James Weldon Johnson Fellows in the Arts
Five Acres
An interdisciplinary artist, Leslie Berns works with everyday, utilitarian materials to create mixed-media pieces that explore aspects of social, racial, and personal history. In Shimworks and Bookmarks for a Mixed Race Narrative: Who Could and Couldn’t Marry Whom, she uses wood leveling sticks (shims) coated in oil and chalk pastel to graphically interrogate a historic document from the pre-civil rights era titled "Anti-Miscegenation Laws of the Several States: 1932." She incorporates visual memoir and textual excerpts into book art-inspired works that enable a narrative, object-based contemplation of key persons, experiences, and influences that have shaped her life and art. Her artworks typically develop from works on/of paper to sculptural objects to spatio-temporal ‘events' documented as moving images and digital prints. She participated in a residency, ‘an experiment with language and form for writers and artists', with Arts, Letters and Numbers, Averill Park, New York. As part of the Washington Project for the Arts Experimental Media Series, Grounding, her video of a choreographed, performative drawing was screened at the Hirshhorn Museum and the Phillips Collection (Washington, D.C.). In Germany, she presented theater- and dance-based performances in the Heidelberg Schloss Garten (Threshold) and at Unterwegs Theater (Life is Folding and Unfolding) and exhibited work at galerie transition in Berlin. Leslie was born in Buffalo, New York to parents of German and Jamaican ancestry. Formerly a Senior Lecturer of Fine Art at the University of Maryland, College Park, she is currently based in Hudson, New York, and University Park, Maryland. She holds an MFA from Yale University and a BFA from Pratt Institute, both in painting.
Rachel Eskin Fisher is a filmmaker and screenwriter who writes about people with marginalized identities navigating the intersections of their personal and political lives, with a focus on people in past times. She holds an MFA in Television Writing & Production from the TV Writers Studio of Long Island University and a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She co-produced and directed the film Joachim Prinz: I Shall Not Be Silent. The documentary is about the rabbi who spoke at the 1963 March on Washington, Joachim Prinz, who came to America in 1937 as a refugee from Nazi Germany. Rachel’s screenplay Miss Perkins is about Frances Perkins, who became Labor Secretary in 1933. As the first woman cabinet secretary in US history, Perkins had to take care of her mentally ill husband and hide her loving partnership with Mary Harriman while convincing FDR to undertake the New Deal. As a James Weldon Johnson Fellow, Rachel will be working on her next television pilot, about the friendship, feminism, and passions of three women suffrage activists in the 1910s: Grace Nail Johnson, Marie Howe, and Rose Pastor Stokes. Rachel lives in Maplewood, NJ with her husband, Dan Fisher. They are the proud parents of two high school and college-age sons.
JUNNY Ann Hibbert [JUNNY] is a Jamaican-born, Harlem-based fashion designer who creates bold, size-inclusive clothing. She is known for her use of bold colors, prints, and textures, and her collections have been praised for their joyful and empowering Spirit. JUNNY started her career as a fashion designer after getting downsized from her job as an ESPN sales executive. She quickly gained a following for her unique designs, and in 2021 she debuted her first collection at New York Fashion Week. The collection was a critical success, and JUNNY was named one of the top emerging talents of the year by W Magazine. In 2023, JUNNY was awarded the Visa She’s Next in Fashion Grant, which recognizes and supports women entrepreneurs in the fashion industry. She is also a vocal advocate for diversity and inclusion in the fashion industry, and she is committed to creating clothing that makes everyone feel confident and beautiful. JUNNY's work has been featured in publications such as Essence, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, W Mag, WWD, and Vanity Fair. She is a talented designer and a role model for women everywhere.
Pianist, composer, and educator Pete Malinverni has been a fixture on the New York City Jazz scene since moving there in the early 1980s from his hometown of Niagara Falls, NY, where he'd begun Classical Piano studies at the tender age of six. Pete is a Steinway Artist. Since moving to NYC, Pete has recorded sixteen times as a leader, including in solo piano, piano/violin duet, trio, quartet, quintet, big band, and choral contexts. All of his recordings have been received by critics and the public alike and have seen heavy airplay on all platforms, from the radio to the internet. Throughout his time in NYC, Pete has established performing, recording, and inspirational contact with a host of masters on the scene there, including Joe Lovano, Vernel Fournier, Charles Davis, Mel Lewis, Dennis Irwin, Karrin Allyson, Steve Wilson, and many, many others. These collaborations have happened in studios and on stages like the Carnegie Recital Hall, the Caramoor Festival, the Piccolo Spoleto Festival, the Rome Music and Image Festival, the Santiago (Chile) Jazz Festival, and others, as well as in New York's great clubs, such as the Village Vanguard, Birdland, the Blue Note, the Village Gate, Bradley's, Smalls and Mezzrow. These experiences, along with his work in inspirational settings such as the Devoe Street Baptist Church in Brooklyn (Minister of Music for eighteen years), the Westchester Reform Temple in Scarsdale, NY (Pianist and Conductor), and the Pound Ridge Community Church (Director of Music), have convinced him that music must be treated as a sacred gift, to be passed on freely to fellow musicians and listeners, with passionate control. Pete is proud of his work in education, too. After tenures at William Paterson University and New York University, he now serves as Chair of Jazz Studies at the Conservatory of Music at Purchase College, State University of New York, just a few miles north of the City.
