This project charts new territory. There are many films, books, and articles that document the 1957 racial uprising in Levittown, PA but there is no quantitative, formal, or narrative study of the Black communities in Levittown. Outsiders label our neighborhoods abherant; our perspective has not been recorded. Black Bloomsdale is an interdisciplinary story telling project that engages the elders to uncover the prescious jewels of our unique and rich history.
The Black Spatial Relics Residency supports the development of new performance works about slavery, justice and freedom by emerging and mid-career artists. https://www.blackspatialrelics.org
A storytelling installation based on my aunties memories of her girlhood on the King’s Farm Plantation in Lower Bucks County, PA in the early 1900s as well as the history of the Gee’s Bend Quilters.
In residence at the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Perelman Building for Philly Art Splash. Installation by Misty Sol. Costume by Monica Alvanel.
Learning the art of quilting for spiritual health and liberation from China Pettway of Gee's Bend.
China Pettway told us stories of joy and survival related to quilting. During the retreat, we learned that the process of quilting strengthens relationships in the physical and spiritual community.
Peppers & Onions … is an explosion of color, stories, sensations, and collective memories. It looks at our relationships to Black motherhood through the lenses of literature, personal family history, and ritual. The gallery is an immersion into childhood memory and the subconscious.
The kitchen is the heart of the exhibit. This nourishing kitchen is preserved as a subversive space, simultaneously a stage, gallery, and sanctuary where the blues, both horror and joy, that Black women express can become sweet.
This clip is from the performance “The Most Wonderful Soup in the World”, inspired by the poem of the same name by Nikki Giovanni.
something in her seasoning made you fly…
what she got in that pot? a little piece of the sky?
something in her seasoning made you fly…
something in grandmama’s kitchen, made you a butterfly
-From Butterfly Woman by Misty Sol
sound design by Ralf Willis and Misty Sol
Camera by Dwayne Alistair Thompson
Costume Design by Monica Alvanel and Misty Sol