In 1964, composer, pianist, and jazz royalty Duke Ellington was interviewed by Byng Whitteker for the CBC, who asked him where he gets all his ideas. Ellington responded, “Oh, man, I got a million dreams. That’s all I do is dream all the time.” His interviewer quips, “I thought you played the piano.” “No!” Ellington emphatically corrects him while turning his attention to the keys, “This is not the piano! This is dreaming!” and proceeds to improvise the most eloquent composition. When he finishes, he reaffirms his initial claim, “That’s dreaming.”

Dreamers walk a different path, a courageous journey with all the heights and pitfalls that come with any disciplined pursuit to manifest a vision. Not all dreamers are masters, but master dreamers are always world builders—they make whole what others only contemplate but rarely pursue. Master dreamers cultivate possibility for themselves and their communities and are a blessing to the world.

Sharayna Ashanti Christmas is a master dreamer. For over 20 years, she has dedicated herself to supporting the development of young visual and performance artists in DC, Baltimore, NJ, NY, Philadelphia, South Carolina, New Orleans, and abroad in Brixton, London, the Dominican Republic, and Ghana. Her journey has been serendipitous and serpentine. However, her passion for art and how it can support young people’s affirming self-actualization continues to reinvigorate her commitment to the work. It is hard, often thankless work, but it is the work she is eternally devoted to, like many master dreamers before her.

“I refer to myself as a cultural worker rather than solely an artist or educator because the term carries a deliberate political weight.” Christmas shared with this writer. “Toni Cade Bambara reminds us that “the role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible,” and it’s in that spirit that I locate my practice. Cultural work, for me, is an expansive and international framework—one that holds my work as a dancer, filmmaker, educator, and activist in a shared commitment to transformation, imagination, and liberation.”

From the ages of 3-18, Christmas’s métier was dance. She learned to cultivate her skills as a dancer by training with teachers at the esteemed institution, Dance Theater of Harlem. There she learned discipline, a body memory, and intensity that has stayed with her years after retiring from dance. Genius walks the streets of Harlem. Watching the productions of Ulysses Dove, and taking modern dance classes with Ailey dancers, Christmas learned the power of movement to encapsulate Black memory; the body as an archive continues to inform much of her research. Studying the techniques of Dr. Pearl Primus and Katherine Dunham became her north star. Those women and scholars like Dr. Marimba Ani, as well as other creative masters exemplified an unflinching embrace of the power attained when you activate knowledge of self. Guided by their practices of love, Christmas learned the communally healing power of art.

“When I started dance, I wanted to be more like Ailey,” Christmas continued, “He collaborated with Langston Hughes, Nina Simone, Duke Ellington, and Alice Coltrane. That’s powerful! Ailey created a space for himself and his body. Revelations is his story of being from the rural South in Texas. He talked about that when others were embarrassed to be from the South. So, I wanted to do that.”

After 15 years of daily training, a grueling regimen to tone dancers’ bodies for the rigor and strain required for professional ballet, she stopped. It was abrupt. She felt it was time. She was rebelling against respectability, which ironically steered her toward convention. You need money to live and survive in New York. She made much of it, working a short stint as a Financial Analyst at the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street. Disheartened by the culture of that institution, she quit. It had always been dance that inspired her, after all. Her body remembered. You never forget what transforms you. 

She moved to Baltimore to pursue her studies at Morgan State University and graduated in 2002. A year later, she founded her own dance company, Rayn Fall Dance Studio, where she served as the Director and Lead Choreographer, teaching children ages 3-18, ballet and modern. For many years, those classes occurred at the Druid Hill YMCA and later moved to Eubie Blake National Jazz Institute and Cultural Center, before sunsetting in 2022. Under the nonprofit Muse-360, she founded other culture-focused, youth-led initiatives, including New Generation Scholars (2007), New Generation Scholars Youth Scholar Abroad Project and Intergenerational Institute (2007-present), NGS Open Community Classroom: Learning Our Way (2024), and NGS Young Artist Archival Fellowship (2024), in partnership with AfroArchives.  

All of the initiatives under Muse 360 envision their role as a “center of radical transformative youth development rooted in pursuing culturally centered, critical thought, and creation in the world.” The project’s Christmas stewards are co-led with youth participants. Each is recognized as a scholar and encouraged to activate their knowledge of self to make their mark on the world. Each year, a village of artists, curators, writers, and academics is invited to mentor participating youth, lead lectures, and consult with them about their careers. I was among the cadre of powerful culture workers invited to teach this past Spring. This powerful work encourages young people to stretch their imaginations and use their creativity for good in the world. In a city that is too often presented as a murder capital but rarely uplifted as a bastion for creative genius, the work that Muse 360 models is critical to the inspiration of new generations.

This Summer, New Generation Scholars will curate a Black Femme Freedom School, which Christmas describes as a “space of radical possibility rooted in Black Feminist Thought and the legacy of Freedom Schools.” Co-visioned by Spelman rising Junior, Naima Starr and centering education as a tool for liberation, the program invites young scholars to develop practical skills that promote agency, self-empowerment, and the realization of a positive path forward for their future selves. 

Christmas has spent her career being clear about her calling. Working on behalf of future possibility and teaching the next generation how to realize their dreams is the most radical, reverent, and revolutionary work anyone could ever pursue. Like all master dreamers, Christmas has no shortage of vision. Her latest research initiative, The Black Women Cultural Workers Archives Project (BWCWA), co-visioned with Dr. Nadejda I. Webb seeks to recognize unsung cultural workers in and beyond the region. The thread that strengthens all of her life’s work is her unyielding commitment to love. 

“Toni Morrison said, love is a bench. That’s what I’m really trying to create,” Christmas explained. “I’m creating a bench so that the next generation can feel supported… It’s the ways in which we want to build our institutions, and our intentions are really centered on love… I believe that the ritual of reverence is a way for us to collectively come together. The work that I’m doing is intimate and intense. We can look at all of the gaps and the pitfalls for why an organization didn’t work… but, what really matters at the end of the day is how are we supporting one another? How are we building solidarity? How are we honoring our ancestors and how are we honoring ourselves?”

