Philly’s Freedom

Serena Saunders is a full-time mother and practicing artist. Native to Philadelphia, Serena's core is fine art but she also creates in the realm of fashion design and writing. Her work as a painter has a fresh, color-strong perspective that speaks to our imagination while the subjects ask of our awareness. Her often large-scale, graphically bold and poetically composed paintings offer the viewer layers of narrative. The painter works with a color palette that gives her intricate prints a world of their own. She then uses these environments on canvas as a backdrop to her portraits and their stories. You will often find a matter of injustice or undying hope fighting its way through the line work to prevail at the surface. Her work is influenced by her compassion towards youth and community. This affection for the youth was nurtured during her decade spent teaching art and poetry at more than a dozen schools and non-profit organizations throughout Philadelphia and neighboring states. She has shown in spaces such as galleries and international fairs as well as local shops and cafes, you could even find her serving up free art classes outside on the sidewalks of her neighborhoods. Serena Saunders has also served as the Creative Ambassador for the City of Philadelphia and has been featured in numerous publications including Rolling Out, The Philadelphia Tribune, and local televised news outlets.

To create artwork that my family, children and grandchildren can be inspired by, see themselves in, and be proud of the legacy I am leaving is my artistic mission. Unknown to me was how many people, their children, and grandchildren would have the same moving feeling when seeing themselves within the art. Juxtaposing historical context, cultural aesthetics and modern black imagery has become my voice to help connect the diaspora. I will be the ancestor my future great great grandchildren will be empowered by I tell myself. Artwork that embraces and uplifts black culture with creative concepts that connect all ages as well as educate those who support Black History and Culture.

“Chunkel” is the alias of 23 year old artist, Charlie Dunkel. He is an American illustrator and artist living and working in Philadelphia, PA. Charlie has been showing his paintings and drawings since 2016 and later began freelancing as an illustrator and designer after working on children’s books and album covers for independent writers and musicians.

Lyn Godley began her career working with Light in Fine Arts. Since then her work has crossed the borders of interiors, product, furniture, lighting, and jewelry. Her designs, done both individually and as partner of Godley-Schwan (1984-1998) have been exhibited internationally. The Crinkle Lamp, the last piece designed jointly by Godley-Schwan, was accepted into the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art in 1998. Her work is in numerous museum and private collections.

In 1998, after the closing of Godley-Schwan, Godley returned to Fine Art with a focus on merging light and art. As a light artist, her work explores the relationship between art and technology, but more importantly the impact on the viewer. From highly detailed pixels of light embedded into drawings, to programmed LEDs that create animated images that mesmerize, to large scale public art installations; she explores the merging of art and lighting and the experience it provokes. She creates layered environments that play with themes of interactive observation, movement and user-behavior.

She is interested in how the integration of light in artwork can create a deeper conversation by affecting the environment and ultimately the user. Research into visual as well as nonvisual effects of light and imagery, is leading to trials on the potential use of light art in healthcare.

This process is grounded in Godley’s love of making, which is driven by the tactile quality enjoyed through her manipulation of materials. Although technology plays an important role in Godley’s work, she continues to combine that with traditional artistic medium; watercolor, pastel, charcoal, etc. Her sensibilities result in delicate adjustment of medium and materials in response to light as it travels through or is reflected off of their surfaces. This work is made through the animation of LEDs, not computer programs. This grounding in material studies, extended into electronics and circuitry, is further enriched through her research into the psychological and physiological effects that imagery, light and color have on the viewers. Her work is the result of these ongoing investigations, provoking questions regarding how the merger of light and materials might be used to speak to us, to mesmerizes, to excite, to calm, and heal.

In addition to her studio work, she is a fulltime Associate Professor of Industrial Design at Jefferson – Philadelphia University + Thomas Jefferson University. There, Godley is developing a Cross-Disciplinary concentration in Lighting Design with a focus on Light as Experience. She has spoken on the topics of Light and Health, and Cross-Disciplinary Lighting Design Education at both National and International conferences, and is the Principal Investigator on a 3-year EU Erasmus funded grant, ‘Light4Health’, together with five other international universities to develop open-source curriculum on the effects of light on health.

NTEL aka THE ABSTRACT NTELIGENT is a graffiti artist, painter, sculptor, muralist, designer and writer, born in 1984, on a military installation in a faraway land. He spent the first 2 decades of his life moving from country to country. NTEL started making artworks as a very young child, and practiced several different, traditional forms of art throughout his life. Though NTEL always struggled with expression, creativity, and originality in the face of the repetitive culture of art, and the colour-less world of the government properties he grew up on. He eventually stumbled upon graffiti and street art as a teenager, in Germany. Instantly, NTEL knew this was the artform that could set his soul free from the barbed, chain-link fences, and khaki buildings surrounding him. Since that moment over 20 Years ago, NTEL has been working to integrate graffiti and street styles with a variety of other forms of modern arts, like pop art and abstract expressionism. This visual potpourri can be seen in NTEL’s murals and designs commissioned by both private and public entities, and the numerous gallery exhibits he participates in annually. NTEL currently lives full-time on the road, while maintaining studios in Pennsylvania, Missouri, and South Dakota.