Pamela Woolford is an interdisciplinary artist, creating new forms of narrative multimedia work about Black women and girls, and others whose joy, imagination, and inner life are under-explored in American media and popular art. She is the recipient of six Maryland State Arts Council Awards, five film-festival awards internationally, a Changemaker Challenge Award from United Way of Central Maryland and Horizon Foundation, two Baker Artist Awards in interdisciplinary arts, an aSHE Fund Micro-Grant, and a host of other honors. She has been awarded a Storyknife Writers Residency, an NES Artist Residency, and an Official Citation from the Maryland House of Delegates. Woolford's site-specific installation Antoine and Me was exhibited at the Baltimore Museum of Art during 2022 and 2023 in a show voted one of the top 5 exhibitions in the Baltimore area during the show's opening year by BmoreArt magazine. Her latest film, Interrupted: Prologue to a Mem-noir, had a limited online release with a virtual premiere event attended by 1.5 thousand people. Woolford has authored more than 100 memoirs, fiction, profile, human-interest, and think pieces published in The Baltimore Sun, Poets & Writers Magazine, NAACP's Crisis Magazine, Harvard University’s Transition, and other publications. Her writings have been selected for anthologies, translated into German, and widely cited. She has been the Bisson Lecturer in the Humanities at Marymount University.
Originally from Trinidad & Tobago, Alison Wells relocated to the South Coast of Massachusetts in 2004, to pursue a Masters's Degree in Fine Art Painting at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.
Alison’s paintings have been exhibited in galleries and museums internationally and her works are part of private, public, and corporate collections. Her most recent local public commissions were for the Boston Children’s Hospital in both Boston & Dartmouth MA, and St Luke’s Hospital in New Bedford MA.
Wells was selected to exhibit her Urban Organic series at the 2010 World Exposition in Shanghai, China. In 2014 she received the 'Assets for Artists' grant from MASS MoCA, which allowed her the opportunity to open her very own Art Gallery in historic downtown New Bedford MA. where she showcases her paintings and features, guest artists, throughout the year. Alison’s artwork has been featured in several publications such as Harvard Magazine, Art New England, the Boston Globe, Artscope, and Cape Cod Life to name a few.
Alison Wells lives and works as a full-time Artist, Art Educator, Curator, and Gallerist in New Bedford Massachusetts.
Artist, Lesley D. Martinez, explores the visual history of her AfroMexican Ancestry, referencing cultural aesthetics found in African masks, Mexican sugar skulls, and traditional embroidery and textile designs, combining it all through her love for Urban Cartography in what she calls a “Collective Portrait.” The choice of using ink on Papyrus and Hosho paper is layering the texture of fragile, ancient manuscripts that reference the passing on of legacy. Her work ink work has sold in international markets including Spectrum Miami in 2021. Currently a 2022 James Weldon Johnson fellow in the arts. Represented by Connect Gallery, Chicago, IL
Martinez’s work unearths the intrinsic understanding that the visual components of cultural identity are a type of “knowing” and spiritual language embedded in our bloodlines.
She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Behavioral Science, from National Louis University, a Master’s of Science in Marketing and Brand Management, from Walden University, and a Ph.D. Candidate in Community Psychology, focus on economic justice, National Louis University.
Tracy Silva Barbosa is a multi-media artist living and working in Southeastern
Massachusetts. Al passionate poet with material, she has original artworks in private and public collections all over the world.
Barbosa began working with glass in 1997 at Mass College of Art in Boston. Soon after, she worked with the world-renowned architectural glass artist, John Lewis, assisting with such glass marvels as the OK City Memorial, and One World Trade, NY.
Today, Barbosa is the owner of Duende Studio based in New Bedford, MA. Duende Studio is heavily involved in public art and community art projects.
