Essence: In Celebration of Juneteenth

About the Artists

Thomas “Kwest” Burns is a painter with roots in graffiti and hip hop culture. His work conveys a variety of socially relevant themes, including commentary on urban life, politics and culture. He began drawing and painting out of a passion to express his ideas and visions. Kwest works primarily with acrylic paint, oil, spray paint and pastels, and has created murals throughout the city of Boston, in Weston and Lincoln Sudbury public schools and for the Department of Education in Malden.

Barrington Edwards has lived and worked in Boston as an artist and community activist for over four decades. He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Communication Design and also a Master of Science in Art Education from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.  He has since worked in the worlds of art, design, education and community development. Edwards is a Massachusetts State Universities Educator Alumni Award 2019 winner, a Surdna Foundation fellow and an Expressing Boston fellow. He is also a member of the Boston Comics Roundtable and co-founder of Comics in Color. Edwards currently teaches art education as an assistant professor at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

Donna Elliott - I am a self-taught artist. I painted my first piece, “Emancipation,” in January 2013. I am spiritually connected to my Creator, with a true passion for life and humanity. I give thanks to the Divine Creator for entrusting me with the gift to inspire others through my work. My paintings are motivating, inspiring, spiritually reviving, relaxing and fun. Each painting has a plethora of beautiful, brilliant and bold colors telling their own stories. Within each painting, the viewer will see hidden stories, objects, and faces from different angles. My work is a true reflection of my life and it allows others to uniquely see themselves. Painting for me is a way of relaxing and meditation. It takes me away from the vicissitudes and trials of everyday life, and helps me to see and share the beauty of who we are and why we are here.

Percy Fortini-Wright is a Boston-based artist who received his Bachelor of Fine Arts and Master of Fine Arts from the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University. When he was young Fortini-Wright wrote graffiti, becoming a technician of wild-style graffiti letters, tags and bubble letters while developing his skills as a traditional painter of scenes, abstraction and portraiture. Fortini-Wright merges the worlds of classic painting and graffiti techniques, boldly pushing the boundaries of his work. Fortini-Wright has been featured in numerous art publications from The New York Times to American Art Collector. In 2015 he received the Boston's Best Artist award from the Improper Bostonian.

Darrell Ann Gane-McCalla is an artist committed to radical social change. With a Bachelor’s Degree in Liberal Arts from Sarah Lawrence College and a Master of Arts in Teaching from Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Gane-McCalla’s solo work focuses on sculpture, illustration and mixed media. She has also been involved in several community collaborations; namely as the director of several mural projects across Boston and a collaborator on mural projects in Philadelphia and New York City. Gane-McCalla has received grants for her work from several arts and social organizations, including the Chahara Foundation and The Puffin Foundation. Her artwork has been published in a number of books, including on the cover of When the Prisoners Ran Walpole: A True Story in the Movement for Prison Abolition.

Elisa H. Hamilton is a socially engaged, multimedia artist who creates inclusive artworks that emphasize shared spaces and the hopeful examination of our everyday places, objects and experiences. Hamilton has worked with the DeCordova Sculpture Park, MIT List Visual Arts Center and Museum, and Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum to create community engaging art projects. She has also received several grants to implement public art projects around Boston. Hamilton has held artist residencies with the Vermont Studio Center, Boston Center for the Arts, the Eliot School of Fine and Applied Arts, and the Fenway Alliance. She continues her creative practice at her studio at Boston Center for the Arts.

Ekua Holmes’ work is collage based and her subjects, made from cut and torn papers, investigate family histories, relationship dynamics, childhood impressions, and the power of hope, faith and self-determination. Like Bearden quoted below, Holmes has looked out her window to find subjects for her collages. Remembering a Roxbury childhood of wonder and delight, she considers herself part of a long line of Roxbury imagemakers. In this spirit, she supports those who have a calling in the arts, creates and leads workshops, and serves as a visiting artist, lecturer and arts fellow across New England – all while keeping her own studio practice ignited. 

In Holmes’ first public art initiative, she received a Now + There Public Art Accelerator Fellowship and launched The Roxbury Sunflower Project (#RoxburySunflowerProject). Through this effort, now in its fourth year, Holmes has facilitated the planting of 10,000 sunflower seeds in her native Roxbury. A prolific book illustrator, Holmes’ work is now featured in a solo show at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, which will run through January 2022. As an important extension to this show, Holmes is teaming with Native American artist Elizabeth James-Perry to transform the museum’s grounds into a garden of sunflowers and corn.

As an illustrator of children’s literature, Holmes has received  a Caldecott Honor and a Coretta Scott King - John Steptoe New Talent Illustrator award. In 2018 Holmes made her first foray into book illustration and won the Robert Siebert and Horn Book awards for her illustrations in Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer, Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement by Carole Boston Weatherford. In that same year, she also won the coveted Coretta Scott King Award for her Illustration of the book Out of Wonder: Poems Celebrating Poets.  In 2019 she again won the Coretta Scott King Award, this time for her illustrations in Stuff of Stars by Marion Dane Bauer.