In an era where tyrants are emboldened and educators are shunned for expanding the perspectives of the next generation, it is a courageous act to stand tall and unabashedly advocate for justice rather than cower in the face of others’ woeful ignorance. When I asked her if she had any concerns about the future sustainability of this work, personally and more broadly for other educators and cultural workers, she didn’t hesitate to give an affirming response.

“That’s a good question. I do have concerns, but because I’ve been doing it for over 20 years, I’ve had to let go of the idea that everything is supposed to be the way that I imagine it and just allow evolution to take shape. And that’s why I’m trying to plant seeds within these young people. And I’m trying to shout to the hills, ‘Let’s provide reverence to one another! Let’s care for one another!’ Because that’s what is going to truly sustain us.”

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Being human does not make a person humane. Humanity is learned and modeled. It aligns with love, dignity, and the protection of all species on this planet we call home. Some people love their pets more than they love their neighbors. Others love their egos more than they love progress. This explains why although countless communities in every generation have committed themselves to creating a better world, their progress can be easily unraveled. The hope of a brighter future has to be intentionally strived toward. It requires all of us to be better. Though many will stubbornly reject this premise, we can honor the efforts of previous generations by heeding the lessons they learned and found solutions for. If we do not uphold a standard of power that is equitable, love-aligned, and protective of sovereignty, the possibility of a sustainable future becomes untenable.

In times of crisis  — like American democracy has encountered since its establishment due to its dogged repression and regression of civil liberties, devaluation of education and healthcare, degradation of Indigenous land sovereignty, and erosion of environmental protections — it has historically been the underdogs, the outliers, the artists, the writers, the dreamers, and creatives who have advanced fluid, rhizomatic, and radically imagined paths forward. Now on view at the Baltimore Museum of Art, “Crosscurrents: Works from the Contemporary Collection,” reviews the intimate and unifying creative interventions engaged by artists who have worked at the intersections of social and environmental justice. Co-curated by Jessica Bell Brown, executive director of the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University; Cecilia Wichmann, curator and department head of contemporary art at the BMA; and Leila Grothe, associate curator of contemporary art, Crosscurrents forwards the mission of the “Turn Again to the Earth” initiative, which celebrates the museum’s 110th anniversary by centering conversations and action around climate change. The dynamic exhibition spans the BMA’s Contemporary Wing. Companion exhibitions aligned with its theme will continue through January 2026.

“You’ll see that some of the work [and] themes are very directly anchored in ecology, where the artist is making a direct statement about environmental justice. But much more often, you’ll see a more expansive relationship with that subject, thinking about environmental justice and social justice as entwined,” Wichmann shared while she and Grothe led me through a personal tour of the exhibition. 

“If there’s one unifying, shared hope and dream in the installation, it’s learning from artists about when and how to pay attention. [It’s] attunement and contemplation, calling into this idea that in some cases, artists are thinking with materials and learning about longer elemental life cycles,” she added.

“Crosscurrents” is an expansive effort featuring more than 60 works by internationally recognized and regionally championed artists including Abigail Lucien, Fred Wilson, Shahzia Sikander, Ana Mendieta, Ed Clark, David Driskell, Sam Gilliam, and Nari Ward. The exhibition celebrates a broad range of material approaches, inviting audiences to encounter mosaics, sound, sculpture, videos, ceramics, and paintings in dialogue with each other. Nearly half of the works are on view for the first time.

The exhibition has three entrances. If you enter through the primary rotunda of the BMA’s Contemporary Wing, past Henry Moore’s permanent installation, “The Three Rings” (1966), you will be greeted by a towering steel cage, intricately welded by Haitian American artist Lucien, entitled “Zouzou’s Ballad” (2025). The cage has no visible entry or exit. A solitary swing dangles stoically at the center. Its invisible sitter is inspired by the late activist, actress, and singer Josephine Baker’s starring role in the film “Zouzou” (1934). In a particularly troubling and beautiful scene from the movie, Baker performs as a caged bird. Nearly naked, loosely adorned in ornamental bird feathers, she sings the song “Haiti,” a sorrowful ballad about longing, displacement, and return. Lucien’s gilded cage has no song and no sitter, and the absence of the body enunciates the multifaceted intention of all structures as portals of expansion or contractive prisons. Baker’s life and career was ever-entangled in parodying and being exploited by exoticism and stereotypes about Black women. “Zouzou’s Ballad” is one of 10 new sculptures designed by Lucien for an ongoing series entitled “Under Other Skies,” commissioned by the BMA for the “Crosscurrents” exhibition.

Every gallery is engaged in its own powerful discourse that draws clear corollaries between intimate interiority and the climate as a sociopolitical and environmental landscape that affects communal experiences.The immensity of the exhibition and the broad range of artist interpretations around those themes sets “Crosscurrents” apart from most exhibitions on view at this time. Governmental agencies, museums, and educational institutions have been threatened for elevating discourse about environmental and social justice. Wandering through the galleries is both deeply moving and startlingly sobering. Creations in the exhibition span nearly 40 years, reminding us all that artists have been grappling with these ideas and pushing for broader awareness for many generations.

To clarify the ebb and flow of each artist’s approach in dialogue with other artists’ interventions, the curators sectioned the show into seven prominent themes: Structures, inspired by theorist and Third Text founder Rasheed Araeen, considers patterns and interconnected relationships in environments; Elemental, which highlights the ways force manipulates elements in the natural world; Groundswell, which acknowledges artists who engage ideas of dissent, protest, and direct action; Elegy, which ponders individual and collective responses to mourning and grief; Cohabitation, which elevates a conception on Baltimore as an ecology, lifts up artists directly and indirectly connected to the city, and queries the impact of humans in environments; Expanse, which conjures ideas about contemplative and inspired approaches to materiality; and Migrations, which investigates the migratory relationship between materials and humans around the globe and that effect on material, humanity and the climate. Touring all of the galleries at a fairly leisurely pace took around two hours. Anywhere you choose to start is sure to be inspiring.

