Lance Johnson | TBD

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PERSONAL BIOGRAPHY

“The foundation of each piece I create is the layering of words throughout each canvas. I feel that words of inspiration are the soul of my work. Words have power and my goal as an artist is to create art that will resonate positively and evolve with each viewing. For me, the most amazing thing about art isn’t the final piece, it’s the creative process that is unleashed when you look at a blank canvas. I’m most passionate about the journey. The process is always most satisfying. For me it’s all about layers and textures. I look at a canvas like it’s a wall on say the lower east side. I try to create layers of history. The way old graffiti is covered new graffiti and urban decay and torn posters create textures.

Also, I was inspired as a young teen by the Harlem Renaissance so collaboration is a major component of my artistry. 

I was born and raised in NY and it has had a profound effect on my art. the energy, vibrance and movement of the city are so inspiring to me. The diversity and soul of the city are celebrated in my work. “

 

Aliah Lavonne Tigh | June 2024

Aliah Lavonne Tigh is the author of Weren’t We Natural Swimmers, a 2022 chapbook with Tram Editions, with poems appearing in the Academy of American Poets‘ Poem-A-Day, Mizna, Guernica, The Texas Review, Matter: A Journal of Political Poetry and Commentary, The Rupture, and others. Tigh has joined other writers for the Tin House Summer Workshop, read for Houston’s Poison Pen Reading Series and Hess Reading Series, The Brooklyn Rail, and contributed work for a Gulf Coast Journal and Texas Contemporary ekphrastic collaboration and was a grateful Recipient of Idyllwild Arts’ 2017 Bentley-Buckman Writing Fellowship. Tigh holds poetry and philosophy degrees from the University of Houston and an MFA from Antioch Los Angeles, and lives in Houston, Texas.