Holmes currently serves as commissioner and vice-chair of the Boston Art Commission, which oversees the placement and maintenance of public works of art on and in City of Boston properties. She is also the associate director at the Center for Art and Community Partnerships at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, where she manages and coordinates sparc! the ArtMobile, an art-inspiring, art-transforming van retrofitted to contribute to community-based, multidisciplinary arts programming focusing on  Mission Hill, Roxbury and Dorchester. Holmes received her BFA in Photography from MassArt in 1977.

I do not need to go looking for 'happenings,' the absurd or the surreal, because I have seen things that neither Dalí, Beckett, Ionesco nor any of the others could have thought possible; and to see these things I did not need to do more than look out of my studio window. – American artist Romare Bearden

A native of Roxbury, Massachusetts, Shea Justice’s work combines editorial illustration and political imagery. By superimposing text from historical documents like the US Constitution with headlines from current events, Justice highlights the treatment of people of color in modern America. Justice received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Art Education from Boston University and his Master of Fine Arts from the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University. He has participated in artist programs for the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and the deCordova Museum, and has been a member of Northeastern University’s African American Master Artists in Residence Program for the past twenty years. Currently, Justice teaches at Lincoln Sudbury Regional High School. 

Fitzcarmel LaMarre - I didn't know I was going to become an artist, because I was already an artist. In elementary school I drew everyone else's animals for our assignments. One of my earliest memories was attempting to draw a human figure, and since then I've been attempting to master the human likeness. At best, I'm interested in making art that makes people think; art that shocks people and visually stuns them into complete captivation as it tells its story. At the very least, I want people to acknowledge the talented execution of my work regardless of whether they agree with the content. Versatility is evident in my skill set, which ranges from realistic renderings to humorous cartoons. My style of art revolves around creating striking images that look like they exist in our time and space. I use our world as a template to create my own (there are several in my head).

Cagen Luse is a visual artist, entrepreneur, and the artist/author behind LunchTime ComiX and The Market, which have been published in local alt-weeklies such as DIG Boston and the Boston Compass, and across social media. Luse also runs his own business, 950design (950design.com), which produces handmade items such as t-shirts, art prints, buttons and notecards featuring his original artwork. Luse is also the organizer of the Comics in Color monthly event series and the Boston Comics in Color Festival (comicsincolor.org), Boston’s first comic arts festival focusing on stories by and about people of color.

Boston-based visual artist and graphic designer Ayana Mack has been honing her skills in the creative community for over a decade. Mack’s artistic inspiration is rooted in personal experiences, Black culture, self-love and believing in the ability to inspire others through her artwork. Her use of vibrant colors, linework and expressions of Black women within her work exhibit power and softness in unison. In 2020 Mack was an honoree for “Black Excellence on the Hill,” celebrating her contribution to the arts in the Commonwealth. She has also been a featured artist in Boston Art Review magazine, a Creative Entrepreneur Fellow for the Arts and Business Council, and a board member for both the American Institute of Graphic Arts and the Arts and Business Council of Greater Boston.

For the past forty-five years, Hakim Raquib has been photographing the ever-changing landscape of his community of Roxbury. Raquib’s largest body of work The Carribbean Art Festival underlines these changes and the cultural impact of immigrant communities in America. Raquib’s work can be found in collections at The Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the deCordova Museum, Polaroid Foundation and more. Raquib has received several citations from the City of Boston and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for his artistic achievements and work with youth. In 2017 Raquib received the Brother Thomas Fellowship Award for outstanding artistic excellence. Currently Hakim is a visual artist in residence at Northeastern University’s African American Master Artists in Residence Program where he has been developing his skills in digital art, machine learning, Photoshop and artificial intelligence.

Chanel Thervil is a Haitian-American artist and educator who combines abstraction and portraiture to open up communal dialogue around culture, social issues and existential questions. At the core of her practice lies a desire to empower and inspire tenderness and healing among communities of color through the arts. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from Pace University and a Master’s Degree in Art Education from Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Thervil has held residencies at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Children's Museum, deCordova Museum, The Harvard Ed Portal and Google. Her work has been featured by PBS Kids, The Boston Globe, The Boston Herald, WBUR's ARTery, WGBH and more.

After graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Illustration from Rhode Island School of Design, Shaanti Williams moved to Boston to pursue a career in teaching.  Williams’s work focuses on portraiture, reflecting figures and personalities from pop culture and beyond that have left an impression on society. He has been a teacher of visual arts in Boston Public Schools for over twenty years, finding inspiration in the unique vision and voices of his students.