DEEP in the Work

In this episode, we’re talking to Jessica Lynne, a beloved sister, a Southern center for me, someone for whom I would not be in the arts + culture space without, and who I advise on most of my life moves before I make them—and someone who I ask to always to continue to journey with me, including on the executive Board of Black Art Futures Fund. I tell everyone in an introduction to Jessica Lynne that I absolutely make no life decisions without her. Yall know her also as  a writer and art critic. She is a founding editor of ARTS.BLACK, an online journal of art criticism from Black perspectives. Her writing has been featured in publications such as Art in America, The Believer, BOMB Magazine, The Nation and elsewhere. She is currently at work on a collection of essays about love, faith, and the American South.

This conversation was recorded on May 21, 2020

Enjoy

Produced by Curtis Caesar John

Music by audionautix.com

In this episode, I’m meditating on what defines community, especially Black community, and what it means to be a Black cultural worker at a major museum in Columbia, South Carolina with my friend Sherrie Belton.

Sherrie Belton is a Fairfield County, SC native who loves asking questions, solving problems, and causing good trouble. From classrooms to museums, she has spent the last decade doing creative community work across the Midlands of South Carolina. Though typically she serves as an arts programmer and arts educator, she began exploring what it means to be a maker through an open call for proposals for Indie Grit Lab’s Rural Project. It’s where Route 3 Box 187D was born, an audio series that celebrates the everyday triumph and resiliency of Black families in rural South. Sherrie is particularly interested in Black community regeneration, cultural preservation, and creative placemaking.

This conversation was recorded on April 5, 2020.

Produced by Curtis Caesar John

Music by audionautix.com

Deep in the Work Intro—Stephanye Watts

In this episode, we’re talking to Stephanye Watts, who is a Philly native, music fan, and one of the biggest and most-active HBCU Alumni reps I know.

A graduate of Clark Atlanta University, Stephanye is the Assembly Program Coordinator at Recess, an artist-led alternative to incarceration empowering court-involved young people to take charge of their own life story and imagine a positive future through art. Stephanye served her community in her previous post as Community Engagement Manager at Weeksville Heritage Center and continues to do so as a member of the Association of African-American Museums, CAU's alumni association, UNCF's Inter-Alumni Council, and the HBCU Hub.

When the Philadelphia native isn't pushing the Black agenda, she is the woman behind the world's only R&B trivia night, #RhythmNBodyroll, a podcast, The Psyce, and the Be Reel Black Cinema Club.

This conversation was recorded on May 18, 2020

Enjoy!

Produced by Curtis Caesar John

Music by audionautix.com

In this episode, we’re talking to Shay Wafer, who is a mentor, Mama, grandmama, And so much more to many Black cultural workers in the world right now.

In her long career in performing arts, Shay Wafer, has demonstrated a stalwart dedication to the arts and community development through many years of service to the field.

Her passionate vision is balanced with pragmatic experience, as she has held senior level positions at a number of non-profit arts organizations with a focus on African Diasporic programming and community engagement.

Currently the Executive Director of WACO Theater Center in Los Angeles, Shay was the Executive Director of 651 ARTS in Brooklyn and the founding VP of Programs for the August Wilson Center for African American Culture, a multi-disciplinary center and museum in downtown Pittsburgh. Prior to that, she served as the managing director of Cornerstone Theater Company, LA Theatreworks and the St. Louis Black Repertory Company.

She also was a founding partner of Marla Gibb’s Crossroads Arts Academy and Theatre. Shay has engaged in additional community and volunteer activities throughout her career including serving on the Board of Directors of National Performance Network (currently the Board Chair), Theatre Communications Group and as a New England Foundation for the Arts National Theatre Project and National Dance Project Advisor.

Shay has served as a peer panelist for The National Endowment for the ARTS, MAP Fund, Doris Duke, Mellon, Kresge and Bush Foundations, among others.  She holds a BS from Howard University in Early Childhood Education and a MFA from the Yale School of Drama, Theatre Management program.

Our conversation was recorded on April 15, 2020.

Enjoy!

Produced by Curtis Caesar John

Music by audionautix.com

In this excerpt of the full episode, Sherrie and DéLana discuss one of two poems, and this excerpt is a poem by Marge Piercy, "To be of use" and their experiences with what it means to be an invisible / maybe essential laborer in a white work force. What does it mean to have a "responsibility" to a community, and a responsibility to self? In response to the poem, and her work in the cultural sector, specifically at an art museum, Sherrie says, "I don't want to be the one always carrying water...but I'm the only one here." 

Sherrie Belton is a Fairfield County, SC native who loves asking questions, solving problems, and causing good trouble. From classrooms to museums, she has spent the last decade doing creative community work across the Midlands of South Carolina. Though typically she serves as an arts programmer and arts educator, she began exploring what it means to be a maker through an open call for proposals for Indie Grit Lab’s Rural Project. It’s where Route 3 Box 187D was born, an audio series that celebrates the everyday triumph and resiliency of Black families in rural South. Sherrie is particularly interested in Black community regeneration, cultural preservation, and creative placemaking.

In this excerpt of the full episode, Stephanye and DéLana reminisce about their year together in 2016 at Weeksville Heritage Center, "dreaming up possibilities with pennies."  DéLana reminisces on the day Stephanye came into her office with a red wool coat and found a place for her, and what it means to look for a place for Black women with divergent careers, and then with the blessing and love from a Black woman, Tia Powell Harris program and fund a new 19,000 sq ft building with---inadequate funding from philanthropy, and yet! And yet! The work we did was not at all visible part of the contemporary story of Weeksville's "saving" so we had to do some documenting. And storytelling--what we do best.

A graduate of Clark Atlanta University, Stephanye R. Watts is the newly appointed Assembly Program Coordinator at Recess. Stephanye served her community in her previous post as Community Engagement Manager at Weeksville Heritage Center and continues to do so as a member of the Association of African-American Museums, CAU's alumni association, UNCF's Inter-Alumni Council, and the HBCU Hub. As a non-traditional arts worker, Stephanye is invested in nurturing a generation of people like her to create a true representation of what diversity looks like in the arts.

DEEP IN THE WORK podcast host DéLana R.A. Dameron is in conversation with Jessica Lynne. In this excerpt of the full episode, Jessica and DéLana read the text of an epistolary collaboration titled WHERE DO WE GO TO LIVE? WHERE DO WE GO TO GET FREE?, a component of THIS DESIRE: Poetics & Longing, a project with Able Baker Contemporary. The excerpt references three exchanges originally published in Arts.Black and Los Angeles Review of Books.

Texts Referenced: 

Jessica Lynne is a writer and art critic. She is a founding editor of ARTS.BLACK, an online journal of art criticism from Black perspectives. Her writing has been featured in publications such as Art in America, The Believer, BOMB Magazine, The Nation and elsewhere. She is currently at work on a collection of essays about love, faith, and the American South. Jessica lives and works in coastal Virginia. Find her online at @lynne_bias.