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Sharon J. Burton is an artist, art curator, author, poet and certified creative coach and Founder of Spark Your Creative based in the Washington, DC area. She is a visual artist whose preferred medium is collage and mixed media and has exhibited her art in galleries, art venues and other settings across the country since 2007. Sharon has curated a number of art exhibitions in the Washington, DC area since 2006 and has served as an art consultant for novice art collectors.

To learn more about Sharon, and her artwork, please visit her website and Instagram.

Sara received her BFA in ceramics from the Hartford Art School at the University of Hartford and her MFA in ceramics from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally in both juried and invitational exhibitions and has work in both private and public collections. Her professional experience includes positions such as studio assistant, ceramics department technician, resident artist, as well as instructor. Please find attached my responses as well as a few images of my work. To learn more about Sara and her work, visit her website and instagram @s_prig.

Blending family memories with current experiences, Elizabeth Kendall creates simple, graceful sculptures. She works with lush white porcelain, raw wood, rigid steel, or vibrant glass. Her abstract wall pieces and vessels are both delicate and strong, simple and complex. Of her award-winning work she says: “The shapes that emerge are a conversation between my hands and the material. They are both bricks and windows--puzzles that are influenced by the space they inhabit, and by the people that experience the work.

Erika Whitney Young is a Baltimore City based street photographer, creative writer and community advocate. Her photography captures everyday moments with artistic intent, exploring the intersection of realism and abstraction in urban environments. She embodies a passion for storytelling that blends vivid imagery with emotional depth. Her work spans narrative nonfiction, poetry and essays that often explore themes of healing, transformation, and the unseen magic in everyday life. She has shown an unwavering commitment to social equity, grassroot organizing and empowering underrepresented voices. With a background in legislative advocacy and years of hands-on experience in local initiatives, she now works to build stronger, more inclusive communities through civic training and art education.

Baltimore-based illustrator, comic artist, and writer Emily Diane Runyan creates story-driven work that blends illustration and fine art to explore science fiction, speculative fiction, and the relationship between humanity, technology, and the body. Through traditional and digital processes, she uses rich visual storytelling and experimentation to create imaginative worlds that invite reflection on the human experience.



Peter T West is a fine arts photographer and lifelong resident of Maryland. His photographs take on an often unseen perspective, emphasizing subjects that may otherwise be passed by. An avid traveler, Peter has photographed locations all around the world.

Yewande is an American Nigerian visual artist, curator, and social practitioner using her creative practice as a means for community care. While her first career as a healthcare administrator lends to her expertise at the intersection of health, wellness and racial justice, her Nigerian heritage and Southern upbringing lend to her love of storytelling. As such, Yewande’s work celebrates, reframes, and even reimagines narratives that have been inadequately or falsely delivered in the past. Through direct social and community engagement, which often informs her work, Yewande typically centers the layered experiences of Black folks— most often women and children— highlighting joy, resilience, and shared humanity. Within her work, Yewande marries first-hand narratives with vibrant colors, reimagined yet familiar imagery, and attention to naming in order to highlight our connectedness and drive meaningful dialogues that promote healing and redefine the human experience.

Aleni Antalis is a multidisciplinary artist and small business owner based in Annapolis, MD. Fueled by experimentation, Antalis’ work explores the complexities of being a human in today’s society and the vital relationship between mental health, science, and nature. Antalis would describe her work as deconstructed self portraits.

Ant LaVorgna is an interdisciplinary artist, body painter and photographer based in Baltimore, MD. His work explores themes of pop culture, the body, and contemporary politics. LaVorgna’s process is characterized by playful experimentation, shining through in his bold color choices and striking mark-making.

Liana Owad is an artist working with traditional and contemporary mediums to create sculptures and works on paper. Her work explores the domestic space and addresses the ideas of comfort and confinement in the home. She focuses on certain objects from or habits of routine daily life in her sculptures, prints, and drawings. She finds the physical manipulation of materials and learning new fabrication methods the driving force of her work.

CamCurated is a Maryland-based visual artist whose work celebrates the richness and spirit of Black American culture. Working primarily in acrylic on wood, he explores texture, rhythm, and form to create paintings that feel both grounded and expressive. The natural grain of the wood gives his pieces a tactile presence, allowing color and light to interact in dynamic ways that bring each subject to life.

Blending painting, sculpture, and photography, Lillian Chun’s solo show Disassociations explores the tension between stillness and overwhelm. Using found objects, remnants of photographic prints, fabric, old paintings, 3D printed pieces and intuitive mark-making, these layered pieces reflect on the psychological residue of burnout and the invisible labor that often consumes women’s inner worlds.

I’m an Artist Blog with Michele Dowdell.

I’m an Artist with Kayla Acker-Carter

Kayla Acker-Carter has been dancing for as long as she can remember. From her first ballet class at age five to performing with the School of Washington Ballet as an adult, dance has been a constant thread in her life. Her journey includes magnet and PVA dance programs at Bates Middle School, four years with her high school dance company, and a minor in dance during college. Along the way, she performed with studios in Maryland and Colorado, where she also established herself in a local company. Most recently, she took the stage with The Washington Ballet’s adult program in June 2025.

Christy Brooks is a theater educator, director, and visual artist with a career that spans more than 15 years. Her work bridges stage and studio, blending performance, design, and visual storytelling into experiences that bring communities together.

Through large scale drawings and collages, I explore how trees and humans are connected to their environments through deep-rooted networks of care. I am fascinated by trees due to their tendency to live in communities and their ability to support one another through their root systems. As humans, we live similarly entangled lives, marked by our own unique histories of survival, connection, and care. 