Barbosa’s Azorean heritage, along with her admiration for craftsmanship, greatly influences her artwork. Her artistic process uses painstaking layers of transparent color mixed with various images such as post-industrial architecture, and urban sprawl, along with colorful flora and fauna, to create a delicate narrative addressing issues such as age, sensuality, and transcendence.
Noland Anderson is a Tampa-based fine artist, currently showing in galleries throughout the US. He graduated from the Art Institute of Ft. Lauderdale, where he studied advertising. A former freelance illustrator for television, his work now focuses on and celebrates people of color.
Yolande Clark-Jackson is a multi-disciplinary storyteller, children’s book author, and teaching artist. Her interest lies in using stories and materials for remembering, reclaiming, and reimagining. She holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction and is an award-winning personal essayist and author of the award-winning children’s book, Rocko's Big Launch. Her non-fiction essay “How You Get There” was among the top twelve awarded in the 2021 Winning Writers contest. She is a 2021 Eckerd College McCartt Fellowship awardee and one of seven artists awarded the 2022 James Weldon Johnson Foundation artist-in-residency fellowship. Her nonfiction writing can be found in The HuffPost personal, Sisters Newsletter from AARP, Care.com, The University of Arizona’s Poetry Center, the Chicken Soup for Soul: I’m Speaking Now anthology and many others. She is currently seeking representation for her first book of narrative nonfiction and expanding on a past Black family archive project led by The Sojourner Truth Leadership Circle of Auburn Seminary. Yolande’s art installation Seed and Story: An Exploration of one family’s History with cotton and their sharecropping past is currently showing at City Arts Gallery in Orlando until July 16, 2022.
"My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style"
-Maya Angelou
Laurel Richardson is an interdisciplinary artist based in NYC. She received her MFA in Fine Arts degree from Parsons School Of Design in 2020. Recent exhibitions include: “This is Not Enough” at Slag Gallery in NYC; “The Next Generation of Artists”: MFA 2020 Artsy online exhibition; and was one of the 40 finalists for the 2019 AXA Art Prize exhibition tour. She also danced professionally for modern dance companies and in Regional Broadway Theatre for several years including Cleo Parker Robinson Dance company based in Denver, Colorado, and the Chicago Sinfonietta, “A Dream Unfolds” with Cerqua Rivera Dance Theatre. In her work, the past meets the present. Laurel charts her personal history and the history of the African Diaspora, while also questioning the current and historical representation of Black women. As a Parsons Student Research Award recipient, Laurel traveled to Ghana during the 400 Year Anniversary of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Her practice incorporates her research through her travels in Ghana and Brazil. Through painting, installation, and elements of performance, she produces an interwoven surface of ideas and histories.
Leslie Barlow lives and works in Minneapolis. Her life-sized oil paintings serve as both monuments to community members and explorations into how race entangles the intimate sphere of love, family, and friendship. Her work is tender, nuanced, and inspired by community dialogue and personal experience. Barlow is a recipient of the 2021 Jerome Hill Fellowship, 2019 McKnight Visual Artist Fellowship, the 20/20 Springboard Fellowship, and the MN State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant in 2016 and 2018. In 2018, she received the Minnesota Museum of American Art Purchase Award in the Minnesota State Fair Juried Exhibition. Barlow earned her BFA in 2011 from the University of Wisconsin-Stout and her MFA in 2016 from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. In addition to her studio practice, Barlow teaches at the University of Minnesota, supports emerging artists in her studio program PF Studios, is a part of the Creatives After Curfew mural collective, and is an active member on the leadership team of MidWest Mixed––a racial justice and healing organization.
Marc Willis lives and works in Memphis. He received his Master of Science degrees in Media Arts and Science and Music Technology from Purdue University at Indianapolis and his Bachelor of Music in Film Scoring from Berklee College of Music. His focus and “music-centric” work include creative and performing arts, education and social entrepreneurship, youth program development and mentoring, music and media creation and production, and songwriting and composition. Current and recent leadership and senior management experience include Chief Program and Strategy Officer, New Ballet Ensemble & School; Founder and Executive Producer, Aye Leigh Projects; Co-founder, President, and CEO, Omni Schools, and Omni Prep Academy; Fellowship Coach, Memphis Music Initiative. Recent youth programs designed and developed include: We Want Music! - designed and implemented private lesson program; River City Music Project - designed for Aye Leigh Projects; Graham Street House Band Program - designed for Streets Ministries; 4E Approach to Learning - designed for Omni Schools; The Soulsville Charter School - designed for Soulsville Foundation; STAX Music Academy - after school music program and learning academy. Music and media projects and productions include: “Nut Remix” - co-producer of life, reinvention of the Nutcracker for New Ballet Ensemble; Winter & Spring Concerts - executive producer/producer of annual live music concerts and shows for the Stax Music Academy.
