SAMA Member Meghan Walsh had been awarded a $15,000 grant from D.C. Commission on Arts and Humanities to do a project between the Sister Capital cities of Brasilia and Washington, D.C. Her plan had been to travel to Brazil and study a combination of art, architecture and movement/music to influence her in the creation of a new exhibition of work using stone from both places. But COVID interfered and her project became impossible as designed. So she had to reimagine her project and came up with Plan B, she created an online course for hand picked students from Brasilia by Vera Oliveira, a mosaic artist and owner of a school in Brasilia and through Meghan’s own network in D.C.
In addition and of particular interest to SAMA members as part of the online course there will be two presentations by outside artists that will be made public, and will be in both Portuguese and English. One of the presenters is known by many SAMA members – Rachel Sager. The other is a long time colleague of Meghan’s, an artist and architect in Brazil, Lula Marcondes. Meghan will be posting the presentations as live Facebook videos on July 18th (Lula) and July 25th (Rachel). There will also be a series of artist live presentations in September that will not be mosaic specific, but may be of interest to members, focused on Afro-Brazilian traditions, spirituality and the process of making visual art. That four part series is still in design process and is expected to be announced in August 2020.
You may read more and follow Meghan’s project on her website.