What exactly is Juneteenth? You’ve probably seen it listed on your calendar as a holiday, but maybe never really knew what it was. Juneteenth honors the day June 19th, 1865 when in Galveston, Texas, all those enslaved were justly freed. Two months after the end of the Civil War, General Gordon Granger (a Sodus, New York native) delivered the news to the enslaved in Galveston. This holiday has been celebrated by Black Americans since the late 1800s, but since the recent murder of George Floyd and countless other Black Americans, there has been a renewed interest in this holiday.

Today, some celebrate in backyards with friends, family, and lots of food, but some cities hold larger events such as parades and festivals. Juneteenth has also been called “Juneteenth Independence Day,” “Freedom Day,” and “Emancipation Day.” If you’d like to know more about the history of Juneteenth, how it’s historically been celebrated, and why it’s so important, read this article from The New York Times, or if you want to read more about former Sodus resident General Gordon Granger, read this article from WXXI News.

Visual artists play an important role in memorializing the events of Juneteenth. At the center of where it all happened, Galveston, Texas, a mural has been commissioned this year to mark the spot where the emancipation was announced. It will be titled “Absolute Equality.”

According to Reginald C. Adams, a Houston artist who was commissioned to create the art, “the mural sprinkles the hard bitter truth with sugar. The sugar is the beauty and energy of the mural, while the bitter truth is that for two and a half years, people were held in slavery against a federal declaration,” (Alina Tugend).

If you’d like to learn more about the mural and what it represents, read this recent article from The New York Times.

In 2020, a writer for Cosmopolitan magazine reached out to six Black artists asking them to make art about what Juneteenth means to them.
One of the artists Kendra Dandy said, “This illustration is meant to be a celebration of Black beauty and joy to give us light in these hard times,” (Raydene Salinas Hansen).

Another featured artist, Khadija Horton, said “I wanted to celebrate Juneteenth in fashion the same way we do the Fourth of July. I also wanted to highlight specific fashion iconography that comes from Black culture (e.g., butterfly clips, hoops, nameplates—things that I like to wear that make me feel proud) and then I incorporated illustrated typography into those elements.” If you’d like to look at the rest of the artists who made art for this article, visit the full article on Cosmopolitan.com here.

In some communities, Black Lives Matter activists are using Juneteenth as an opportunity to combine art with fundraising for the movement. This year in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, some residents are making art to celebrate Juneteenth. “Art as Liberation: Celebrating Black Art in Pittsburgh,” will include a group exhibit by 15 local Black artists.

The event was created by internationally exhibited artist Mikael Owunna and will be facilitated by groups including 1Hood Media. 1Hood’s CEO Jasiri X, who is also a rapper, said this about the art “I really feel like the key to our liberation, the key to our freedom is expressed through our art.”

The event will be a fundraiser for the Antwon Rose II foundation, which was created by Michelle Kenney in honor of her son who was shot and killed by an East Pittsburgh police officer three years ago this month.

If you would like to read more about this event, visit the event page on 90.5 WESA, or if you would like to see Mikael Owunna’s portfolio, click here.

This year, in 2021, Rochester, NY is ramping up their Juneteenth celebrations and remembrance events this weekend including a Juneteenth Bike Ride, an Honoring Juneteenth event at Genesee Country Village & Museum with guest interpreters including Cheyney McKnight, founder of “Not Your Momma’s History”, a Teen Poetry Slam, and more. Visit this article at Democrat & Chronicle to see details of these events and others – many of which include visual arts components. We encourage you to attend as many as you are able!

Notably, Flower City Arts Center Community Outreach Coordinator, Rashaad Parker, will be participating in the Juneteenth Celebration at The Strong Museum of Play in his role as a Commissioner for the Greater Rochester Martin Luther King, Jr. Commission. After a several year hiatus, The Strong Museum of Play has returned to its summer programming, and is once again hosting the community event during open hours where admission to the museum will be free on Saturday, June 19th from 11am-2pm. Details can be found on the event page here or on the flyer image below.

Blog post contributed by Flower City Arts Center intern and RIT student Madi Watson and Flower City Arts Center staff.

We sat down to chat with 2020-21 Printmaking & Book Arts Resident Jessica Cheng to discuss her journey as an artist as well as our Artist Residency program here at Flower City Arts Center.

Cheng is a native of the Rochester area and grew up in the town of Pittsford, NY. She attributes the start of her artistic journey through her love of comics, drawing, and support from tremendous teachers. After high school, she attended Alfred University where she studied courses in Chinese & German languages and Social Science, and ultimately received a BFA in Fine Arts.

Cheng describes her experience at a liberal arts college vs. an art school as being important to her personally, as she could implement her studies in culture and society simultaneously in her art studies. She also made the decision to major in Fine Arts instead of Illustration, and focused her work on printmaking.

Cheng has been featured in exhibition at Harder Gallery at Alfred University and at The Cube Gallery in Alfred, NY.

Looking at Jessica Cheng’s current artwork, it’s evident that she desires to share her perspective as someone of mixed race, and her personal struggle to piece together and amplify remnants of her Chinese identity.

