Projects
Piloted
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quartet-singing and soundscapes move through our bodies bringing us into ancestral wisdom; while devotional-singing d’angelo, we contemplate all our life-giving connections; an organ improvising the blues moves our pain and sorrow; some scatting, clapping, and speaking in tongues sets our mind and heart free, we hum badu and dance to Sounds of Blackness.
All of these are possibilities in this series of experiments that engages soul music intentionally as a healing modality.
The space is non-performative: no stage, person to person, with room to rest or move about. Improvisation and responsiveness to the needs of the “congregation” is key.
AIN’T.
In-development
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It’s the early 1990s. At a charter school in small-town Louisiana, a small black girl is being picked on by a classmate talkin out the side of their neck. When the girl appears unmoved, the classmate resorts to name-calling to which the girl replies with one-word that is a full argument. Full stop.
“AIN’T.”
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AIN’T represents the reality that none of us are fully what people project onto us. It represents the freedom to expand and change into unique beings that no one can predetermine, box-in, or claim.
As a Wonder-Workin project, AIN’T is a limited time community of practice using crafting and storytelling to explore knowing the divine in a way that defies our labels and formulas, how that connects to possibilities for knowing ourselves in our fullness, & black spiritual practices of refusal, dismissal, undoing, and protection from forces seen and unseen.
2027-2028
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The blood runs deep and reaches far. We’re trying to find our cousins out there so we can re-member (and cut up) together. And we’re happy to set the table and send the invites!
Soon we hope to support the exploration of space-makers, material-makers/ crafters, and other practitioners - those aligned in desire, intention, and how they move - through funding and invitation to a community of practice.
About
Wonder-Workin Arts Lab is a generator of space and art that:
centers black and indigenous ways of knowing,
supports diasporic remembrance and integration.
supports “contemplative” or spirit-sparked experimentation.
connects us by heart and intention, not doctrine or industry.
Our experimentation is not research-oriented. It is focused on practicing in and across communities. It is focused on experience and fellowship that brings out what we know in our flesh and bones - to heal, protect, and strengthen our connection with others, ourselves, and the Spirit/ divine/ sacred.
Like when you boil something to pull the medicine out, we want to create with a potency that shows the medicine in what we’ve been practicing and what we’ve been known. We invite communities to take the medicine and pass it around. We invite communities to even help make the medicine that refortifies our own souls and bodies, opening portals to innovation and remembrance that defies even our own expectations.