Spring 2021 Guest Speakers

Our classes had some marvelous guest speakers during the Spring 2021 session! Below is more information about our guests. We are so grateful to them for their time and all they brought to our classes!

KRISTEN STARKS

K Starks is a self-taught colored pencil artist and native Baltimorean. After focusing on theater at the Baltimore School for the Arts and classical guitar at Towson, then dabbling with acrylic paint and ceramic sculpture, they discovered the rich and vibrant world of Prismacolor pencil drawing and have been dedicated to photorealistic portraiture ever since.

JUSTIN JOHNSON

Justin Johnson (or JJ to most) is a local artist and actor who has been serving the Baltimore art and theatre community for over ten years. While primarily active in the theatre scene performing with such theatres as Guerrilla Theatre Front, Spotlighters, Vagabond Theatre, Fells Point Corner Theatre, Baltimore Center Stage, and Baltimore Shakespeare Factory, drawing has been at the heart of JJ’s identity as an artist. Starting off just doing fan art, JJ has since transitioned into doing caricatures of people and celebrities but will now be transitioning into a new direction in specializing in pet caricatures with his brand, Faces by JJ. JJ still enjoys doing non caricature type art including fan art, illustration, monster design, and graphic design. While spending most of his life doing traditional art with pen and ink, the pandemic forced JJ to learn digital art and now he does art exclusively on digital with his iPad Pro primarily using Procreate and Affinity Designer. You can follow him on Instagram and TikTok @facesbyjjcaricatures. JJ is also a proud member of the International Society of Caricature Artists (ISCA) and hopes to go to their annual convention, ISCACon, this year.

ALBERT PHILLIPS JR.

Albert Phillips Jr. is the founder and CEO of Free Black Mind Educational Group LLC, a company that creates empowering and educational resources for Black youth. He specializes in urban education and youth development. Albert earned a Master of Science degree in Education from Johns Hopkins University and a Bachelor of Science degree in Journalism from Morgan State University. Albert resides in Baltimore. 

DERRICK ADAMS

Derrick Adams is a Baltimore-born, Brooklyn, New York-based artist whose critically admired work spans painting, collage, sculpture, performance, video, and sound installations. His multidisciplinary practice engages the ways in which individuals’ ideals, aspirations, and personae become attached to specific objects, colors, textures, symbols, and ideologies. His work probes the influence of popular culture on the formation of self-image, and the relationship between man and monument as they coexist and embody one another. Adams is also deeply immersed in questions of how African American experiences intersect with art history, American iconography, and consumerism. Most notably in his Floater series, he portrays Black Americans at leisure, positing that respite itself is a political act when embraced by black communities. The radicality of this position has materialized in Adams’ work across his Deconstruction Worker, Figure in the Urban Landscape, and Beauty World series.

CAI THOMAS

Cai Thomas is a documentary filmmaker and director of photography telling vérité stories at the intersection of location, self-determination, and identity about Black youth and elders. She grew up in Miami’s Liberty City neighborhood and is deeply interested in stories rooted in place. Her work has been supported by the Field Foundation, Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, If/Then shorts, oOward, and others. She is currently an inaugural Mellon Arts Practitioner Fellow at Stanford’s Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity.

An additional thank you to Sehej-Leen Parmar, Albert Turner, Janet Glover-Kerkvliet, Johnathan Holtzman, Lucy Donofrio, Karen Via, and Lacey Benton for their assistance in workshops for our Career Readiness course!