KINGSTON- On Tuesday June 13, 2023, the community is invited to come hear from LaToya Hobbs and Kah Yangni at “Slide Night”, a monthly series of artist presentations at Women’s Studio Workshop (WSW). Both artists are in residence at WSW producing large-scale works that address race, gender, and self: Hobbs in the form of massive woodblock prints, and Yangni in the form of a mural on the side of WSW’s studio building.
LaToya M. Hobbs is an artist, wife, and mother of two from Little Rock, AR, who is currently living and working in Baltimore, MD. Her work deals with figurative imagery that addresses the ideas of beauty, cultural identity, and womanhood as they relate to women of the African Diaspora. Her exhibition record includes numerous national and international venues. Her work is housed in private and public collections such as the Harvard Art Museum, Petrucci Family Foundation Collection of African American Art, the National Art Gallery of Namibia, the Getty Research Institute, and the Baltimore Museum of Art. Other accomplishments include the 2020 Janet and Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize, a nomination for the 2022 Queen Sonja Print Award and a 2022 IFPDA Artis Grant. Hobbs is also a Professor at the Maryland Institute College of Art and a founding member of Black Women of Print, a collective whose vision is to make visible the narratives and works of Black women printmakers, past, present and future.
Kah Yangni is an illustrator living in Philadelphia, PA. They make heartfelt art about justice, queerness, and joy. Kah’s artistic mission is to heal themself and others by making art that focuses on radical optimism, and the chance we have to make the world a better place. Kah uses text, vibrating color, screen printing, drawing, Photoshop, and collage to bring these messages to life. Their art has been shared by people like Indya Moore of the television show Pose, and they’ve worked with the New York Times, Vice Media, The Washington Post, and Chronicle Books, as well as with causes like the Transgender Law Center and the Movement for Black Lives. They’ve been covered by NBC News and them, and their poster work is in the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Kah’s first picture book, “The Making of Butterflies” by Zora Neale Hurston and Ibram X. Kendi, was released by Amistad Books/HarperCollins in March 2023. Kah is currently finishing a picture book called “Not He or
She, I’m Me” by A.M. Wild, to be released by Henry Holt Books for Young Readers/Macmillan in fall 2023.
The artist talk begins at 6:30 p.m., and is free and open to the public—light refreshments will be served.
