by Fey
Twitter: @pinkpurseintl
So many things happen in a blink—so quick that our minds seem not to process them, like the first tiny drops misting our Afro puffs or pig/ponytails, as we toddled after school with our mothers in the rain. Not so was 2020, which dragged its feet sullenly on, from the time we found out about coronavirus-19, until and through some argue, each gloomily present pandemic day.
But there were folks, in what became an epidemic storm, who lifted our spirits in quarantine with their fun and funky content creation. And they are, as my late Mum would so warmly and jubilantly say (lilting 🇬🇾Guyanese accent here), “to be commend-ed!” One such is LaShonda Cooks (www.shondasart.com, IG: @shondasart), whom I interviewed for the WOPH pod, after she and an extensive network of fellow artists took the global social media #DontRushChallenge (🎥Watch: https://www.instagram.com/tv/B-uLipsg00t/?utm_medium=copy_link ) to the canvas-side of the sandbox. (#ICYMI, 🎧Listen: https://anchor.fm/woph/episodes/Trending-Urban-Artist--LaShonda-Cooks-eeiefb).
Fast forward from her viral vid stylings, LaShonda painstakingly created and curated an exhibit for the prestigious Dallas African-American Museum of Art (https://aamdallas.org; IG: @aamdfp) entitled “HairStory”. The installation chronicles the history and relationship between Black people and our multinational locks, and is on display through Feb 13.
Suddenly a hot tv and newspaper story throughout the Dallas area, I caught up with LaShonda, to capture her ponderings on her process, lightning success, and how deeply the exhibit is resonating with local Texas media in a time of great change:
“I think I'm still processing it all! I remember walking through the exhibit before it offiically opened and thinking yeah, this is it. I had tons of help from the museum curator Jennifer and my sister Candace to get everything hung in time. And then it was time to start promoting it.
I remember sending out emails as the world waited to hear the results of the US Presidential Election. My headline was "Don't Pull Your Hair Out, HairStory Opens Next Week." I was a bit exhausted so I sent out a few a day and then started posting info on a couple of key sites. God blessed me, and most of these sites contacted me wanting to highlight the story in some capacity. We definitely benefitted from organizations wanting to use their platforms to amplify Black voices and culture.
The media response was mindblowing. I was grateful for one story on the show, one reply—and got multiple. In the end, with less than one month remaining, we were featured by six media outlets locally. I'm still soaking it all in.”🌎🧚🏽♀️