Your boy JBarber got to see the show Declaration and Resistance at the Reynolda House and immediately had to get the artist Stephen Towns to come on the show! Stephen has had a crazy busy couple of years but he had some time to talk to the Noize about his show. He has paintings in the National Museum of African American History & Culture and this show has been touring for a couple of years. We talk about his vibrant, beautiful paintings and his wonderful quilts from the show. Stephen talks about his process of research and adding life to his archived photography, how artists get to tour a show, and how teaching yourself a medium changes how you make art. More of that good art talk that we love over here. Listen, subscribe, and share!

Episode 163 topics include:

Declaration and Resistance at the Reynolda House through May 14, 2023

researching stories as inspiration

breathing life into archive photography

switching between painting and quilting

magical elements in art

vibrant color of Black people

making work about life in the South

Stephen’s relationship to sewing

Stephen Towns was born in 1980 in Lincolnville, SC, and lives and works in Baltimore, MD. He trained as a painter with a BFA in studio art from the University of South Carolina and has also developed a rigorous, self-taught quilting practice. In 2018 the Baltimore Museum of Art presented his first museum exhibition, Stephen Towns: Rumination and a Reckoning. 

His work has been featured in publications such as the New York Times, Artforum, the Washington Post, Hyperallergic, Cultured, Forbes, AFROPUNK, and American Craft. 

Towns was honored as the inaugural recipient of the 2016 Municipal Art Society of Baltimore Travel Prize, and in 2021, Towns was the first Black artist-in-residence at the Fallingwater Institute, located at Frank Lloyd Wrights' renowned Fallingwater house in Pennsylvania.  In 2021 Towns was also awarded the Maryland State Arts Council’s Individual Artist Award.

See more: www.stephentowns.com/ + Stephen Towns IG @stephentowns

Presented by: Black Art In America

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