Professor, scholar and artist Ashon Crawley, Â鶹ƵµÀ’s 2023 Stafford Ellison Wright Black Alumni Scholar-in-Residence, will host a workshop as part of his residency.
Space is limited -
This workshop takes inspiration from Ashon Crawley's Lonely Letters and loss.nothing.memorial. Respectively, these works explore collectivity, loneliness, mourning and celebration. Altars Made and Unmade sustains these themes, even as it embraces "sense experience." How can altar-making, as an embodied activity, rather than an empty routine or an amplification of dogma, provide a remedy to the numbness characterizing much of our present day?
During the workshop, participants will create their own original altar. All materials will be provided.
An Associate Professor of Religious Studies and African American and African Studies at University of Virginia, Professor Crawley’s work is deeply interdisciplinary, touching on Black Studies, Performance Theory and Sound Studies, Philosophy and Theology, and Black Feminist and Queer Theory. In addition to being a practicing artist, he is an award-winning scholar working on several new book projects including a memoir and one about the Black Church, the Hammond Organ, and sexuality. .
Created by Occidental’s Black Alumni Organization (BAO), the Stafford Ellison Wright Endowment enables distinguished Black scholars from a variety of fields, artists, elected officials and others to spend time in residence at Occidental each year. BAO members believe that a student’s educational experience will be enriched by in-depth contact with individuals who serve as symbols of excellence.