For those interested in lens-based mediums, pop into the screening rooms to see “Wolfgang Staehle: Eastpoint” (September 14, 2004), Justen Leroy’s three-channel video installation, “Lay Me Down in Praise” (2022), iconic archival footage of the performance “Blood Inside Outside” (1975) by Mendieta, or Sky Hopinka’s “Dislocation Blues” (2017). If you are moved by artists who repurpose materials to craft unconventional sculptures, installations, and fiberworks, spend time with Ward’s “Peace Keeper” (1995/2020), Brandon Ndife’s “Unfurled” (2022), Thomas Hirschhorn’s “Chandelier with Hands” (2006), Rose B. Simpson’s “Heights II” (2022), or Elias Sime’s “Tightrope-Familiar Yet Complex 4” (2016). Seeking scathing commentaries on the constitutional crisis? View Bruce Nauman’s “Raw War” (1970), Kiyan Williams’s, “How Do You Properly Fry An American Flag” (Study) (2020), Mark Thomas Gibson’s “Biden’s Entry Into Washington 2021” (American Portrait as Landscape) (2021), or Soledad Salamé’s “Gulf Distortions I-XII” (2011).  

Over the last decade, the BMA has relentlessly advocated for dynamic reflections in its collections and exhibitions that accurately and courageously portray diverse perspectives in our world. Crosscurrents continues that momentum and clarifies that this work is not a trend; it’s a mission.

“I have a lot of pride in the ways that the institution is responding with nimbleness to the way artists are working today and the ways in which we as an institution are able to come out and really showcase some of the complexity of contemporary art,” Grothe said.

“Thinking about cumulative energy in our work and in our method,” Wichmann added, “I think we’re able to create the installations that you see here because of sustained work, collectively, over many years. It is galvanizing to remind ourselves of that, and to keep going.”

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Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God.  Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.  – 1 John 4:7 

“I don’t know if white Christians hate Negroes or not, but I know we have a Christian Church which is white and a Christian Church which is Black. I know, as Malcolm X once put it, the most segregated hour in American life is high noon on Sunday. That says a great deal for me about a Christian nation.”  – James Baldwin on The Dick Cavett Show, 5/16/1969 

On Sunday, February 9, 2025, Govans Presbyterian Church unveiled a historic and powerful permanent installation by mixed media artist Ky Vassor entitled Sanctuary City Parts I and II. Many Black, Latino, and Asian people — communities long deterred from membership — opted to attend the service not only to honor Vassor’s accomplishment but also to hear what the institution might have to say about its role in abolishing systemic oppression and racialized violence. 

We are living in a redundant era, where mention of diversity feeds a woefully ignorant groupthink-borg-hive-mind with propaganda that some invisible encroaching enemy will take away their privileges. This false narrative corrupts democracy’s capacity, distracts the world from advancement, and prohibits those most in need from having what they and their families need to be well. Recently, that rhetoric tells us that the enemy is immigrants seeking sanctuary. On other days, that rhetoric proclaims it is the climate activists; protestors against genocide in Palestine, Congo, and Sudan; and women fighting for bodily autonomy. In other rants, the enemy is queer and trans lives fighting for their humanity to be acknowledged. The nation has a long history of demonizing Indigenous and Black lives, and that rhetoric is as old as the founding of the country.

Despite this morally deficient messaging that hopes our fear supersedes our logic and the power of our collective action, Govans, as an institution, has taken a brave stance to use its platform to stand up against injustice. They are still determining what this means and how this affects not only their congregation but also the community of North Baltimore, where their church resides. Govans has indicated that Vassor’s art commission will be the first of many substantial, rather than just symbolic, actions. Art cannot end centuries of oppression but can support robust discourse and motivate a community to grapple with complex realities to realize equitable solutions. This has always been the power of art.

The institution’s work to address oppression began in 2021 with an internal review of their diversity, including the figurative representations presented in the art they display, the racial makeup of their ministers, and the focus of their ministry. Designed in 1844 with the addition of a bell tower and chancel with a steeple added in 1905, the church celebrates many of the attributes of a Gothic Revival church. The most prominent feature, ecclesiastical stained glass windows, were installed from 1905 to 1910. Each window depicts scenes of Jesus and his disciples rendered in a style that rejects biblical descriptions of bronze skin and woolen hair in favor of likenesses popularized by European colonial expansion and missionary work around the world. In a brief segment during the service, the church acknowledged that these images, which overtly lack diversity, are unlikely to make non-white people feel welcome in the congregation. To try and counter this disparity, in 2024, Govans installed Minister Lea Gilmore as the Minister for Racial Justice & Multicultural Engagement and Reverend Dr. Ron Hankins as Govans Interim Pastor and established a Racial Justice Ministry Committee.

In that time, historian and longtime member of the congregation, Myra Brosius, in collaboration with the church’s Racial Justice Committee, has also been conducting extensive research about the history of the church and the grounds on which it was erected. What she found clarified that Govans, founded in 1844, nineteen years before the Emancipation Proclamation declared slavery unconstitutional, was a plantation that enslaved 30 men, women, and children of African descent. Moreover, well into the Jim Crow era, when the church had the opportunity to either integrate or erect a second church for Black, Latino, Indigenous, and Asian members, they refused to, which resulted in the church continuing to refuse the membership of non-white people well into the 20th century. As a result, the church remains overwhelmingly white but hopes its efforts will change not only the racial diversity of its constituency but also the consciousness of its congregation.

In early 2024, Govans began accepting proposals from community artists to design an artwork for their church that reflected their commitment to diversity. Vassor applied and received word a short time later that her design, Sanctuary City Parts I and II, two eight-foot-tall acrylic panels shaped like gothic stained glass windows, had won the commission. Vassor’s two panels flank a rendition of The Consoling Christ (1888), a recognizable painting created by German artist Bernhard Plockhorst, installed on the wall behind the pulpit, which overlooks the sanctuary. The copy featured in Govans’s stained glass window is known as Christ the Consoler and is distinguished by the inscription,

“Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,” as well as a dedication in remembrance of a major contributor to the church’s early renovations, Anna Graeme Turnbull. Coupled with Plockhorst’s work, Vassor’s panels create a dynamic triptych that references gothic and contemporary architectural motifs. With this commission, Sanctuary City Parts I and II represent the only artwork in the sanctuary that depicts non-white people.

