Starting this season, Seattle Rep is offering the Bagley Wright Theater gallery wall as free gallery space for local artists. The art presented is meant to enhance your experience of the show while highlighting and supporting a local artist. Arrive at the theater early to view work by the featured artist for August Wilson’s Jitney, Carol R Williams.

ABOUT THE ARTIST: CAROL R WILLIAMS

 Born in Topeka, Kansas to a military family, Carol R Williams is the only child of Bessie Williams and  Willie C. Williams. Carol’s mother was a certified missionary and gave her life to community service  for over 25 years, feeding and sheltering those who were homeless or re-entering society from  prison. Carol’s father was a patriot and believed in American Democracy. He gave 28 years of his life  to his country through military service.

A mother to two children, Carol currently resides in Seattle, Washington and works to mentor  emerging artists from various backgrounds. Carol is a musician of 21 years who plays the violin and  the viola. She enjoys hiking in the Pacific Northwest’s numerous old-growth forests, teaching about  conifers, indigenous, and invasive species, and has been certified through the City of Seattle Parks &  Recreation Urban Forest Educator Program. You can find her walking all over Seattle.

Carol deeply believes in the power of art to build community, bridge community relationships, and  create authentic space for healing.

Carol earned a SUVAIR Residency at Seattle University (2019), a James & Janie Washington Foundation  Residency (fall 2020), a 4Culture Conductive Garboil Award (2018), an Artist Residency with AADK  Spain (2018), a 4Culture Artist Community Grant Award (2017), and was accepted to Seattle Office  of Arts & Culture’s Public Art Boot Camp (2018). She is the owner of K-Love 4 Art, co-founder of both  Race & Climate Justice and the Art Collective ARTifACTS, and the Co-Executive Director at Community  Arts Create. She was recently accepted into the Environmental Leadership Program. 

ARTIST STATEMENT

 “A Seattle-based, interdisciplinary artist who makes work that engages audiences in conversations about social, environmental, and racial justice.

Throughout her practice, Williams contends that the only way to shift race relations and understand climate change is through collective imaginings and re-imaginings of equitable relationships to the land, animals, and resources. Williams’ aesthetic forms fall, swim, fly, drip, and grow through various layers of reality, spirituality, and data analysis. Her narrative installations reject the tidy, toxic logic of scarcity models, suggesting powerful alternatives in collective storytelling, collective ownership, collective re-valuing of bio species, and collective commitments to sustainable environmental practices over time.”

- Seattle University, Headreen Gallery 2019

CONTACT

To learn more about upcoming exhibitions, purchasing works, commissions, workshops, speaking, and facilitation, email the artist directly at klove4art@gmail.com or visit klove4art.wixsite.com/c-rashawnna-williams.