Black Creatives Circle

Black Creatives Circle

Elevating Black artists in North Louisiana

By Jordan LaHaye Fontenot

For decades now, mixed media artist Vitus Shell has been firmly established as one of the South’s most compelling artists, and certainly one of NorthLouisiana’s. He’s been honored in residencies across the country, and his work has been exhibited in venues that include the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, the Arkansas Arts Center in Little Rock, NOMA and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans, the Houston Museum of African American Culture, and various other institutions from New York to Minneapolis and beyond.

In 2019, Shell was back living and working in his hometown of Monroe, within its own emerging arts scene. But he, whose body of work is a multi-layered study of the Black experience, struggled to totally embrace his place within the North Louisiana artist community, where he was consistently one of four or five Black artists in any space at any time. “I knew that it was more than just myself and my friends,” he said. “For this to be a majority Black area, and for there not to be that representation at these events … so we started talking about the idea of getting other Black creatives together, just to have conversation.”

BCCNL Board Member Brandon Virgil, Sr. “Free Mind”.

Those initial meetings quickly confirmed what Shell and his friends had suspected: Black creatives in North Louisiana were, as multidisciplinary artist Rodrecas Davis put it, “hungry”. “People are hungry for outlets and hungry for community,” he said. “We realized that was something we needed individually, but there are other people that needed it obviously as well.”

To meet this need, and foster a community for local Black artists like themselves, Shell and his creative partners K’Shana Hall and Erin Davenport officially founded the Black Creatives Circle of North Louisiana (BCCNL)—holding their first visual arts exhibition at The Palace in February 2020.

Davenport, a multi-media artist and the host of A Daydreamer’s Podcast who currently serves as BCCNL’s Communications Coordinator, explained that one of the most powerful benefits of a collective like this is linking people together to amplify opportunities and explore new ideas, developing new solutions to old problems.

“Let’s get to the root of why there are only a few of us here at these art spaces in this majority Black area,” she said. “It’s not because we don’t know or aren’t talented. There are reasons why, reasons why people don’t feel comfortable. Black people don’t know other Black people in the arts. Or they don’t know this is something that is good, something you can make money off of.”

Shell emphasized that in order for North Louisiana to grow and move forward, that gap needs to be filled. “People that look like us have to have some kind of representation in the area, and to have a platform for ideas, to figure out ‘What does change look like?’ And I think that had to come from creatives,” he said.

BCCNL Vice President K’Shana Hall, “The Freedom of Refusal”

The unified front that BCCNL offers individual Black creatives grants their work and ideas a larger presence and louder voice. “It’s about visibility,” said Hall, a mixed media artist and photographer who now serves as the Vice President of BCCNL. “In Monroe, people have been working very hard to create a much better art scene that didn’t yet exist in general, but there just weren’t a lot of people who looked like us included in that.” So, here we are, she said. “And with BCCNL, it’s a safe space, where people can feel welcome to express themselves, show their work, and voice whatever it is they want to say.”

Four years since the Circle got off the ground, it is now one of North Louisiana’s foremost arts organizations, offering free monthly programming that includes a “Kids Art Club,” “Creative Convos”—where creatives convene to discuss art and community—and facilitated meetups for visual artists, fiber artists, and literary artists. The organization also presents regular workshops hosted by its members or in collaboration with organizations like Springboard for the Arts, offering educational opportunities in everything from hair arts to floral arranging to songwriting, as well as business-oriented classes on subjects like “How to Price Your Work”.

BCCNL Member Ansell Jordan, “Colorized”

Hall emphasized accessibility is a key facet of everything that BCCNL does. Most events are free, or lowcost. “We want to make it as easy as possible for people to be able to reap the benefits of what we are doing,” she said. Davenport agreed, saying that in the past Shell has often reminded them that “We’re for the people, we need to do this for the people.”

This spirit extends beyond breaking down financial barriers to general inclusivity. “Everyone is welcome,” said Hall, so long as they understand and respect that these are Black spaces, designed to uplift Black voices. When it comes to the term “artist,” too—the identifier is meant to be an invitation to creativity, rather than a strict career or vocation. This is not just a place for accomplished visual artists, but for artists in every medium and during every stage of their creative journey.

Erika McFarland, for example, considers herself an “art appreciator” often drawn to the administrative work that “allows artists to be artists.” “For someone like me, who I consider to be a creative, but I haven’t found what that outlet looks like, being able to be part of a group that accepts me for where I am and encourages me to be better and to grow in that area, and gives me examples on how I can do that—it’s just really beneficial to have that space. And people who look like you who can say, ‘It’s possible.’ Because creativity is within everyone, and it’s so awesome to have a space where the doors and hearts of people are opening in order for you to be able to do those things.”

Singer/songwriter and poet Ronny Smith Jr. is one of the group’s newest members, and explained that the support he’s found in BCCNL is what gave him the confidence to embrace live performance. “Before I joined, the most I did was perform poetry,” he said. “I had friends who knew I made music, but I would never sing, never share my voice. And then just recently, through this group, I had my first performance as a songwriter, and it was really powerful for me. Having a group like this, I really feel like it opens up a l lot of doors, a lot of avenues, because you can really sit with other creative individuals—and that alone is inspiring—but then you also have the fact that, you know, they look like you, and they share the same culture, and we are able to share that in a safe space. It just feels like a fellowship of amazing artists just being, and I think we need more of that.”

President of BCCNL Vitus Shell, “Ice Cream Man: White Anxiety”

Learn more about the Black Creatives Circle of North Louisiana, and their upcoming programming, at blackcreativescirclenl.org