Aiming for Freedom: Race, Reparations, and Right Paths

The Aiming for Freedom reparations workshop seeks to go beyond conversations of minimal repair to imagine shared liberation. While economists and historians may be best suited to navigate the former, artists are unquestionably an important part of visioning the latter. This unique workshop honors image alongside word, emotion alongside intellect, and texture alongside text. Black feminist scholar-activist K. Melchor Quick Hall and artists Darrell Ann Gane-McCalla, Marla McLeod, and Destiny Palmer come together to offer an arts-based experience that aims for freedom. Participants will explore molding clay with Gane-McCalla, exploring textile and garment with McLeod, and painting size and color with Destiny Palmer.

Expecting participants to invest in the labor and facilitation of artistic visioning, registrants must commit a total of $10,000 to reparations before the workshop will be confirmed. While US-based, white inheritors of wealth are especially encouraged to register, this workshop is open to anyone who is interested in investing in the work of artists to facilitate visioning another world. Ninety percent of committed funds will go directly to the facilitating artists; ten percent of committed funds will support scholarships for an annual writing workshop for people of color at Pendle Hill.

Leader(s)

K. Melchor Quick Hall is the author of Naming a Transnational Black Feminist Framework: Writing in Darkness and the co-editor, with Gwyn Kirk, of Mapping Gendered Ecologies: Engaging with and beyond Ecowomanism and Ecofeminism. She is a popular educator who works with students of all ages. Melchor is also the Interim Executive Director of African American Education & Research Organization (AAERO) and Melchor-Quick Meeting House (MQMH), both organizations founded by her mother. Through Pendle Hill, she co-facilitates an annual writing workshop, with Joanne Daley and Danie “Ocean” Jackson, for people of color. Read more about her work at https://www.writingindarkness.org/ and https://mappinggenderedecologies.org/.

Darrell Ann Gane-McCalla is an artist committed to radical social change. She promotes visual art as a vital element in the struggle for human rights, and in the creation of new ways of living. Her own practice is primarily sculpture, illustration, and mixed media. Her community collaborations are mainly murals, mosaics, and workshops. She has directed murals across Boston, and assisted with mural projects with Philadelphia’s Mural Arts Program and New York City’s El Puente Academy for Peace and Justice and Groundswell Community Mural Project. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Liberal Arts from Sarah Lawrence College and a Master of Art in Teaching from Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Read more about her work at https://www.facebook.com/Darrell-Ann-Gane-McCalla-119251458102737/.

Marla Lenore McLeod holds a Bachelor’s degree from Southern Connecticut State University and a Master of Fine Arts from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. McLeod explores black identity and social constructs through her portrait paintings, textiles, and sculptures. Her MFA thesis made her a featured artist on the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 2020 Takeover Fridays social media project, the 2020 Area Code Art Fair StoreFronts Projects, and one of the Boston Globe’s “5 Outstanding Art School Grads.” In 2019, she received the Will and Elena Barnet Painting Award, a Tisch Library Graduate Research Fellowship, and presented at Black Portraitures, NYU.  McLeod co-curated the Special Exhibitions section of the 2020 Area Code Art Fair and is currently an Adjunct Professor at SCSU and a Post-Graduate Teaching Fellow at the SMFA at Tufts University. Read more about her work at https://www.marlamcleod.com/.

Destiny Palmer is currently working at Thayer Academy and most recently was an Assistant Professor at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Palmer is trained as a painter, but her work explores the intersections of painting, history, and color, allowing it to blur the lines of painting, sculpture, and installation. Palmer explores and investigates what it means to be an artist, educator, and advocate for the arts. She has worked with various communities to create public art projects ranging from traditional murals to community engaged/lead mural to digitally created murals. Creating art in public realms has been a focus for Destiny; she received her Master of Fine Arts in Painting from Tyler School of Art at Temple University and Bachelor of Fine Art in Painting at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Destiny is co-founder of Traditions Remixed, an artist collective whose goal is to create a supportive community for young artists, especially artists of color, encouraging collaboration and networking. Read more about her work at https://www.destinypalmerstudio.com/.

Financial aid may be available. If you are seeking funds to participate in this program, click to review and complete our Financial Assistance Application and a Pendle Hill staff member will follow-up with you shortly (please do NOT register online). Thank you for your interest.

Travel directions to Pendle Hill.