“Italian-Americans, Chinese-Americans, any family of immigrant peoples, has artifactual traditions they cling to,” Cheng reflects, “I call this their gabagool. A piece of immigrant culture unifying them as a people.”

Gabagool is the Italian-American word for a variety of cold cut ham.

“I want to explore what it means to be someone of a mixed-race or multicultural origin,” she continues, “and having a dialogue around that, and preserving the gabagool.”

Cheng states that the tumultuous election at the start of her time at university greatly influenced the topics she studied, which in turn motivated her style of printmaking. The current pandemic and the political landscape we have experienced recently – specifically with race, immigration, cultural appropriation, and xenophobia – are also topics Cheng hopes to exemplify and discuss within her work.

Jessica Cheng found out about the Artist Residency program at Flower City Arts Center through two past Printmaking & Book Arts Residents, Susan Doran (2016) and Paige Moreland (2018). Doran is the mother of one of Cheng’s friends and Moreland attended Alfred with Cheng and has a similar style of printmaking.

When asking Cheng what advice she would give to an artist who might be seeking a residency, she says, “Stay organized and stay connected within the community around you. Find opportunities and achievements, no matter how small, to keep you going and uplifted.”

To keep up with Jessica Cheng and her work, be sure to follow her Instagram @jessica.cheng.og. If you are an artist or know of an artist who might be interested in our program, please visit our Residencies page here – applications for the following year are due by April 15.

Below are some examples of Jessica Cheng’s artwork, along with a paragraph for context.

My current work at The Center has been focusing on reclaiming authority over Chinese and Chinese American visual culture as a method of anti-racism. Systemic de-Asianification of Asian cultures has endured millennia, and the practice of stripping Asian ownership of art, craft, culture, history, and material for non-Asian profit is alive as ever. My work so far in “x-x,” “xAx,” and “xOx” reclaims Chinese and Chinese diaspora imagery and symbolism to identify sacred visual culture for Chinese Americans. The ability for marginalized communities to have exclusive access and authority over their history, representation, media, culture, and means of production of those things is my preferred method of justice and progress. While products of that method absolutely can and should be shared with allies outside of the community, some things must be reserved for it to be true justice.

Jessica Cheng

During this 4 week class students met virtually, and studied elements of photography, and techniques for photographing plants and flowers. Building on what we learned each week students went out and photographed, we shared our images, and discussed our love of nature.

Below are the photographs of talented students and photographers Helena Brissenden, and Amanda Tierson.

Helena Brissenden

Amanda Teirson

“During this 8-week class students will explore digital & darkroom photography, digital art, and alternative processes like cyanotypes.”

This is the class description students had based their decision on, their decision to sign up for the spring session of TRAC: Exploring Photography. As you’ve already guessed, I’m sure, this is not how the Spring 2020 session went. So how did we explore photography? We discussed some technical decisions one may make when making a digital photograph, even with a cell phone! We talked about how different lighting informs a photograph. We looked at bodies of photographic work and discussed decisions made about composition and sequencing. Students worked towards their own cohesive body of work and wrote about their final series. 

As different as the class was from the one they signed up for, five teens showed up every Tuesday afternoon for eight weeks straight. Their active participation, despite the hardship of the past few months, inspired me deeply. They listened, they shared, they learned. I feel confident in that, based on the work they produced and shared with me and with each other. One student willing to share one of said bodies of work is Mikayla Guck. Please enjoy Mikayla’s series, “The Creative Process”. 

The Creative Process

It is more than what an artist makes. There is beauty, too, in the simplicity of the art supplies that create a masterpiece. I think, as artists, we often put pressure on ourselves to create a final product that blows people away. But to me, the time and thought and materials that go into what we create have just as much value as our creations.

I took these pictures with my camera because I wanted to capture as much detail as possible in order to get a look at seemingly ordinary art supplies. For me, creativity is sparked through color and contrast, and I displayed that with both the colors of the rainbow and the glow of metallics. In some of the photos I used a mirror in order to reflect my subject, in a way we might see our own reflection in our artwork.

Ultimately, understanding and appreciating our creative process will help us create art that we can connect with and use to understand our creative drive. For me, and probably many other creatives, seeing growth in my art comes not from making good pieces, but from a greater knowledge of how and why I am creating. 

– Mikayla Guck

“During this 8-week class students will explore digital & darkroom photography, digital art, and alternative processes like cyanotypes.”

This is the class description students had based their decision on, their decision to sign up for the spring session of TRAC: Exploring Photography. As you’ve already guessed, I’m sure, this is not how the Spring 2020 session went. So how did we explore photography? We discussed some technical decisions one may make when making a digital photograph, even with a cell phone! We talked about how different lighting informs a photograph. We looked at bodies of photographic work and discussed decisions made about composition and sequencing. Students worked towards their own cohesive body of work and wrote about their final series. 

As different as the class was from the one they signed up for, five teens showed up every Tuesday afternoon for eight weeks straight. Their active participation, despite the hardship of the past few months, inspired me deeply. They listened, they shared, they learned. I feel confident in that, based on the work they produced and shared with me and with each other. One student willing to share one of said bodies of work is Carina Christman. Please enjoy Carina’s series, “Backyard Oasis”.