17 Apr 2023 Tawny Chatmon visits UCA as artist-in-residence

CONWAY — The University of Central Arkansas will host photography-based artist Tawny Chatmon as an artist-in-residence from Tuesday, April 18, to Thursday, April 20.

Chatmon will host an artist talk, along with Haitian visual artist Fabiola Jean-Louis, on Thursday, April 20, at 7:30 p.m., in the lecture hall of the Windgate Center for Fine and Performing Arts. 

Chatmon is one of eight African American artists featured in the 2022 Venice Biennale exhibit, “The Afro-Futurist Manifesto: Blackness Reimagined.” She is currently collaborating with Jean-Louis on “The Roots of Freedom” project.

In 2010, after photographing her father’s battle with cancer, she changed from commercial photography to art photography as a way for her work to serve a higher vocation.

Chatmon takes a multi-layered approach to her process by overlapping her digital photographs with collage, 24-karat gold leaf, and materials such as paper, semi-precious stones, glass, and other mixed media.

In addition, Chatmon will perform an in-class visit to Special Topics in Art on Tuesday, April 18, from 2:40-5:20 p.m. in the Cogdell-Penny Sculpture Studio, located in the Windgate Center.

As a mother of three children, she is motivated to “leave something important behind” for the world her children will grow up in.