During the opening ceremony, Vassor shared a moving speech that clarified who the work depicts, including Baltimore activists Lillian Kim, Lucille Gorham, and Pauli Murray, as well as those lost to police brutality, including Korryn Gaines and Freddie Gray. Vassor also acknowledged the names of the enslaved families who, up to that point, had not been publicly acknowledged by the church.

“The mural’s panels acknowledge that Govans is situated on lands that were formerly part of a plantation, as illustrated by the map integrated into the gothic arches. This map delineates the perimeter of the land granted to William Govane by John Hopkins. At the top of each arch, the names of thirty enslaved individuals are prominently displayed: Dick, Mirigo, Davy, Tom, Solomon, Sue, Sal, Abigail, Jenny, Rachel, Cassie, Joshua, George, Juno, Peter, Elick, Little Elick, Sam, Abraham, Daniel, Victor, Nell, Nan, Kate, Cato, Charles, Isaac, Juda, Phillis, and Hagar…I am truly grateful for this opportunity. Each of these panels encapsulates Baltimore as a sanctuary city, embodying the unity and collective protection shared among its residents,” Vassor stated. 

Govans Presbyterian Church is a rare example of an institution that boldly stands up against oppression, injustice, and the proliferation of historical violence against Black, Latino, Asian, Indigenous, and LGBTQ-identifying communities. By celebrating models of radical love instead of divisiveness, the church can promote how art as activism can enact systemic, policy, and legislative change in and beyond Baltimore City.

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“Are you sure, sweetheart, that you want to be well?…Just so’s you’re sure, sweetheart, and ready to be healed, cause wholeness is no trifling matter. A lot of weight when you’re well.” 

– Toni Cade Bambara, The Salt Eaters 

The journey to healing is intimate and vulnerable. Everyone has a testimony that explains the miracle of their lives, a praise song to the persistence of their sound body, spirit, and mind. Your testimony accounts for the ways you pushed forward when others told you to stop and the moment you finally left those naysayers behind. Your testimony celebrates those who encouraged you when you needed it most and the support you continue to provide for others in need. By the grace of God, beloved, you are still here, still standing, despite all odds. A witness to the wonder and the marvel of life. More than a conqueror.

“God meets you where you are,” wrote Ms. Veda Moore in a testimonial she contributed to LaToya Ruby Frazier’s latest masterpiece, “More Than Conquerors: A Monument for Community Health Workers of Baltimore, Maryland 2021-2022,” which is now on view at the Baltimore Museum of Art through March 23, 2025. Frazier, an accomplished photographer, educator, and activist, has dedicated her life to illuminating the humanity of Black working-class communities. Moore’s portrait is triumphant — she stands regally in the center of a tree-lined path, ova east at North Milton Avenue and East Eager Street. Head to the sky, the sun reflects her radiance. Ms. Moore’s testimonial is one of 18 stories from Baltimore-based community healthcare workers (CHWs) featured in the exhibition. Other contributors include La Kerry B. Dawson, Tracy Barnes-Malone, Karen Dunston, Kenya Ferguson, Griselda Funn, Erica Hamlett, Donnie Missouri, Kendra N. Lindsey, Evelyn Nicholson, Helen Owhonda, Gregory Rogers, Wilfredo Torriente and Latish Walker.

The exhibition was initially commissioned for the 58th Carnegie International and won the esteemed Carnegie Prize. In 2023, The Baltimore Museum of Art acquired the work for its permanent collection. Every portrait is a monument unto itself, mounted in socially-distanced rows on stainless-steel IV poles. Collectively, the work stands as a living commemoration of unsung heroes, essential workers who daily put their lives at risk to support the needs of others. Many of those workers are women. All of them are people of color. All are members of a vital army who operate in plain sight but are rarely recognized for their efforts. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when a mandated sequester stalled the world, essential workers — particularly community healthcare workers — stood in the gap.

Frazier was made aware of the efforts of CHWs by reviewing the public health equity research developed by Dr. Lisa Cooper, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity; Dr. Chidinma A. Ibe, assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University; and Dr. Anika L. Hines, assistant professor, Department of Health Policy at the School of Public Health at Virginia Commonwealth University. While on a panel discussion with Dr. Cooper, an audience member posed a query to Frazier about the developments that could occur in public health equity work when artists and doctors collaborate.

“The seed from this project was planted on that panel,” Frazier shared with me over Zoom. “It was the first time Dr. Cooper and I met, and she knew my work, ‘The Notion of Family (2001 – 2014),’ and my 14-year collaboration between my mother, grandmother, and me, and it represented for her a methodology that doctors, researchers, and scientists use called photovoice.”

Photovoice is a qualitative research process of inviting patients to use cameras to document their lived experiences in order to better share those experiences with doctors, who can utilize that data to support public health equity policy change. Frazier has a long history of using her camera as a tool for social advocacy on behalf of Black working-class communities in America. The urgency to assess healthcare inequities became especially central to Frazier’s practice when she became the victim of medical racism and was denied access to the COVID-19 vaccine. That instance concretized for Frazier that if she could experience that level of blatant disregard for her health, despite her success, while wearing business attire, then it was likely that many others were also unprotected and unsupported in times of medical crisis. She wondered who was providing those services when traditional facilities were not. She learned that it was CHWs.

“If Black people are afraid of being racially profiled at these sites, if we’re afraid of the law enforcement at these sites if we have disabilities or don’t have access to get to these sites, who is the person that is the liaison that helps us get access?” Frazier noted. “When I called Dr. Cooper and told her what they did to me, she understood that it was about implicit bias in the medical field, and she immediately put me in touch with her mentees to learn more about their work in Baltimore.”

