Hiram Van Gordon Gallery at TSU

Address: 3500 John A. Merritt Boulevard, Nashville, TN 37209

Dates: February 27 - March 30, 2023

Hours: Monday - Thursday 8:30am - 4pm (closed March 6 - 10)

Website: tnstate.edu/art/gallery.aspx

Crowning Glory
Reception: Thursday, March 23, 5- 7pm

Hair Hair Hair! Crowning Glory will look at Black hair through six women artists' powerful and playful expressions of what adorns the head. A range of mediums; soft pastels to sculptures, prints to paintings, interpreting bonnets to braids. The show highlights the importance of hair community and individual expression. We acknowledge the work being done with the CROWN Act, a law that prohibits race-based hair discrimination, that was blocked in the U.S. Senate this past December. Co-Curated by Dr. Cynthia Gadsden, Art Historian at Tennessee State University and Courtney Adair Johnson, Gallery Director. Supported by EADJ.

Artists: Jeannette Ehlers, Elise Kendrick, Jasmine Moseley, Elisheba Israel Mrozik, Althea Murphy-Price, Tanekeya Word

image: Jasmine Moseley

Crowning Glory artists

Jeannette Ehlers

Jeannette Ehlers is a Copenhagen-based artist of Danish and Trinidadian descent whose practice takes shape experimentally across photography, video, installation, sculpture and performance. She graduated from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 2006. Ehlers’ work often brings about decolonial hauntings and disruptions and she insists on the possibility for empowerment and healing in her art, honoring legacies of resistance in the African diaspora. She merges the historical, the collective and the rebellious with the familial, the bodily and the poetic. In the words of author Lesley-Ann Brown, “Ehlers reminds all who participate in or gaze at her work that history is not in the past.” She has exhibited internationally and was shortlisted to create a national monument to The Windrush Generation at London Waterloo Station 2022. She is the co-creator of the public sculpture project I Am Queen Mary, 2018

Elise Kendrick

Elise R. Kendrick is a transplant to Music City. Originally from the suburbs of Gahanna, Ohio, she developed her love of creativity while spending her summers in theater and art camps as a youth and sharing time with her mother doing arts and crafts at the kitchen table. Early on, her parents encouraged her quirky attitude, as well as her unconventional approach to life, which made it easier to pursue art on the collegiate level. While attending Tennessee State University, one of Nashville’s historically Black colleges and universities, she received her bachelor of science degree in art with a concentration in jewelry and metals. After college, she began painting seriously. Her current work consists primarily of paintings of women of color in addition to linocut prints that touch on hair, race, culture, and the disruption of social norms. She often uses bright colors, black and white, and sometimes text to visually communicate information about her subjects. With each brushstroke, her goal is to capture the inner essence of the people she places on canvas.

Jasmine Moseley

Jasmine Moseley is a Black artist from Nashville, TN but has lived in Atlanta, GA and Baton Rouge, LA. She draws heavily from her experience growing up in the inner cities of the American South. Her works commemorate, celebrate and venerate Black women. Moseley is a graduate of Tennessee State University.

Elisheba Israel Mrozik

Elisheba Israel Mrozik is a Fine Artist and International Award Winning Tattooist. She graduated from Memphis College of Art in 2006 with a BFA in Computer Arts. After moving to Nashville, TN in 2007, she began to work full time as a freelance artist in graphic design, anime, and fine art. Elisheba was a part of Nashville Black Artists Renaissance, and has shown at Columbia State, The Ha Factory, Boheme Collectif, Corvidae Gallery, and other venues. Mrozik found expression in tattooing in 2010, opening her own studio in 2011 named One Drop Ink Tattoo Parlour and Gallery in Nashville, TN.

Althea Murphy-Price

Althea Murphy-Price began her studies in Fine Art at Spelman College before receiving her Master of Arts in Printmaking and Painting from Purdue University and later studying at the Tyler School of Art, Temple University where she earned her Master of Fine Arts. Her artwork has been shown widely throughout the country as well as international cities in Spain, China, Japan, Italy and Sweden. Her writings and work have been featured in such publications as Art Papers Magazine, CAA Reviews, Contemporary Impressions Journal, Art in Print, Printmaking: A Complete Guide to Materials and Process., and Printmakers Today.

Tanekeya Word

Tanekeya Word creates multimedia visual art on paper: drawings, paintings, narrative forms, and fine art prints that centers the everyday fantastical lives of Black women and girls. Presented in quotidian object scale, no larger than the human body, her works are serialized with focus on Black interiority, material culture, nature, and subaltern mappings in harmony with the body. Word is the founder of Black Women of Print, a homeplace for Black women printmakers. She holds a B.A. in English/Afro American Studies from Howard University, a M.A. Arts Management from American University. Currently a dissertator of Urban Education at the University Wisconsin-Milwaukee, with a specialization in Art Education, Word’s forthcoming dissertation (2023) is entitled: Black Womanhood + Black Aesthetics in Art Education. Tanekeya Word has participated in national exhibitions and her work is held in private and public collections: The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, District of Columbia; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia; Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton; Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis; Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee; St. Lawrence University, Canton.

Art and Design Black Futures Week

February 27 - March 3

What it means to be Black and alive. Blackness is infinite. The book, Black Futures, edited by Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham, inspires us to continue the conversations of Black artists, activists, and writers who spread joy, power, legacy, and innovation through their work. Tennessee State University Department of Art and Design will host a week of Black excellence. We will explore conversations with artists that work to decolonize spaces and move us forward while nodding to the past. We will have events throughout the week of February 27 to March 3 for students and the community; two panels (Paint and Design), Sankofa Design Contest, a Crowning Glory hair workshop, and a Kappa Pi party. Our Design panel is packed full of superstars from around the country/world. Our very own Chair Kaleena Sales, will talk with powerhouse Rick Griffith (More Matter/Denver), Visual Communicator, Design Educator, Author, Filmmaker, and Farmer Saki Mafundikwa (Zimbabwe), and organizer of State of Black Design Omari Souza (Houston, Texas). Follow us on IG and Facebook @tsuartanddesign for Art and Design Black Futures Weeks schedule.