Misty Sol

Misty Sol has been invited to be the featured performer at Get Fresh Daily's Solstice Garden Party on June 27th. Misty will present an hour-long meditative performance that blurs the lines between storytelling, lecture, meditation workshop, and musical performance. At the celebration, Misty will also have the opportunity to present visual art that illuminates the commonalities in Black cultural expression as an environmental and wellness paradigm. She has transcribed the performance as a poetic document which will be printed as a chapbook and shared with the audience at the event. 

The WOO Grant will help cover documentation costs for the performance, as well as printing costs for the chapbooks.

Misty Sol (ACG ‘06, ‘11, ‘16, ‘20; LTA ‘16; WOO ‘19, ‘20, ‘21, ‘22, ‘23), with the assistance of 3rd and 5th grade students from Stetser Elementary School, recently painted two murals in Chester, PA that highlight the nuances of Black life, history, and greatness in the city. On June 18, 2023, there will be a ribbon cutting ceremony for these murals, which combat racist narratives that paint Black communities as one dimensional and not worth protecting. The WOO Grant will support Misty with documentation expenses to capture the ceremony/murals and honor the intergenerational community-wide effort that made them possible. Additionally, Misty will frame prints of the murals and distribute them to family members of those memorialized in the paintings. 

Misty Sol has been invited by The Silk Tent, a shop located in West Philadelphia, to collaborate with Sistahs Laying Down Hands in curating a pre-Kwanzaa mixed-media, multi-textile performance art exhibit. Opening on December 16, the exhibition will feature the handcrafted and written work of Black women representing the seven principles of Kwanzaa.

This grant will support Misty providing artists honorariums, transportation, and purchasing supplies for the exhibition.

Misty Sol (WOO '20, '19, ACG '20, '16, LTA '16) has been invited to curate a multidisciplinary mixed-media installation for the scheduled April 4th Easter Sunday drive-by parade, performance, and book signing for Philly Jawns: For Women Revisited which will take place as an indoor/outdoor event at West Philadelphia's CEC (Community Education Center).

This grant will support Misty's construction in developing a portable structure for exhibition and performances at the event as well as the creation of an indoor fruit, vegetable, and flower garden with free offerings to community attendees. 

Mother Tongue: Healing + Liberation in Black Vernacular Art, is a 4-day mini-festival that celebrates the fortifying roots of the Black Art, including a curated live discussion with arts practitioners, dance, spirituals, and dramatic readings from the works of Zora Neale Hurston. On Juneteenth, we will gather in the garden at the Colored Girls Museum to contemplate power and possibility in bloom.

Misty Sol was invited by German poet and activist Andrea Zittlau to Rostock University to create a participatory work of art with students this summer. Misty intends to do a quilting and storytelling project as well as a botanical painting class; emphasizing  intergenerational consciousness in movement building through aesthetic practices. Misty will present alongside Andrea on a panel, Community Outreach: Aesthetic Education, the Challenges and Chances of Participation at the 67th annual meeting of the Heilderberg Center for American Studies at Heidelberg University.  

As an African American Woman, Misty believed it is important for her to continue to contribute to an international conversation about how women build community and inspire social change through aesthetic, ritual, and narrative practice.  This is an opportunity for Misty to present the wisdom of Black American women and to build on her practice as a storyteller, painter, and gardener who uses Black aesthetic to reclaim wellness through liberation and self definition in the Black Community.

Misty Sol (LTA '16, ACG '16, '11, '07, '06) will attend the Gee's Bend quilting retreat in Canton, Mississippi. There, she will learn traditional quilting in a small group led by China and Mary Ann Pettway who will share their unique style of African American quilting as it relates to spirituality, community bonding, and individual artistic expression. The Gee's Bend Quilt represents a visual aesthetic grounded in Africa and born to African Americans as a sister to the blues and other Black vernacular forms.

As a result of this quilting workshop retreat, Misty will gain a new technical skillset to further her work as the artist-in-residence for Art Splash 2019 and the Philadelphia Museum of Art's Soul's Grown Deep: Black Art from the Deep South exhibit. Misty will also use these skills to create public art and workshops at the Baobab Center in West Philly in late 2019 that address grief and violence in the neighborhood.

Misty Sol illustrated a series of coloring and activity pages with the theme of sustainability and community for the children of Chester. The images reflect the predominantly Black racial makeup of the children, and the content included the objectives and input of three youth programs - Chester Unity Through the Arts, Ruth Bennett Homes Garden, and The Sewing Good Seeds Project. The artwork documented and celebrates the youth-led environmental justice and community healing work in Chester and provided children with fun and culturally relevant learning materials. Misty partnered with Lakesha Logan, children’s librarian at J. Crozier Library, who provided mentoring and helped distribute over 100 color books based on the coloring pages at the farm, library, through teaching opportunities, and events focusing on sustainability.

Misty Sol presents and promotes reading, writing and cultural literacy as tools for healing and liberation in the black community. By critically questioning the dominant narrative, she encourages black children to have faith in their own inner sense of story. Misty writes, publishes, performs and teaches various forms- essay, poetry, fiction, and playwriting-, preserving the history and traditions of her community. She primarily writes about the violence against Black bodies and the violation of black women. Her collage and acrylic pencil drawn illustrations are a result of collaborations with authors and community organizations to create stories that combat the symbolic annihilation of black children in media. The visual components are increasingly influenced by her community farming practice. These images create space to celebrate the magic and diversity of Black childhood and challenge the racist mainstream narrative that undervalues, demonizes, and erases black children.

Misty Sol will facilitate a six-week/twelve-session journaling workshop for students of Traveler’s Aid (the city’s largest family shelter).  The workshops will include activities in free writing techniques, book-making, improve, and freestyle poetry compositions. The journaling and other creative activities will serve as an emotional outlet for the students and provide a safe space for them to vent, process, and channel their negative experiences into something creative.  The students will also have the opportunity to be published in the local newspaper One Step Away, which is for and by the homeless. 

Misty will coordinate a series of art exhibits, performances, and workshops at the Friends Neighborhood Guild. The five-part series will be called Autumn African Arts @ The Guild. These events will provide culturally enriching arts programming, beautify the Guild's common spaces, and promote literacy and the importance of family.

In September 2006, Misty conducted formal interviews, both written and video, in Georgia, with her great aunties about their family history, focusing on her grandmother's flight from the South in the late 1930s, following the lynching of her brother. These interviews served as the basis for a series of essays and poetry on her family history, which she performed for the larger black community and shared through workshops on history, movement, and identity. This project is the beginning of her discourse on negotiating a sense of self in relation to history; this discourse will help provide confidence and ancestral guidance to Misty, other family members, and the larger black community. Misty's work will allow her to explore how displacement and movement have shaped the identity and history of black people. Currently, Misty is working on a stage production, a short documentary, and youth workshops inspired by her research.