Public health equity research clarifies the environmental factors that influence health disparities or barriers to health. To better understand the realities of community health care workers in Baltimore City, Dr. Cooper introduced Frazier to Tiffany Scott, co-founder and president of the Maryland Community Health Worker Association, who intimately understood CHWs’ needs.

“CHWs need as much support as we give to our communities,” Scott shared. “With most professions, once you finish your day or shift, you are no longer on duty. But as CHWs, we can’t turn that off. It’s a ministry.”

Scott personally drove Frazier around the city so she could better understand the neighborhoods that the CHWs come from and continue to serve. Scott was an essential liaison between the CHWs and Frazier. I asked her why she felt the project was so important.

“I felt it was time for recognition,” Scott continued. “CHWs do a lot more than people will ever be able to recognize…I wanted the voices of the underdogs to be heard. Having the interviews with LaToya and the conversations one-on-one with CHWs was a healing process for us because we got to say what we were going through without judgment.”

Monuments are rarely dedicated to the living, and it is even more unusual for laborers, underdogs, and the working class to be honored. We are socialized to be apathetic to the experiences of everyday people rather than advocates for each other’s protection. This was made startlingly evident during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic when communities that were most vulnerable, uninsured, and low-income were also more likely to be on the front lines providing essential support. By working with community healthcare workers in Baltimore, Frazier understood how important monumentalizing their efforts would be not only for them but as a model for the entire nation.

“They immediately started crying [when they saw the monument] because they said nobody had ever wanted to make a portrait of them, let alone pay attention to them at all,” Frazier continued. “They helped me understand that they are the foot soldiers of the healthcare system, but no one respects them or recognizes them. So [More Than Conquerors] was an affirmation and a confirmation for them that for me as an outsider to care and to show up with my creative resources to try to document this understanding was historic… This is an anti-monument,” Frazier elaborated. “It’s about the love that is enacted upon us in times of great sorrow that society chooses not to perceive — it’s about a monument of solidarity, a monument about agape love, the highest form of love — it’s important for humanity… all of us in the work are survivors. I strongly believe in democratizing the arts, I believe it should be accessible to all people.” 

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I’m lounging on a sexy golden sofa, sipping something robust, sweet, and rum-forward. The cocktail is a work of art, crimson-tinged with a crisp stroke of blue algae brushed along the inside curve of the coupe glass to accentuate its cool. The category is classic beauty. I soak in the quiet chatter and sweet giggles of young professionals and artsy peers dressed in their best fits, enjoying the respite of the workday’s end. The scene could have been clipped out of a spread for Ebony photographed by Anthony Barboza or Kwame Brathwaite. Our collective joy buzzes off the wood and brick walls, beams like the sunlight shining through the towering windows. The ceilings are high enough for us to stand tall, lofty as the peace we feel in each other’s company. Rum and laughter warm my chest. There is nothing like being nourished by community and sharing space with those who see you and want you to feel seen.

Have you visited Mama Koko’s yet? The concept cafe and cocktail bar is the latest venture from veteran restauranteurs Ayo Hogans and Angola Selassie located on the first floor of the historic James E. Hooper House in Old Goucher. If you’ve lived in the region for a while, you would likely have visited their flagship eatery, Grind House Juice Bar, later rebranded The Green House Juice Cafe, in Charles Village, grabbed a bite at their sister location at Towson University, or popped into Flourish (now on Harford Rd), a boutique managed by Nilajah Brown that once operated at the front of The Green House Juice Cafe.  Soulful plant-based cuisine has long been a staple food option on the St. Paul corridor for decades. OGs will remember Chef Skai’s venture, The Yabba Pot, which occupied the same venue in the early 2000s.  Hogans and Selassie’s spin on vegetarian cuisine presented a straightforward, eat-on-the-go plant-based menu with fresh smoothies and vegan treats. Mama Koko’s offers a culinary and conceptually elevated experience. The added perk is that the cafe is located just a few blocks from their previous address. 

Think grown and sexy meets casual neighborhood hub with small plates, craft coffee, artisan cocktails, and mocktails at reasonable prices. The menu and the layout, which hosts two bars, a lounge, and covered outdoor seating, are designed to suit a broader palette that pays homage to southern Creole, French, and West African flavor profiles. The venue is inspired by Angola’s mother, Dr. Kokahvah Zauditu-Selassie, lovingly called Mama Koko, and celebrates her iconic style, incredible world travels, and their family’s powerful legacy.

“We wanted a space that would allow an experience for people to be able to slow down, sit down, socialize, show off their fits, meet some new folks, and that way, we could have a platform for an exchange of ideas.”

“Our last location was quite small, and because of the size constraints, it only allowed a to-go experience,” Angola shared. “We wanted a space that would allow an experience for people to be able to slow down, sit down, socialize, show off their fits, meet some new folks, and that way, we could have a platform for an exchange of ideas.”

The 33-room mansion was initially constructed for James Edward Hooper in 1886, who made his fortune by manufacturing duck cotton fabric in Baltimore. After he died in 1908, the house hosted various businesses until it fell into disrepair. It was purchased in 2018 by co-owners Matt Oppenheim and Mick Mier, who sought to turn the valuable property into a mixed-use space for artists and small ventures. The building survived a fire in 2022, and after years of critical renovations to maintain the original charm and historic architecture, the Hooper House recently reopened to the public. Hogans and Selassie leased the first floor for Mama Koko’s and a room on the second floor for The salon. Since last month’s soft opening, both projects have been very well received.

The couple wanted the space to feel like home. Their attention to detail is what makes sitting for a spell at Mama Koko’s such a treat. Their familial archive is the foundational decor. Cotton plumes and eucalyptus bundles billow out of vintage vases tucked into the corners of windowsills and set as intentional centerpieces on tables. Archival black-and-white ancestral portraits line the built-in bookshelves and overlook the nooks of both bars.

