As part of their R&D Fellowship with SOURCE, brontë velez recently gathered a cohort of artists – Spirit Adams, Jasmine Best, Cici Osias, Karina Sharif, and Nastassja Swift – for a week in residency at the snowy campus of Arts Letters & Numbers in Averill Park, NY. The artists gathered around craft, ritual, and study of Black feminist teachings to create sacraments for a special evening at Carnegie Hall.
brontë was invited by esperanza spalding to curate the environment for a homemade field of love, a special evening of black feminist music, dance, and transmissions at Carnegie Hall that took inspiration from June Jordan’s 1977: Poem for Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer. Through their R&D Fellowship, brontë deepened the possibilities of this invitation to expand the homemade field of love.
Emerging from guidance from esperanza and deep meditations with the poem, brontë asked each of the artists:
- How might we clean the air and make our hands brooms?
- How might we cool the waters with a libation?
- How might we sit “lion spine relaxed,” like ancestor June witnessed of ancestor Fannie, despite the racial violence she was up against?
- How might the fire at the center of this field of love be “one full Black lily luminescent?”
The sacraments each artist made emerged from meditations with their prompt, and guidance from brontë.
We’re so grateful to our friends and partners, Arts, Letters, & Numbers for graciously and enthusiastically saying a big yes to hosting this unexpected and emergent collaboration!
Learn more about the project here!
