SPEAK OUT

Alsendoe Owens, "Face With White Wrinkles", 2023, mixed media on paper, 18 x 24 in

Participating Artists: Jirard Bond, Stanley Brown, Chantell Donwell, Robert Duncombe, Zainab Elhasan, Latoya Elliot, Je'vonnie Evans, DeRon Hudson, Shawn Jackson, Richard Marshall, Nathaniel McNeal, Keisha Miller, Khiry O’Neal, Alsendoe Owens, Josef Rampp, Whitney Robinson-Jackson, Marquise Rucker, Stephan Tatum, Aaron Taylor, Donald Thomas, Christopher Wansac, Raymond Wells, Paris Wheeler, and Joseph Wirick

Curated by Evan J. Condron & Hannah Lilly

Opening Reception: Wednesday, October 18th, 5:30-7pm

October 18 - November 15, 2023

Brown and Juanita C Ford Art Gallery
Wayne County Community College, Ted Scott Campus
9555 Haggerty Road,
Belleville MI 48111

Hours: Monday-Friday 10am-2pm

Speak Out is a group show featuring artists from the Progressive Art Studio Collective (PASC) at the gallery at Wayne County Community College. This show interprets 'speaking' as a communication that doesn’t necessarily require verbal language. Rather ‘speak’ is used here simply to mean the communicating one's voice, a particular opinion or attitude expressed. Speak Out can be understood as a collective act of 'speaking out', expressing creatively a diversity of perspectives and attitudes on being in the world, and bridging the gap between solitude and belonging by challenging viewers to engage other ways of being.

The artists of Speak Out were chosen to represent a diverse cross-section of the over 170 PASC artists. Many of the artists in this exhibition are showing their artwork for the first time. These artists represent the diversity of mediums and styles in the PASC studio, exhibiting a wide range of materials and expression. With artwork subjects ranging from musicians, to celebrities, to repeated patterns, to total abstraction. This is our first exhibition at theBrown and Juanita C Ford Art Gallery at Wayne County Community College's Ted Scott Campus.

PASC was launched in January 2021 as the first progressive art and design studio in Detroit and Wayne County dedicated to supporting adults with developmental disabilities and mental health needs to advance independent artistic practices and individual career paths in the art and design fields. PASC runs three studios in Westland, Detroit and Southgate, Michigan, as well as a virtual art studio program, and we support over 100 artists across Wayne County. PASC is a program of Services to Enhance Potential (STEP) a non-profit service organization, founded in 1972, that provides services and supports for 1400+ individuals with disabilities and mental health issues across Southeastern Michigan.

Our exhibitions program is supported with grants from the Michigan Arts and Cultural Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.