“All of these elements are my mother’s favorite elements,” Selassie continued. “They reflect her stories, travels, aspirations, and our family history in a very individual-specific sense, as well as a larger, collective sense… We wanted to promote global and African solidarity and internationalism as a whole. And we wanted the cotton to acknowledge those in the North American continent, the children of the cotton, and then place them in conversation with those in Brazil and Jamaica and Martinique, the children of the sugarcane, the rum.”

The recipes they feature in their evening rotating menu are intergenerational staples that have fed the cafe’s namesake and Mama Koko’s kin for generations: delicious small plates of red beans and rice, collard greens, roasted sweet potatoes, vegan and meat protein options. I cleaned my plate of greens and red beans and rice, humming and rocking as I ate, which we all know is the universal language for, “damn, this is good.” Their lunch menu reflects some of the dishes that made The Green House Juice Cafe famous, including yummy smoothies, yogurt bowls, and kale salads, and their new offerings include po’boys, smashed burgers, and Cajun shrimp and grits.

Mama Koko’s offers something to appeal to most palettes and lifestyles. During the day, teleworkers can bring their laptops, take meetings, and luxuriate in a relaxed environment with artisan offerings. When the clock strikes 6 p.m., the cafe transforms into an appealing bar and lounge; lights are dimmed, and candles are placed on each table. If you are still working at that hour, don’t be surprised if a member of their staff politely taps you on the shoulder and asks you to put the laptop away. They want to set a mood that inspires connection, community, and conversation. 

What a novel idea.

“I was a vegan for over 20 years, and in the last few years, for personal reasons, I am no longer vegan,” Ayo noted. “So, I wanted to offer more diverse food that is still healthy, fresh, and well-prepared food. But we still have many vegan options as well,” she added. “If you and your friends come and somebody is pescatarian, and someone else eats meat or is vegan, you can all get something here. The menu is definitely diasporic. It’s light bites. The food is good, but we’re not focused solely on the food,” Hogans continued. “We are focused on the whole experience, the vibe, the feeling you feel when you come in. It’s simple but delicious.”

Upstairs, on the second floor of the lush mansion, you will find The Salon at Mama Koko’s. If you peek inside, you will likely find Mama Koko sitting on her settee, surrounded by threads, beads, and books, calmly working on her coveted bracelets, writing her memoir, or reading. Lounge chairs are arranged in the round in front of her so visitors feel welcome to converse while shopping. Many will visit The Salon because they recognize the matriarch from the celebrated documentary “In Our Mothers’ Gardens,” directed by Shantrelle P. Lewis.

Others will visit to sit at the feet and learn from Dr. Kokahvah Zauditu-Selassie, a literary scholar, friend and colleague of Toni Morrison, retired professor of English at Coppin State University, and author of countless essays and seminal books, including “African Spiritual Traditions in the Novels of Toni Morrison” (2009) and her recent novel, “The Second Line” (2024).  

Those unfamiliar with who she is or her esteemed legacy will visit because of the beautiful space she has curated for herself and her community. 

“I have always made and sold things, and I have always been literary,” Mama Koko shared. “I was thinking about Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own,” and I always wanted a space where I could create. So, I created a literary salon as a place where I could leave my house and write without the interference of distractions. And when I came back from the African Cup of Nations soccer tournament in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, I decided I wanted to open up a store like the Salon de Clamart that the Nardal sisters founded in Paris in the 1930s.”

Her clothing line, Yacine Diouf, is prominently featured in the intimate boutique. Mama Koko named the collection after her 10-year-old mentee, who resides in Dakar, Senegal, and hopes the gesture will inspire the child to achieve great things. The Salon includes many rare items sourced worldwide from Black women artisans, including raw fabric, dresses, bags, and Issa Gray’s exclusive jewelry line, IRE AJE. 

Mama Koko’s and The Salon pride themselves on being family-operated businesses dedicated to curating uplifting, community-oriented experiences. 

“I think people are deprived of love,” Mama Koko counseled. “People don’t really care about people in the ways that they should care. We work hard, and we are very intentional and very protective of having a space where people come in and feel welcome… We are maximizing their feeling of comfort. It’s not an industry model. We have a different business, aesthetic, and cultural model here. They not like us.”

The post Have you visited Mama Koko’s? It’s a vibe. appeared first on Baltimore Beat.

Clouds disperse in wispy, pink-hued clusters against the setting sun of a blue-orange sky. Two brothers lean against a cold metal fence and each other for support. Bright colors roughly applied with sharp palette-knife strokes accent beaming skin. Their portrait, “I Feel Less Pressure, But I Have My Moments” (2024), is one of nineteen masterworks featured in Moon in Scorpio, Megan Lewis’ latest exhibition, on view at Galerie Myrtis. 

Over the last decade, Lewis has worked to master her use of oil paint. Her paintings are passionate reflections of the beauty in Baltimore City. The models for her portraits are strangers, people she meets serendipitously while walking to and from her studio on North Avenue. The criteria for who draws her attention is wholly intuitive: something about the stance or eyes, a dark-hued complexion, or a confident swag that compels her to immortalize their likeness on canvas. She approaches their portraits with care. They are dreamy riffs, meta-ruminations that reflect Black lives in Baltimore City. Lewis advocates a queer aesthetic that subverts monolithic reflections of Black men that deem them selectively worthy of protection. Lost. Unloved. Criminal. She paints their beauty free from emasculation. Human and divine. 

“I’m still not used to it,” Lewis shared. “It still gives me anxiety to this day, but it’s like, I’m choosing to step into that power every time. It is kind of a release because I have to be confident. It’s like, okay, you’re scared, but you got to do it. And I’ve done over 100 paintings. It’s like I have to conquer that fear. Regardless.”  

I first encountered her work in 2015 when she was working with youth on a mural in Sandtown. She was learning from local masters Ernest Shaw, Amy Sherald, and Gaia. Her paintings affirmed Black women on huge buildings, community centers, and the interiors of schools all over the city. Her limited-edition prints and jackets celebrated icons like Tupac Shakur, Biggie Smalls, and Nina Simone and paid homage to James Baldwin, Ms. Hill, and Jay-Z. 