Randy Preston is a singer-songwriter, educator, and storyteller who grew up on 3 continents. Raised in England and Kenya, he gained a deep appreciation for the lore, the myths and the legends of the places he has lived. Most recently, Preston has been fascinated with stories and songs of his grandmother’s tribe, the Piscataway people, a Native American tribe local to Maryland, and Northern VA. For the past two years, Preston has been touring with Kwame Alexander visiting schools and special events to entertain and engage people through catchy music and interactive storytelling. He’s written original songs for Kwame’s latest novels in verse REBOUND and SOLO.
Karyn Parsons is best known as the character “Hilary Banks” on the long-running television show, “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.” Karyn created the Sweet Blackberry Foundation after being inspired by the true tale of a determined enslaved man and the remarkable lengths he traveled to find his freedom. A mother and an activist, Karyn believe that stories have the power to inspire youth. Karyn most recently released her debut novel "How High the Moon" published by Penguin Books.
Laura Migliorino is a photographer who was born in Cleveland Ohio. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Walker Art Center, Weisman Museum in Minneapolis, The Minnesota Center for Book Arts, and The Warehouse in Atlanta. She has exhibited internationally for over 30 years. Laura is a Professor of Art at Anoka-Ramsey Community College near Minneapolis. Migliorino's BFA is from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her MFA is from the University of Minnesota.
Russell Harris is a versatile artist who paints the figure, still life scenes, and small, complex trompe l'oeils. His brushwork varies between loose and expressive, to highly refined and nearly imperceptible. Each work is carefully composed and restrained, giving each object or figure depicted a quiet power and intensity. Harris has exhibited nationwide at The New England Fire and History Museum in Cape Cod, MA, Gallery 323 in New York, and The Cornell Museum of Art in Delray Beach, FL to name but a few.
Dr. Allison E. Francis Paynter is a Professor of English and Coordinator of the English Department at Chaminade University of Honolulu in Hawaii. Dr. Francis teaches and publishes academic papers on a range of topics, which include Victorian and Scottish Literature, Theatre and Poetry, Vodou in Haiti, 19th century African American and Caribbean women’s literature, and Women’s Literature with a focus on science fiction and fantasy. And, she is thrilled to complete a theatrical adaptation of James Weldon Johnson’s novella, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man. Dr. Francis expects to stage a production of her play in New York and Hawaii this coming year.
Meclina Priestley is a micrography artist specializing in using words to create images that invite conversation and contemplation. It is her intention to create art that calls upon the notion that the pen is mightier than the sword in a climate of social & cultural exploration. Meclina has completed a plethora of commissions for private collectors and her work has been featured at MODA Atlanta, Turner Broadcasting, BET & Bravo sets. Meclina rejoins as a Fellow in 2018 and as Program Coordinator for the artist residencies.
Sonya Clark is a fiber artist known for using a variety of materials including human hair and combs to address race, culture, class, and history. Her beaded headdress assemblages and braided wig series of the late 1990s, which received critical acclaim, evoked African traditions of personal adornment and moved these common forms into the realm of personal and political expression. Sonya’s work has been exhibited in more than 350 museums and galleries in the Americas, Africa, Asia, Europe, and Australia. Read more about Sonya here.
Patrick Eugène is an emerging abstract expressionist painter who challenges the social, cultural, and societal expectations placed on and held by his contemporaries. His canvases are rich in color and emotion. Capturing the complex joys, anxieties, and confusion of coming of age in New York City, Eugène’s work harkens back to a time before emotions were most often abbreviated into social media hashtags and brief status updates.
Douriean Fletcher is an ever-evolving artist whose focus is to create the finest and most unique one-of-a-kind wearable art pieces. She uses natural raw materials, gilded 18K, and 24K Gold metals, and bold abstract shapes, to bring forth the awareness of an ancient yet futuristic opulence. She believes that through adornment women can define their beauty on their own terms. Douriean’s aesthetic, commitment, and quality of work led her to become the Specialty Jeweler Costume designer for Marvel's Black Panther movie. Read more about Douriean here
Costume designer, Ruth E. Carter has made history once again after winning her second Oscar for Best Costume Design Sunday night (March 12th, 2023). As she accepted her prize, the Academy revealed that with her second win, she is now the first Black woman to win multiple Oscars in any category. Dourier Fletcher works with Ruth Carter. A proud moment for Ruth and Douriean. See the article by Daily Beast here
Kamil Peters is a contemporary metal artist working out of Holyoke, MA, with roots in Texas and Western Massachusetts. His work embodies a wide range of intricate masks and sculptures to large-scale commercial installations, always incorporating the spirit of the past with a distinct modern edge as an interpretation of the natural world.
