Artist. Writer. Educator.
Venise Keys is a visual artist, writer, and educator raised on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois. Venise’s art has exhibited throughout Chicago at The Cre.ea.tive Room, the Museum Science and Industry, KaLab Gallery, +Plus Gallery, Woman Made Gallery, and Intersect Chicago (formally known as SOFA: Sculpture, Objects, and Functional Art & Design Fair). She also exhibited at Front Room Gallery in Brooklyn, New York and the Saint Louis Museum of Art in Saint Louis, Missouri.
She has a Bachelors and Master’s degree in Painting with a Certificate in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies for her research on Black Feminist politics. She served as adjunct faculty of art for Illinois Central College, Bradley University, and has lectured at Dillard University on the role of the Black artist. This work is published in the scholarly journal, Kalfou: Comparative and Relational Ethnic Studies.
This year, Venise’s writing on art education has circulated to Norway, Germany and she is recently published in a New York arts and culture magazine, Hyperallergic. Venise is currently an artist-in-residence at Wild Yams: A Residency for Black Women & Mothers located in The Cre.ea.tive Room. Venise teaches high school visual art at Art In Motion Creative Arts School and is the program director for the Kappa Chapter of Gamma Xi Phi Professional Art Fraternity.
What is the Lashon Fouché method to holistic arts education?
Increased self esteem by abandoning perfectionist and imposter syndrome habits about art making.
Developing intentional creative routines to use observations, emotions, meditations, and dreams of daily life in artwork.
Offering consultations / programming collaborations to promote alternative expressions of knowledge and socially responsible activism.