Honoring excellence and beauty has long been foundational to her practice. Her father, Randolph Lewis, a retired carpenter, was a significant source of inspiration. By observing him, she gained greater confidence. Two hands and boundless imagination can build anything. Her furniture series, from 2019 to 2020, was innovative. Like the late visionary Tom Miller, she appropriated discarded items, including benches, mirrors, and coffee tables, and transformed them into functional works of art. 

Lewis has become a painter’s painter. Moon in Scorpio evidences the hard work she has poured into her practice over the last decade.

“I need constant change. I need to feel like I’m constantly growing,“ Lewis said.

The painting “Inexpressible” (2024) depicts a young man standing in front of the historic Macedonia Baptist Church cathedral in Upton. He has praying hands and physics-defying locs. The painting honors the legacy of Lewis’ grandmother, who was a devout member of Macedonia’s congregation. After her passing, painting helped Lewis cope with grief. Channeling her emotions into restorative reflections helped her heal. She could have crumbled under the pressure of it all. Instead, she blossomed.

“I’m not a jump-and-grow-wings-on-the-way-down kind of girl,” Lewis laughed. “So painting is that structure. I’m here, man; I’m gonna make mistakes. And that’s just what it is. You have to sit in it. Once you do it, that’s the thing, that’s the beauty. Like, I make work for me. There’s love in it.”

“Moon in Scorpio” (2024) is an oil-on-fabric painting that inspired the show’s title and exemplifies this spirit. The woman it portrays is more water than flesh, neck-deep in thunderous waves and big emotions. The fearlessness in her eyes affirms that she won’t drown. Her chest is swollen with billowing waves but she does not avert her gaze. Her likeness is a triumphant testimony for Lewis and all women. As Lucille Clifton declared, 

[…] come celebrate 

with me that everyday 

something has tried to kill me 

and has failed.    

“[‘Moon in Scorpio’] is a document. It’s a storm. It’s cool on the outside and hectic on the inside,” Lewis continued. “I don’t like to talk about how I feel. [I’m a] Capricorn, but my moon is in Scorpio. It’s like, no, wait a minute. Let’s go deeper. Be ready to do how you feel. Like, are you open? Will you express yourself easily when you’re ready to flip?”

“I Am Honored To Have Done Good By My Broken Heart” (2024), oil on stretched fabric, honors the beauty of the brothers, the young fathers, and everyday good men in Baltimore City with the portrait of a king crowned with a blue durag. He postures in a spectra-floral landscape, hand clenched into a fist at the center of his heart. The tattoos on the back of his hand wind like the stems of the flowers that bloom in the firmament behind him. His defiance echoes in the likeness of every portrait in the exhibition. 

Lewis enunciates the unabashed beauty of her models. The titles of her paintings are as poetic as the compositions of her portraits. I asked her what inspired this series at this time in her career. 

“Just the evolution of where I am: heartbreak, love, you know … I’m growing, evolving, I’m experiencing different things, so the work is going to fluctuate. I was just documenting how I feel because if I don’t, then I’ll explode,” she said. “This is definitely more personal, and it’s just the beginning. It’s a small step into me diving deeper and getting more honest. I’m excited to see how I grow, how I incorporate everything that I’ve learned into the next series.” 

Moon in Scorpio is on view at Galerie Myrtis until July 20. Artist talk with Megan Lewis and Dr. Myrtis Bedolla on July 20, 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. at 2224 North Charles Street. Registration link on galeriemyrtis.net.

The post I’ll Try To Blossom Instead: The Vulnerability and Mastery of Megan Lewis appeared first on Baltimore Beat.

In Grandfather’s Cabin/Noah’s Ark (1993-1996), a masterful and densely tactile tapestry designed by the late visionary Elizabeth Talford Scott (1916-2011), stars float in the stratosphere above a familial scene that honors her childhood home in South Carolina. Upcycled objects, mixed repurposed fabrics, buttons, knickknacks, and intuitively placed clusters of rocks, are sewn into ornate, ethereally abstract bursts. Bold wall text from a historic interview between the artist and curator George Ciscle describes the quilt: 

“This is a family. The man, the woman, the baby. That’s a family of sea creatures. Tadpoles and lizards. You see the snake? He’s to protect it, anyone from coming in.”

Grandfather’s Cabin/Noah’s Ark (1993-1996) has not been exhibited since 1998, when Ciscle organized the retrospective exhibition, Eyewinkers, Tumbleturds, and Candlebugs. This year marks the iconic show’s 25th anniversary. This milestone will be celebrated with a reimagined exhibit featuring rare works that span Talford Scott’s celebrated career. Then and now, Ciscle worked collaboratively with the MICA Exhibition Development Seminar to realize the show for the Baltimore Museum of Art. The entire exhibition is staged in the BMA’s contemporary wing. 

Ciscle and EDS brainstormed ways to make BMA’s exhibition more accessible. Benches are now available in every gallery, and artworks are installed at a slightly lower level so they are viewable for wheelchair-dependent guests. A glowing braille portrait of Talford Scott is featured, as well. All accessibility offerings are noted in a handy guide positioned at gallery entrances. 

Additionally, under educator and archivist Deyane Moses’ direction, EDS organized the project No Stone Left Unturned: The Elizabeth Talford Scott Initiative, which selected five museums and four universities as satellite exhibition sites. The initiative sought to place the artist’s work in conversation with audiences at Coppin State University, MICA, Maryland Center for History and Culture, Walters Art Museum, The Peale, Reginald F. Lewis Museum, Johns Hopkins University, and Morgan State University. Free public programming is planned for varying sites through April 2024.  

Talford Scott did not consider herself to be an artist until late in her life. Even then, after years of pushing the bounds of quilting, some still considered her work more craft than fine art. How absurd that anyone could view her conceptually and compositionally intricate genre-defying creations as anything but genius works of art.

“It was at a time, of course, when people weren’t talking about this kind of work in the context of art,” Ciscle explained.  

