity Black Black exhibition challenges audiences to embrace this liminal space. Part of what is most powerful about this exhibition is its unapologetic celebration of Blackness in its entirety– not just the beauty and joy that Black folks experience, but the challenges and the heartache – our humanity.

The Blackity Black Black exhibition takes up two floors at the McGuffey Arts Center and leaves audiences feeling moved, changed, and inspired. The show will run until April 2, 2023. 

What’s up next for the CBAC? Currently, they’re working to expand their efforts. “If you are a Black artist and you’re interested in helping us grow and build and you have the time for it, we would love to have you,” Kori says. The CBAC hopes to hold more events, artist gatherings, and curate shows, continuing to incorporate as many artistic disciplines as possible. 

As for Kori? She’s going to continue carving out time for her art, and move towards focusing on her artistic practice more fully. With no doubt, no matter what she does next, she will bring her multifaceted and multidisciplinary approach, and will continue to artistically thrive. 

To learn more about the Charlottesville Black Arts Collective, visit charlottesvilleblackartscollective.com. 

To learn more about Kori, visit koripricephotography.com. 

Categories
Arts Community Community Development Jessica Harris

Veronica Jackson & Black Joy Is…

a woman making art
Veronica Jackson shows the process of pulling a print, then applying glitter by hand to one of the portraits in the BLACKTIVISTS series. The ongoing artwork consists of silkscreened portraits that depict thirteen relatively unknown and understudied Black women activists.

by Jessica Harris

photograph of art work from "That's Pop's Money"
“The artwork “That’s Pops’s Money.” Using 813 timecards, artist Veronica Jackson documents her grandmother’s domestic, social, intimate, and invisible labor over the course of 67 years as a housewife. Photo Credit: Veronica Jackson

Fearless. Female. Ferocious. These words perfectly describe artist and designer Veronica Jackson. 

They’re also words from the subtitle of her latest curation, Black Joy Is: Ferocious, Fearless, Forever, Female, For Me, running at Piedmont Virginia Community College (PVCC) until March 25, 2023.

Featuring Black, female-identifying artists from Charlottesville and Virginia, Black Joy Is… is a powerful examination of how Black joy is understood and activated, particularly from the perspective of Black women. This lens seems to be fitting for curator Veronica Jackson, whose work examines the intersection of Blackness, feminism, and visual culture. 

Hailing from northeast Washington D.C., Veronica is a fourth-generation Washingtonian with roots in Virginia. Several years ago, she moved back to her ancestral home in Bedford, VA to care for her mother on land that her great-grandparents owned. 

Veronica credits her mother with introducing her to the world of art and design. “The foundation of my aesthetics came from my mother,” she shared. The two of them used to drive around D.C. and look at homes in wealthier areas. This early exposure prompted her to take an interest in the environment constructed around her, eventually leading her to pursue architecture and design.  

However, upon graduating from the University of Virginia’s School of Architecture, she realized that she didn’t want to strictly be an architect. She took a job working for a lighting and exhibit design firm, and found ways to tell stories through her work. “I was a storyteller but didn’t realize it…and so I link architecture and storytelling and art because they’re all connected,” she said.

painting of a girl by Bolanle Adeboye
“Flower Girl” by Bolanle Adeboye, an artist whose work is featured in Black Joy Is…

After five years, she decided to try her hand at freelance design, and soon decided to permanently chart her own path by creating The Jackson Design Group. Yet, this work was not all Veronica felt called to achieve.

“Around 2011, I decided that I needed to contribute to humanity better,” she shared. She had been collecting art and having many conversations with artists about how important their work was to society. “I decided, okay, if I have this knowledge about what visual art is and the transformative power it holds, how do I get this message out into the environment?” she asked. “Because and especially as people of color or anyone who’s ever felt othered, understanding the impact of visual culture is paramount; what we put in our visual environment matters and affects our psyche.” 