In this exhibition, I investigate how our relationships with others - both in loss and love - shape who we are and who we become. Though often subtle, many of these works are autobiographical, with trees acting as symbolic figures for myself, my family, and other individuals. The tree carvings, blossoming flowers, and fresh foliage represent a season of growth in my life. I invite you to view the interdependency of the trees as a model for how we can better support one another through cycles of challenge and change.

Today we are exploring a creative connection between artists Camila Leão and Catherine Rupan Mapp. Camila is originally from São Paulo, Brazil while Catherine is originally from Miami Florida. Their paths first crossed at CAC’s Voices of Hispanic/Latinx Artists gallery reception in 2023, where their friendship and creative relationship began. Their paths would immediately cross once again during the Meet and Greet for BRUSH Mural Fest, where they were able to connect and talk about their practice, background, and journey. The two have been collaborating and supporting each other ever since then. Read more about their creative connection in this interview.

National Hispanic Heritage Month acknowledges the contributions made by Hispanic and Latin American communities and honors their significance to society and their social, political, and cultural histories. It also recognizes their influence on the evolution of American legacy. The Voices of Hispanic and Latin American Artists Exhibition will feature artists who represent a diverse range of identities, experiences, histories, and backgrounds through the power of their creations.

Featured artists include: Brit Alex, Nicole Alfon, Hannah Atallah, Ann Baun, Jovan Bethel, Sandra Blevins, Sara Caporaletti, Andrea Downs, Coriander Focus, Lillian Jacobson, Hailey Jordan, Barabara Dahlberg, Kathy Daywalt, Nina DeAngelo, Shanti Dixon Gramby, Kelly Hall, Diamond Jones, Elissa Jones, Jeniffer Lancaster, Sarah Laraine, Brianne Lesane, Charlotte Kuethe, Cindy Mehr, Karen Middleton, Diane Osburn, Linda Popp, Sara Prigodich, Gail Robertson, Beth Schwartz, Atalante Shay, Serenity Smith, Macy Toalepai, and Chenell Turner.

An interdisciplinary visual artist duo spanning two generations (combined experience of over 40 years), are celebrated for their beautiful large-scale wall sculptural compositions created using thousands of ultrathin, shapeless strands of natural wool fibers, freestanding sculptures, wearable art and mixed media works that incorporate natural flowers and plants. Their studio is based in Maryland. 

Hailey Jordan is a biracial, queer, scientist-turned-designer, raised by travelers, who thrives in the in-between. Her work illustrates the vibrancy of Black, Queer adventure on the frontiers of liberation– her subjects often in the midst of dance, exploration, bliss, abundance. To design and live with joy is Hailey’s way of honoring her ancestors and carving space for the Black, Queer imagination in generations to come.

Brandon Slewion is an  interdisciplinary artist, educator and entrepreneur working between Toledo, Ohio and Washington D.C. Raised in the nation capital his relationship with politics, business, tourism, and inner city sports during his youth significantly affected his perspective of identity, competitive culture, and personal branding. Expanding the idea of public works and alternative education, he is redesigning the role of an artist as a role model 

We do nothing without intention. 

Through vibrant hues, Black ritual, and spiritual imagery, we utilize storytelling and collage to conflate the ideas of reconstruction and resilience within the Black experience. Our work serves as testaments to healing by example, honoring the Black mother, spirit, and childlike wonder in the stories told in our scrolls and creations. There is a sense of joy and wonderment felt when viewers experience our work, our attraction to textures, shiny materials, and patterns enhances the story and interpersonal experience we share as twins and with our communities. Materials are broken down and rebuilt to reinforce the journey toward completion, emphasizing the colorful, multidimensional layers of the inner and outer worlds we inhabit as Black indigenous creators. We actively channel collective consciousness within our practice, traveling various dimensions and connecting 2D, 3D, and 4D elements to birth a new understanding of experience, one that is affirming, uplifting, and powerful. What we create isn't just work, nor is it art. It is the manifestation of hope and faith.

I’m Lauren J. Turner, and I’m thrilled to have you join me on an artistic journey that’s all about sparking conversations around parenting and reshaping how we perceive it. Parenthood is truly magical, and my art celebrates those extraordinary moments while shedding light on the often-overlooked aspects of the Black parenting experience that the media tends to miss.

Adewale Alli is a self-taught Nigerian visual artist based in Baltimore, Maryland. His work is a profound exploration of materiality intertwined with the eloquent language of color. Each piece he crafts is a chapter in his ongoing odyssey into the vast spectrum of being, capturing not only the splendor and intensity of existence but also delving into the enigmatic truths that elude our comprehension.

Jeffrey S. Felten-Green (b. 1965, Connecticut, US)

Many of my ideas are satirical, playful, and at times, serious. My art is also about storytelling, and I often flip the standard narrative or story and highlight them in a more interesting way. My collections of African-inspired paintings, icons, political paintings, folk pieces, and parodies reflect my many and varied influences, muses, and things that are important to me. 

Like when raising children, I see my role in creating art as one where I nurture and tend to the pieces and always give them my best. Then, I release them to the world to bring and share joy.

Tony Spencer is a Recording Artist, Poet, Model, Composer, and Storyteller. He is the founder of Enrapture Records and Enrapture Ministries, and has a B.A. and Masters degree from Sojourner/Douglass College. He was one of four Annapolitans to carry the Olympic Torch across Maryland during the 1996 International games. Tony and his family have been a fixture in the area for a long time, and have long been involved with goings on at Chesapeake Arts Center. Join us this November and December for an incredibly special solo exhibition of Tony’s work, both visual and narrative