“Back then, it was all framed as either women’s work, quilting, craft, textiles, African American, local… The list goes on and on. I really wanted people back then to look at that question in terms of what was going on in art history and the art canon. Keep in mind, that was four years before Gee’s Bend at the Whitney, [chuckle] which, of course, helped those conversations come forward.” The Quilts of Gee’s Bend is the most famous ongoing series by Black quilters who descend from Gee’s Bend, Alabama. This is an important context for Talford Scott’s late rise as an artist, as Gee’s Bend legitimized quilting as “art.”

Talford Scott grew up on the Blackstock Plantation in South Carolina. Her father was a sharecropper. She learned how to “piece quilts” by watching and assisting the matriarchs in her family while they worked. Over the years, she developed a talent for the tradition. Stitching beautiful and durable quilts was a source of great pride and a necessity; the skill ensured her family of little means had blankets in the winter and wares to barter for other staples with members of their community. Education was more praxis-based than formal — she learned by doing.

“So, mom, did you used to make the things that you needed when you were on the plantation?” Talford Scott’s daughter, artist and MacArthur Fellowship recipient Joyce J. Scott, asks her in the 1990 documentary The Silver Needle: The Legacy of Elizabeth and Joyce Scott. The film is screened in tandem with other remarkable interviews as part of the exhibition.  

“We made everything that could be made by hand, like food, shoes, and clothes,” Talford Scott responds. 

Floatin’ On A Thread, a commissioned composition from musicians Bashi Rose and Adam Holofcener, offers another conceptual layer to the revamped exhibition. Inspired by Talford Scott’s iconic quilt My Dreams (1987-1998) and her childhood home, Rose and Holofcener spent a week traveling through Chester, South Carolina, gathering field recordings to better assess the ways that environment shaped Talford Scott’s vision. In collaboration with performers Michelle Blu, Bobbi Rush, Cheyanne Zadia, Scott Patterson, Rose, and Holofcener, completed a lush 10-minute, two-channel soundscape. Visitors can sit at an intimate station near My Dreams to listen to the composition. 

“Spirit appears in the thread of the night,” Rush whispers. “Imagination, imagination, imagination,” Talford testifies. “Cover me with memories. Cover me,” Zadia coos. “My ancestors, stay on the run,” Patterson intones.  

“When I was a child, we had a rock at every door,” Talford affirms. “Understand? It was for luck. And we had a horseshoe over the door and had a shotgun under the horseshoe.” 

Rocks, as referenced in biblical verse, are often allegories of God’s transformative and protective power. 

Isaiah 33:16, NIV

He will dwell on the heights,

his refuge will be the impregnable rock,

his bread will be given him,

his water will be sure.

If God is omnipresent and can activate anything in service to his will, even inanimate objects can function as miraculous mediums. This perspective informs the recurring philosophical premises and aesthetic gestures in Talford Scott’s quilts that elevate her tapestries beyond only their utility.  

Encoding textiles with intergenerational archival information is a way of both marking time and transcending it. The sale and trade of enslaved Africans in America separated families from each other. Despite geographic displacement, anyone who maintained any scraps of inherited fabric from their loved ones could retain and share the history of their bloodline by piecing quilts. Quilts are not just accumulations of cloth; they are “family albums for preliterate people,” notes Joyce. Quilts act as an apparatus for remembrance every time their owner or creator shares a story about the origin of its material matrices. Remembering encourages psychic, spiritual, and corporeal restoration by intentionally honoring what came before. 

Talford Scott, lovingly called Mother Scott by her friends and family, imparted knowledge to all willing to receive it. Every quilt she made was customized with a unique design suited to the specific needs of those for whom the quilt was being made. Some were crafted to be draped across the back to alleviate aches and pains. Others were made to ease worry and assist with affirming dreams. She intuitively arranged objects, including stones, pebbles, colored thread, bric-a-brac, beads, and the like, into rhythmic patterns that dance across textiles, like jazz singers gliding through the scales. 

Quilts featured in this retrospective come from the family’s private collection and on loan from friends who knew and loved Mother Scott. Each lender was asked to contribute a personal narrative about their cherished artworks, which informed all descriptive wall text. For Robin Thompson’s contribution, Another Time (1992), a textile made from fabric, thread, and mixed media, she ruminated on her 20-year friendship working with the artist in the Green Card Crew quilting community. 

“Mother Scott presided over us and allowed our creativity, love, and unique outlook. Her engagement and encouragement guided us to become the best of ourselves and to share this gift with others. This is a part of her incredible legacy.” 

The power of collective remembrance is evident in Mother Scott’s prolific practice. She gifted members of her community with tokens of her love. Through the exhibition of those offerings, a broader community can now witness the monumentality of Mother Scott’s career.  

For Talford Scott, piecing quilts was both a modality for fine art and a curative. 

“This design is usually for people who have faith. You’ve got to have something to have faith in.” Talford Scott shares with Dr. Leslie King Hammond in another excerpt from The Silver Needle. The two sit across from each other, separated by a vast quilt that drapes Mother Scott’s thighs. She describes her intuitive way of working as “wild” because the features in her quilts did not conform to the schemas of traditional designs. 

“If you were going to do quilts or designs or something, you couldn’t make it wild. If you wanted to use strips, see how those strips are together there?” She pauses and leans forward to point out a particular feature on the quilt. 

“One, two, three.” She points to strips that form a love knot, a standard, symmetrical design used in traditional quilt patterns. Instead of adhering to this structure, Mother Scott’s quilts break the taut geometry of the ornamental design. Dense strips blend, blurring the static square, and bloom as amorphous warps of cotton, wool, and stones. The textile transcends its bounds and becomes a galaxy map. 

Eyewinkers, Tumbleturds, and Candlebugs: The Art of Elizabeth Talford Scott is now on view at the Baltimore Museum of Art, November 12, 2023 – April 28, 2024

The post Something To Have Faith In: Remembering Elizabeth Talford Scott appeared first on Baltimore Beat.