So, in 2014, she moved to San Francisco to pursue a master’s degree in the Visual & Critical Studies Program at California College of the Arts. Her understanding of visual culture and her own personal experiences led her to pursue art-making more intentionally. She said to a friend, “I have a piece of art in me that wants to come out.” The friend replied: “Veronica, you have more than one piece of art in you.”

And that she did. Now having created multiple pieces, her work is powerful and unabashed, and brings to bear her identity as a Black, female, and now since moving back to Virginia, Appalachian artist. 

Her experiences with racism and sexism in her career and personal life illuminate the intersection of invisibility and hypervisibility as a Black woman, and this dichotomy inspires much of her work. It is even in the title of her exhibition The Burden of Invisibility. This exhibit is currently on view at the Arts Center in Orange through March 25, 2023.

Yet Veronica’s work is not relegated solely to burdens of Black womanhood. It is also centered on radiance, determination, and reclamation of the Black experience. And Black Joy Is… beautifully captures these pluralities.  

The exhibition features 9 artists from the surrounding Central Virginia area, namely: 

  • Bolanle Adeboye 
  • Zoë Charlton
  • Tori Cherry
  • IBe’ Crawley
  • Veronica Jackson
  • Somé Louis
  • Benita Mayo
  • Tobiah Mundt
  • Kori Price
abstract artwork of a Black figure in nature by Zoë Charlton
“Declared and Proclaimed (The Black Settlers, Homecoming)” by Zoë Charlton, an artist whose work is featured in Black Joy Is…

It is an understatement to say their work in this exhibition is impactful. It is impossible to not feel jubilation and solace radiating off the gallery walls. From the moment you walk into the V. Earl Dickinson Building at PVCC, a palpable energy exudes from the paintings, sculptures, photographs, film, and mixed media work.

Veronica curated the exhibition which entailed assembling various artists and stewarding a range of artwork that “encompassed multiple mediums which illustrated and responded to the same focused message—Black joy.” 

“I love curating,” she said. “I love bringing together disparate visions based on a common theme to a common venue. And I think that’s the storyteller in me.”

a photograph of a painting of a boy at rest
“Support,” by Tori Cherry, an artist whose work is featured in Black Joy Is…

When asked how she defines Black joy, Veronica believes it stems from self-acceptance, self-awareness, and self-love. “One of my mantras is love yourself most, and that is not a selfish statement or self-absorbed statement. It’s about self-preservation. Because once you love yourself most and really inculcate that ideal into your belief system, then you can truly and sincerely give to other people.” And she believes, along with Dr. Cornel West, that “the only way to combat white supremacy is through Black love. And Black love is not limited to just Black people.”

Veronica hopes that all who leave the exhibit “may understand Black women differently, but they can also understand that there’s no monolithic Black woman. That we are all different people…all humans are different.” And, as evidenced by the “For Me” in the exhibition’s title, Veronica hopes that all who partake of this work—regardless of how they identify—celebrate Black joy. 

While she’s already planning for upcoming projects and residencies, right now, Veronica is soaking in this experience. “What makes me happy is making art, immersing myself in projects, and using my creativity for the benefit of society,” she said. Suffice to say, Black Joy Is… and Veronica’s work certainly seeks to do just that. 

To see the Black Joy Is… exhibition, visit PVCC’s V. Earl Dickinson Building at 501 College Drive, Charlottesville, VA 22902. Gallery Hours can be found here. Veronica will also return to PVCC on Tuesday, March 21, 2023 at 6:30 p.m. to give a lecture titled “A Constellation of Blackness: Rendering Invisibility, Hypervisibility, Devaluation, and Triumph.” 

