"To Reflect Us, To Relate To Us": Artists Roundtable on the Legacy of Black Dimensions in Art

Sean Desiree is a conceptual and interdisciplinary artist, born and raised in the Bronx. Their interest includes social engagement and disruptive interventions that counter biased societal structures. In addition to being an artist, they are an educator facilitating the BIPOC Builders Immersions at Soul Fire Farm in Grafton, NY. In 2024, they attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. In 2022 they were awarded fellowships at  Leslie Lohman, and Socrates Sculpture Park. They have attended residencies at More Art, MASS MoCA, and Wave Hill. While an Artist in Residence at More Art, they debuted their socially engaged public art sculpture, BEAM ENSEMBLE in collaboration with the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

Although Clifford Oliver was born and raised in New York City, he has lived his entire adult life in rural upstate New York where he has raised a small family, a few dogs and chases horses. Always appreciative of and fascinated by the visual arts, Clifford Oliver didn’t start out to be a photographer. Writer, veterinarian, and anthropologist topped his lists of what he was going to be for a long time. Photography allows study in all those occupations and then some. Clifford began his career in photography while serving in the U. S. Navy. While maintaining staff photographer positions with Upstate Medical Centre and later NYS Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, Clifford freelanced for local artists, stables, farms, magazines and even weddings. He has been a volunteer at his local library for the last twenty years. A testimony to his constant search for knowledge. Photography is Clifford’s tool to explore, to expose, to celebrate the world we live in. He believes in the power of the still image; the ability of a photograph to freeze time. Unlike other visual arts a photograph is a testimony to truth.

ransome received his MFA from Lesley University. In his practice he combines acrylic paint with an array of found, created, and purchased papers. His work embraces the spontaneity in jazz and the resourcefulness of rural Gee’s Bend quilters, utilizing materials at hand to collage and paint to blend a unique yet personal creation.  He has exhibited in a solo exhibit at The Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, SC, CAM Raleigh NC at Alpha Galley, Opalka Gallery, and group shows at Katonah Museum of Art, The Sigal Museum, The SECCA Museum, MASS MoCA, the Visual Art Center of New Jersey, Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, and Weatherspoon Museum of Art.

Jean-Marc Superville Sovak is a multidisciplinary artist whose work critically fabulates around silent histories absent from dominant historical narratives. His current projects include There Are NO Black Shakers; A Contemporary Folk Opera, and a-Historical Landscapes, 19th-century landscape engravings altered to include images from contemporaneous Anti-Slavery publications. His participatory performance works include retracing the Underground Railroad at Hudson Valley historic sites, and organizing a “Burial for White Supremacy.” His public art includes a memorial to some of the first Africans to arrive in Rhode Island. A Bard College graduate (M.F.A. Film/Video) Jean-Marc has exhibited at Columbia University’s Wallach Art Gallery, Shirley Fiterman Art Center, RecessArt, Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Arts Westchester, Socrates Sculpture Park , and Manifesta 8 European Biennial. Jean-Marc has been a Visiting Artist/Lecturer at Bard College, SUNY New Paltz, Columbia University and Vassar College, and in 2020 was guest curator at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art.

Jade Warrick is a community-centered muralist, arts educator, and advocate dedicated to transforming public spaces into vibrant canvases for connection, reflection, and collective joy. She is the host of WMHT’s PBS program A House for Arts and the founder and co-director of Amplified Voices, an art and wellness initiative empowering youth and adults to tell their stories through public art and creative expression. She sits on the board of Collar Works and has worked with several local arts organizations to spread the power of what art can give. Through her murals, educational programs, and community partnerships, Jade’s mission is to build a more empathetic world - one where creativity restores critical thinking and art becomes a catalyst for understanding and healing across generations.

Elizabeth Zunon is the award-winning illustrator of over twenty children’s picture books, an author and mural artist. Born in Albany, New York, Elizabeth spent her childhood in Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast), West Africa, where she loved to draw, paint, make up dances, and play dress-up. Surrounded by the bright, vibrant colors of everyday West African fabrics and tropical vegetation, Elizabeth’s love of color and pattern grew and lingered past her return to the United States as a teenager. She attended the Rhode Island School of Design and graduated with a B.F.A. in Illustration in 2006. Elizabeth now lives in Albany with her husband and young son, where she explores a multicultural world through painting, collage, silk-screening, embroidery, and more. Her work is largely influenced by the people, places and things from her childhood in Côte d’Ivoire as the product of two cultures. Elizabeth’s illustrated children’s books include “Through Sand and Salt: A Tale of Discovery Across the Sahara” and “Grandpa Cacao: A Tale of Chocolate, from Farm to Family” (published by Bloomsbury Children’s Books), both of which she is also the author.