CHERYL R. RILEY is an artist, furniture designer, and art advisor whose focus is artists of the Black African Diaspora. She has created wall art, installations, site-specific public artworks, custom, and licensed lighting and furniture designs since 1986. Cheryl is a member of BADG (The Black Artists and Designers Guild) founded by artist/designer, Malene Barnett. She is designing a Sanctuary (Meditation/Grief/Worship) space that will feature the art of Renee Cox for Black Artists + Designers Guilds (“BADG”) Virtual Concept House, which launches in October 2020.
For the past six years, Meclina has been a full time artist working with interior designers, production companies and private events. Her work is growing in visibility and her client base continues to request her for additional works of art. For the most part, she is a self taught artist. She has taken various fine art classes and worked at a non-profit Art Therapy organization in college. It was there that she discovered art as a language. I began purchasing books on art therapy, spritual expression through art and cultural storytelling.
I created curriculums based on these theories and assisted my students in finding new way to express, communicate and grow. The astonishing revolation was that I was finding my own true inner voice as an artist. During the day I taught classes and at night I was preforming with a spoken word group. My poetry became the focale point of my art work and I focussed on Micrography (using text to create images).
Working with the design community is thrilling and alive. I love collaborative work that is client based, it allows for a three part relationship.
Susan Powers is a self-taught artist who began painting in 1979. Only a year later, her work had been accepted for display by the prestigious Jay Johnson Folk Heritage Gallery in New York City. Her paintings are in many permanent collections, including the Smithsonian Institution, Chase Manhattan Bank, and the American Museum in Bath, England. Her works have been exhibited in numerous galleries and museums, including the Bede Gallery, Jarrow, England, the Woodspring Museum, Weston-Super-Mare, England, the Camden Arts Center, London, the Haworth Art Gallery, London, the White House in Washington, D.C., and numerous galleries throughout the Northeast. She is a James Weldon Johnson Foundation Artist-in-Residence recipient.
Ms. Powers makes her home in the old Vermont farmhouse that is the source of much of her inspiration. Her paintings of still life, landscape, and architecture are rendered in oil in a realistic manner, often evoking a sense of irony, humor, or surrealism.
Brooklyn-based artist Daniel Hibbert was born into a musical family in Lansing, MI and it is exactly these musical roots that drive his painting process today. In a synesthetic moment of inspiration the artist translates the rich rhythms, harmonies, moods and lyrics of songs that profoundly move him into vivid visual expressions, playful montages of line, color and imagery.
Originally trained as an engineer, this mathematical mind manifests itself in the unconventional use of space, reminiscent of cubism, found in the artist’s works. Deemed by some as an “urban cubist”, Hibbert also draws inspiration from Pop Art, Neo-Expressionism, graffiti as well as hip-hop, jazz, rock, and funk music. His works include a variety of media but are primarily done in acrylic and spray paint on canvas.
Hibbert earned a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Tennessee State University and has a background in Finance and Operations but art is his true life passion, a way to break away from the boundaries and limitations of everyday life. He has only recently forged a promising art career but has already participated in live shows in New York and has works in private collections in Hong Kong, China and Chicago, IL, Washington D.C., Nashville, TN and New Jersey.
Selwyn Garraway is a watercolor painter and illustrator, whose art career spans some 40 years. He specializes in watercolors of landscapes, historic and vernacular architecture, the built environment and private commissions of “House Portraits.” Selwyn formal art training began at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and in 1980 he obtained his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has exhibited in many solo, group and juried exhibitions held at the Trinidad and Tobago National Museum and Art Gallery, Port Of Spain, Trinidad, W.I, Nelson Rockhill Art Gallery & Atkins Museum Kansas City, MO., the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, The National Arts Club, NY, the Salmagundi Club, NY and Guildhall Museum, East Hampton, NY among others.
He also pursued a successful career as a freelance editorial illustrator during his time in Chicago. His editorial illustrations were featured in such publications as the Chicago Reader, Crain’s Chicago Business and Student Lawyer Magazine. In 1978 he was recipient of a grant from the Pollock Krasner Foundation. In 2017, he was recipient of the James Weldon Johnson Fellow in the Arts Award and was an inaugural artist in the Foundation’s Artist-in-Residence program co-sponsored by Bard College at Simon’s Rock, Great Barrington, MA.
The artist resides in Lower Manhattan, New York where he also has his art studio.