Urgent Care for Urgent Times

It is hard to believe that April is almost over! The Spring Preview of A Good Night’s Sleep, Act Two: Urgent Care will be open for Sunday tours for 3 more weeks (4/30, 5/7, and 5/21). If you were hoping to see this exhibition, make your plans now! The Colored Girls Museum will be open for groups of ten or more by appointment only after May 21, 2017.  Tours begin at l:l5.
Dr. Calyn Pickens Rich, creator of Dining with Dana and TCGM artist
photo from Carpe Nocturnum
MEET THE ARTISTS

This week we are shouting out Calyn, Joy, and Petra, 3 artists with new work in A Good Night’s Sleep, Act Two: Urgent Care.

Dr. Calyn Pickens Rich

“I have been drawing the same character, Dill, since I was six years old. From him evolved a world of “dills” within an ever expanding 2D Universe. The idea of creating comics came to me when I found – after many long nights in the lab – that the written word, in combination with visuals, could tell a story, change a mind…”
– excerpt from Carpe Nocturnum magazine

A year ago, we commissioned Calyn (famous for her characters, Dill and Dana) to create a comic featuring the three of us (Ian, Michael, and myself) “Dining with Dana,” and we think she did a pretty fantastic job. For more info about this extraordinary young artist, check her out here.
(l to r) Joy O. Ude and Petra Floyd
photo by Jere Paolini
“Chamber” is a participatory mixed media installation conceived by Joy Ude and Petra Floyd, which has transformed the third floor of The Colored Girls Museum into an intimate space to share and meditate on the thoughts of Colored Girls seeking a good night’s rest. Visitors enter a cloth tent where hand-­woven cloth baskets beckon guests to sit and curl up inside, mirroring the gestures of finding solace in a loved one’s embrace or retiring into the groove of a well-­loved couch. Suspended at eye ­level above the baskets are a cloud of transparent envelopes, filled with the written hopes, dreams, and fears of colored girls.

Joy O. Ude is a mixed ­media artist and designer. In her artwork, she explores Black culture as a subset of American culture by addressing sociological issues including education and employment. As an American ­born child of Nigerian immigrants, she also reflects on the concept of duality. Learn more about Joy, and her work, at http://joyoftextiles.com/home.html.

Petra Floyd is a first­ generation, Liberian-American, multidisciplinary artist from Philadelphia. In her practice, she uses drawing, sculpture, writing, printmaking, and performance to meditate on American and diasporic constructions of Blackness, and the tools deployed by Black people to reinvent themselves, again and again. Joy and Petra both work at the Fabric Museum in Philadelphia.

To read a little more about Petra, visit http://www.philly.com/philly/living/Philly-museums-plea-to-visitors-Slow-down.html