Everyone is welcome to join Cherokee Buddhist Temple for the annual Songran Thai/Lao New Year Celebration. A cross-cultural and intergenerational fellowship of food, music, dancing, and games. Community sitting meditation and chanting begins at 9:30am, as usual. Bring a vegetarian dish and/or peaceful energy to share. Free and open to the public. Just don’t forget to remove your shoes. :-)

The near-halfway point of National Poetry Month will find us in the loving embrace of our cultural and spiritual caregivers at Progressive Emporium, sharing word and love. Join me for an afternoon of collaborative expression, artful engagement, beauty, and laughter. Progressive is a place where we are welcome to be who we truly are, unapologetic in our splendor. I am honored to have been invited to come sit, speak, and share—and to be a guide for others to do the same. Bring work to share, or an open heart to receive. Free. <3

(“Progressive Emporium & Education Center is cultural center with a retail component. It provides cultural gifts and supplies, artifacts, clothing, DVD’s cloth, Black books, artwork, crafts, spiritual development and ceremonial tools, and more. It also offers cultural education activities and classes, skill-building workshops, health & wellness workshops, cultural celebrations, book signings, cultural displays, and literacy based activities for children and families. Progressive is a cooperative effort managed by Sudan Illustrators, Inc. and TEACH Society.”)

Singing praises and thanks to the ancestors and art gods (:-)) for the opportunity to not only show work in this group exhibition, but to also be invited to serve as a juror for COCA’s upcoming Text as Visual Language Exhibition. Serving alongside acclaimed artist Buzz Spector and professor Tate Foley, this experience has been both exciting and excruciating at once. Grateful for the opportunity to merge words with the tactile, emotional process of creating the things.

Opening reception on Friday, April 5, 2019 at COCA. Show runs through May 19, 2019.

“Throughout history, text has relied directly and heavily on visual images for its meaning with examples such as hieroglyphics and calligraphy. The first form of writing, cuneiform, is characterized by a system of pictorial images. The letters of the alphabet we use today are no exception. They were first drawn and designed as 26 distinct visual symbols and each symbol represents an assigned sound. It is these visual symbols we arrange into words and enunciate as sound for meaning and comprehension. Based on this premise that text is visual, any written material can be contextualized as visual language.

St. Louis established and emerging artists explore the use of text in works of art through a variety of media. Curated by Yvonne Osei, Curator-In-Residence.”

I am grateful for the opportunity to hang work in the invitational SKATE DECK SHOW (yes, skateboards as canvases—how dope is that?). The exhibition opening takes place at 4 Hands Brewery on Saturday, March 30th, 2019. The show will feature a list of 50 specially invited local and national artists, including 18andCounting, Danielle Spradley, TASK, Cbabi Bayoc, Eugenia Alexander, Stella Stardust, and the young homie Tayari Woods.

Curated by STL’s Screwed Arts Collective members Bryan Walsh and Killer Napkins.

Come see some incredibly dope skate decks (including one by yours truly!), and take one home if you’re feeling especially spendy.

100% of proceeds go to the artists! Open to the public. Free.

I am honored to join poet and curator Shine Goodie for another installment of Goodie House Poems and Stories at Human Spaces in South City St. Louis. This all-features event will host musician Summer Osborne, poet ReeCee, and artist Flower Omega for a night of fellowship in word, song, and spirit. Light food + beverages. Free.