Exhibition Opening: FRI FEB 2 | 6-9PM
On View: FRI FEB 2 – SAT MAR 2
Artist Bios
Hoesy Corona is an uncategorized queer Latinx artist of Mexican descent living and working in the United States. He creates work across a variety of media spanning installation, performance, and video. He develops otherworldly narratives centering marginalized individuals in society by exploring a process-based practice that investigates what it means to be a queer Latinx immigrant in a place where there are few. He choreographs large-scale performances and installations that often silently confront and delight viewers with some of the most pressing issues of our time. Reoccurring themes of queerness, race/class/gender, nature, isolation, celebration, and the climate crisis are present throughout his work. Hoesy has exhibited widely in galleries, museums, and public spaces in the United States and abroad.
Corona lived in Mexico, Utah, and Wisconsin, before moving to Baltimore, MD, in 2005 to establish a professional practice in the arts. He is a recent GKFF Artist Fellow 2019 & 2020 in Tulsa, OK, and is a former Halcyon Arts Lab Fellow 2017-2018 in Washington, DC. Most recently he was a Nicholson Project Artist in Residence in Washington, DC.
Anna Divinagracia is a Philippines-born Baltimore-based photographer and creative director. Divinagracia transforms her shared experiences from both Baltimore and Filipino culture into intimate presentations of reality through her lens. She creates a personal nostalgic narrative that explores themes of love, tenderness, family, and home that challenges issues of acculturation and identity as an immigrant. Divinagracia holds a bachelor’s degree in marketing from the illustrious Morgan State University.
Melissa Hyatt Foss is a musician, instrument-maker, and composer hailing from Maryland and Vermont. After receiving her BA in Art History at James Madison University she relocated to Argentina where she studied and developed her career as a performer, researcher, and teaching artist for over a decade. She completed her Master’s degree in Musical Creation, New Technologies and Traditional Arts at the National University of Argentina, specializing in the recreation of ancient sound artifacts of the Americas and electroacoustic composition. For seven years, she was a soloist with the Orchestra of Indigenous Instruments and New Technologies, performing in Argentina and touring abroad in Europe and Central America.
Melissa has cultivated an interdisciplinary practice that takes shape in sound sculptures, musical instruments, and organic electronica. Her work is a multifaceted contemplation of the beauty of our human heritage, the wisdom of our ancestors, and a search for their place in our world today. Her composition “Hanblecheyapi,” which was composed using a collection of her own hand-built instruments from the three Americas, was one of the International Rostrum of Composers’ 12 recommended works in 2018 and has since been broadcast by the BBC and other radio programs in Finland, Portugal, and Austria among others.
Baltimore native, Ajee Hassan, is a multi-disciplinary Beauty Artisan. Using the art of hair as her medium, her work is at the intersection of beauty and wellness. With extensive training in color application, cutting techniques, and skin-enhancing services, her aim is to empower individuals to step into their greatness — building their confidence and self-esteem through personalized styling education and self-care strategies. As an artist with a meticulous eye for cultivating beauty and overall wellness, she has founded Diverse Methodology – an artistry platform dedicated to amplifying her creative expression through the transformative power of beautification, with healing through art at its core.
Christopher Johnson, MFA, southernly known as KOLPEACE, is an artist, South Carolina made. His practice intersects Studio Painting; Live Performative Soul Painting; Murals; Community Artist workshops with youth, adults, and elders; and Video & Photo documentation that incorporates his southern style of (trill, trap, and soul) performance art. In attempt to protect and encourage the culture of Black peace, he grew to love and spread through portraiture. KOLPEACE (Kids Only Love Peace) is a key to teaching education, stories, and encouragement through painting. Incorporating music, artistic tools and unique tools to produce art in the matter of minutes in front of multiple backgrounds of audiences & community. His murals and studio works tap into his cultural upbringing with visual influential people in his life, while experimenting with media in efforts to spark conversations and teachings. “I believe portraiture captures the spirit and soul of the individual painted on the surface. My paintings are intended to engage and encourage the viewer while diving deeper into each subject’s being. I want whomever to have an everlasting feeling of peace in that moment. My performances evoke a strong spiritual value, which allows my ancestry characteristics to take over as I tap into my southern roots and bring the people together.”
D.C.-born, Hyattsville-raised twins Eleisha Faith & Tonisha Hope McCorkle hold BFAs from NYU in Studio Art. Formerly enrolled in the Visual and Performing Arts program at the Jim Henson School of Arts, Media, and Communication, the two have been curating, studying, and creating art since they were 13. At 17, the twins lost their mother to the rare lung condition of sarcoidosis. Since then, the two have used their art as a space of healing–creating immersive experiences that engage with loss, grief, and identity. They have decided, after spending almost a decade developing their crafts individually, to come together and form an interdisciplinary collaborative. Depicting their experiences, their work speaks to the candid, yet uncanny truth of Black life, while simultaneously severing from a cyclical narrative deeply rooted in pain and disenfranchisement. Collard greens, hair, and faith are some relics represented in their work. Sourced from their own lives, the pair began to see their worlds collide as they grew into a new state of consciousness as one, traveling multiple dimensions in their work and conflating the ideas of reconstruction and resilience. Their work serves as a spiritual process towards completion–utilizing 2D, 3D, and 4D elements as puzzle pieces to form the bigger picture. Deconstructing materials in their practice, the dynamic duo reconstructs narratives through veracious and symbolic imagery to communicate stories of Black life, food, rituals, healing, spirituality, and magic.
Bria Sterling-Wilson is a photographer and collage artist from Baltimore, Maryland. She received her B.F.A in Photography and Digital Arts from Towson University, Towson, MD in 2021. Sterling-Wilson uses found imagery, magazines, newspapers, and fabrics to construct alluring scenes, portraits, and interiors to express the black experience. Sterling-Wilson has exhibited works in Sanquhar, Scotland, Brooklyn, New York, Los Angles, California, Atlanta, Georgia, Washington, D.C, and Baltimore, Maryland. Bria has been featured in BmoreArt Magazine, Create! Magazine, Contemporary Collage Magazine, EBONY Magazine, and Black Collagists: The Book.
FRI FEB 2: Applications Open
SAT FEB 24: In-Person Info Session 4-5PM & Open Studios 5-9PM
WED MAR 20: Virtual Info Session 6:30-7:30PM
MON APR 8: Applications Close at 10AM
APR – MAY: Finalist Selection and Interviews
MON JUN 3: Accepted Artists Notified & Studio Tours Scheduled by This Date
MON SEP 2: Earliest Move-In Date
Location: The Patterson & Creativity Center
