Artist

Alivia Blade is a visual artist from Louisville, KY. She received a BA in Graphic Design from Columbia College Chicago in 2017.

In 2020, Alivia began her solo artistic practice, exploring gender and black feminism through sculptures incorporating synthetic hair, combs, and styling tools. exhibited at houseguest gallery in Louisville, KY, in 2021. 

In recent years, Alivia’s art practice has developed toward collage work—finding solace in the images of her grandmothers and Harriet Tubman, they’ve become the guiding figures of her collage practice.

Alivia’s passion for honoring her ancestors ascended in the creation of paper-mache shrines. The shrines rise like cave stalagmites, recalling the underground worlds that black folks historically utilized for freedom. Paper-mache “altar tools”complement the shrines, creating Sanctuaria: a communal installation experience for cultivating dreams of liberation.

Connect with Alivia’s work: aramintaisdreaming.com, @aliviablade

Curators, Designer, Writer

El Bruner (they/them) and Lindsey Cummins (she/her) are life partners and curatorial collaborators based in Louisville, Kentucky. 

El is a designer focused on research as practice, forms of creativity inherent to the digital experience, and the commons. Lindsey is a writer whose work turns to art to commune with the unknown and as a lens for reimagining identity, place, and relationality. Together, they combine their passions for art, writing, and design to curate community-centric projects grounded in care, collaboration, locality, accessibility, and experimentation. 

Lindsey and El run an independent house gallery and make up two-thirds of Kudzujelly, a 501(c)(3) devoted to fostering arts discourse in Kentucky through digital publishing and cultural programming. Kudzujelly forefronts print media’s accessibility through projects like Printed Zine, an annual community publication, and Papertrail, a traveling zine library and site-specific exhibition.

Connect with El & Lindsey’s work at kudzu-jelly.com,@kudzujellyky, @hillbillycurator, @smokebreakz

Artist, Curator

Sirene Martin is a multimedia artist hailing from south central Kentucky. She holds a Bachelors of Arts in Pan-African Studies from the University of Louisville and she currently works as an Assistant Curator at the
Speed Art Museum. 

Connect with Sirene’s work @sirenewata.

Thank you!

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Kacey Slone at Junior Jr. Press for risograph printing the flyer. Connect with their work on Instagram @juniorjr.riso

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Lake Tracy at Gasoline Press for printing and assembling the zines. Connect with their work on Instagram @gasloline.press

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Nina and Nick at Snide Hotel Gallery for hosting Sanctuaria. Connect with their work on Instagram @snidehotel

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Kentucky Foundation for Women for sponsoring this event. Connect with their work here.

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Ever Rock Real Development, based in Nashville, TN for sponsoring this event. Connect with their work here.

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Special thank you to the Blade Family for sponsoring this event!

Dear family & friends, this would not be possible without you all!