"Growing up in Baltimore,

I’ve found there’s always been an emphasis on artists here instilling hope in other residents and being those responsible for preserving community relics. In my work I aim to continue the tradition held by many great Baltimore artists before me by utilizing multiple forms of media to encapsulate the resilience of the people that call Baltimore home.

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In 2017, I became an assistant teacher, and then in 2018, a gallery assistant, where I was exposed to other Baltimore residents’ work outside of lenses of inaccessibly high fine art. By 2019, I also began working in craft bar tending and modeling frequently for local brands, having become interested in the parallels between hospitality and community preservation. The wonder and vibrancy created in works by the youth instilled more vibrant color stories and hope filled undertones in to my pieces, as the children I was working with often reminded me of my own siblings growing up here. Being a gallery assistant showed me how to tackle difficult subjects such as identity; forms of violence inflicted on others and self; and the inclusion of community voices in one’s work with tact. Becoming a craft bartender and model allowed me to gained the public speaking knowledge necessary to engage those in my neighborhood and expanded the forms of media I create within.

By 2020, I was fully enthralled in craft bartending, presenting my own mixed media works, and modelling professionally.

 

Often times, I will directly put words of affirmation in to my work or feed questions on self to the viewer, aiming to make them de compartmentalize how their interactions with self also affects the community they’re apart of. I chose to research popular Baltimore muralists I grew up seeing such as Tom Miller, Ernest Shaw, and Archie Veale. I also dove deeper in to my own heritage by studying “Naive” style Haitian artists such as Hector Hippolyte, and traditionally taught Haitian artists like Laurent Casimir. This research allowed for me to begin working with more of my surroundings; picking up crate palettes and turning them into canvases or utilizing old mirrors as a surface to paint on. Harvesting the resourcefulness that comes from my heritage, being of a family from Haiti and a Southern cotton farm, aided me in rounding out my work. Allowing me to find motifs such as West African Adinkra symbols, cotton reeds, and sugar cane plants that I often use as a mark of resiliency in my work. My goal as an artist is to create approachable resources for other Baltimore residents through art/ empower the community that raised me."-Ky Vassor

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*Photo courtesy of David Anderson (@wavey____)