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Arts Community Development Hometown Heroes Katrina Spencer Style

The Beautiful Work of Her Hands

hairstylist
Kristal Farmer Grady sits in a stylist chair at Ebony Images. Photo provided by interviewee

by Katrina Spencer

Kristal Farmer Grady can do it all. Locs, weaves, bantu knots, wigs, cornrows, relaxer, protective styles, twistouts, braidouts, color, trim. “You name it!” as gospel icon Shirley Caesar once famously said. Following 15 years of wide ranging work experience and training with Hair Cuttery, there is little left on this veteran hairstylist’s coiffure bucket list. For just over five years now she has been offering her services at Ebony Images at Seminole Court where her clients book her services through Style Seat. There she and five other stylists rent chairs where clients can get a short pixie cut like Halle Berry’s classic look, tapered close at the neck, or get locs installed, tightened, or reddened like songstress Halle Bailey of 2023’s The Little Mermaid. If you ask Kristal what her favorite styling technique is, she doesn’t hesitate: it’s color. She loves to apply vibrant hues to her clients’ tresses and acknowledges that in her profession, “It is not an option to be less than perfect.” She takes a great deal of pride in her work, deftly managing heat, dyes, synthetic materials– truly “the whole 9.” Her least favorite style? Any individual microbraids, which consume a good deal of time and leave her and customers with little to talk about after the 8-hour sessions the style requires.

This Virginian grew up in Louisa with a mother who was a minister and a father who was a taxicab driver for over 30 years. With her mother’s vocation, it was not uncommon for Kristal to spend three or four nights a week in church. It was then that Kristal was first handed a comb to keep her busy throughout the many Baptist services. She got much practice, too, being a barber to her five brothers. While at least six years of her education were directed through homeschooling, by the time she was formally training at the Charlottesville-Albemarle Technical Education Center for her license in cosmetology, she had already delved deep into a diverse body of experimentation. Her clients today come in all colors and include men, women, and children. With all she’s done and seen, she has some clear preferences about useful products and reliable tools that help her to manage her craft. Peep these tips: best brand of loc twisting gel? Bellatique. Fantastic flat irons? Go with Baby Bliss. Scalp stimulator? Rosemary mint oil is the way to go.

Some of Kristal’s skills can only be won with time. For example, in a service position like her own, she has learned to read the energy of a broad spectrum of people and can engage most anyone. As with every hairstylist, a few burns, nicks, and cuts along the way are part of her story, too, a natural job hazard for someone who relies on her hands– but nothing serious enough to turn her off from the calling that she loves. Kristal’s goal now is to whittle her services down to a smaller subset, likely in service to the natural hair community, which has been burgeoning over the past 15 years. Many clients are choosing to avoid certain styles that require harsh chemical processing of the hair, and stylists are taking heed, expanding their repertoires further to create styles like Lupita N’yongo’s and Letitia Wright’s in Black Panther and Wakanda Forever, Issa Rae’s in Insecure, and Tracee Ellis Ross’ on almost every red carpet she graces. The famous folks and others, too, are getting to know their curl patterns and embracing what their roots produce naturally.

painting
One of Kristal Farmer Grady’s paintings

While Kristal’s work is as likely to be featured in a hairshow run by University of Virginia students or out of town in weddings amidst couples sharing their vows, the work of her hands is versatile enough to go beyond hair and scalps, razors and scissors, creams and balms. She loves to create in all forms and along with her husband, Larry Grady, the rapper known as “Legend tha God,”, the two have created Grade-A Kont3nt, an artistic pairing that works with a variety of materials– resins, acrylic, fabric, styrofoam, oils, putty, rope, and more– to produce arresting works that can adorn your home, office, and/or other spaces of your choosing. The mixed media provide indefinite possibilities for products that are both decorative and practical for use. Kristal and Larry’s work has been featured at the Jefferson School for African American Heritage Center and sold at local craft fairs at IX Park. No matter the medium, Kristal will be conjuring up something new for us to admire. To find her in action, visit Ebony Images at 153 Seminole Court in Charlottesville; book an appointment through Style Seat; follow Grade-A Kont3nt on Facebook; or call 434-227-3138 for a consultation on the next hairstyle you want, or the craft you want to commission!