Chelsey Luster is a Philadelphia-based visual artist, curator, and art instructor from Baltimore, Maryland. Her work focuses on intimacy and vulnerability through depictions of empowered female figures in various drawing, painting, and printmaking mediums. Luster has been using bathroom scenes in her work to explore queer black womanhood with regards to lack of privacy, invasion of the black queer body, power structures, and isolation. Her work acknowledges the obstacles that burden queer black women because of the intersectionality of their gender and sexuality and depicts these concepts through the renderings of voyeuristic bathroom scenes.

Sean 9 Lugo, wheatpasting his way through urban neighborhoods. Brown boy representing the duality of both Latin and American culture and experiences through masks that can either misconceive or stereotype perceptions.
His art has a street element, but he does not consider himself a street artist. His images are meticulously done by hand, but he does not consider himself a fine artist. He is self-taught and creates art for himself, not for others. He describes his art as not fine-tuned because struggle and imperfections are the experiences echoed in his work.

Shanina Dionna is a visual and performing artist, mental health advocate and non-profit youth arts educator based in Greater Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Since 2011, her Embryo art exhibition series has helped raise awareness for mental health, chronicling the life of one millennial’s growth journey. The series is supported in-part by local businesses and the wellness community.

Her art for social change practice is rooted in the exposure of her own personal battle and history with mental illnesses, diagnoses, hospitalization and therapy treatments. Life-sized acrylic portraits, improv performances, dance/movement, botanical therapy and "safe space” installations all help convey her intent for communal wellness and healing.

In 2016, Shanina Dionna helped found the youth art program, Art Buds Philly, currently housed at the Urban Art Gallery in West Philadelphia. In 2018, she became one of twenty artists worldwide to receive the first-ever TDC20 Grant also known as, The Dean Collection 20, presented by Alicia Keys and Swizz Beatz. In a 2020 interview with Philadelphia Magazine, she was declared the “Philly artist [who is] creating a positive space for mental health conversations.” Shanina Dionna is a current student with PCEATI (Person Centered Expressive Arts Therapy Institute) in Sonoma, California and is due to receive certification in 2021; she will facilitate expressive arts therapy sessions post-graduation.

“ Art helped save my life. I simply desire to pay that forward.”
- Shanina Dionna

Eve Hoyt is a Philadelphia based artist who began bending neon in 1989. After several years working in the sign industry and looking to explore the possibilities of using neon as an art form, she set up her own studio, Evening Neon. Creating pieces that are colorful, abstract, and often whimsical, her award-winning artwork has been shown throughout the country since 2001. Hoyt is also a member of the Philadelphia Dumpster Divers, a group of artists using recycled and discarded items in their artwork.

William O’Hara

In high school I had taken every art class that they would let me take while I was there. I would draw and paint and sketch and learn the history of art and different artists. Then came along photography, and the darkroom and that was very thought provoking for me. Photography was the medium that I had gravitated towards because it was the one I had related to most directly.
After high school I took a break from photography and art in general. About 2 years ago I found myself going through a rough patch in life and would find myself escaping by myself in any direction I could go and when I got there I found myself pulling out my phone, not to use it and get on social media or text but instead to take photos. A friend of mine took notice and reached out telling me that he had a canon 5D classic sitting on himself that he never used anymore. This is when I acquired my first digital camera and I have not looked back since. From that time, I had taught myself the ins and outs of the digital camera and how to operate the camera on manual settings from the beginning to be able to have the most control over the final image. This is also the same for my editing style where I had self-taught myself how to use software like Lightroom, by going into the software and seeing what adjustments did and how they all interacted with each other.
After being self-taught for two years I had decided to attend Southern New Hampshire University online course for my Associates in Digital Photography. The reason for this choice was to obtain a degree for corporations in instances where the opportunity required a degree, or where a degree would be helpful in setting me apart. During this time, I had then made the choice to move from Indianapolis, Indiana to the Philadelphia area and become a self-employed freelance photographer and this is when Frame of Reference Photography was created and established in Philadelphia, 2019.
I have since been in the Philadelphia area for just over a year now building my business. I have been fortunate enough to make connections with the Philadelphia Fashion Week team and musical artists of all genres. Recently I have had a focus on portrait and creative portrait photography based on off of inspirations for the fashion-world. Along with the fashion and music, street photography has played a large part in my photography career. Street photography allows for the stories of the average person to be captured and told as well as the stories of the city. Each city has a personality and a pulse and that comes from the people who live there. Being able to capture emotion and stories is the purpose of photography and the reason that I am pulled into the medium to begin with. Everyone has a story to tell and I go out and capture these moments to tell their stories.

Zoe Sturges

Zoe Sturges is a kindergarten teacher at Mastery Clymer located in North Philadelphia, and a two-time graduate of the University of Pennsylvania.
As a substitute teacher, two of her fourth-grade students were arrested. Additionally, as a kindergarten teacher after one of her young students had prank called 911 officers arrived at the school to attempt to handcuff the six-year-old boy. These first-hand accounts of police brutality and unlawful punishment along with the tragic death of George Floyd inspired her to become involved in this summer’s Black Lives Matter protests in Philadelphia. Ms. Sturges hopes to call attention to the on-going issue of unjust arrest and abuse of power toward youth, especially her youth community of elementary school children with her district.