Conjuring Moments

Artist Statement
The title of Glynnis Reed’s exhibit, Conjuring Moments, comes from Black
feminist scholar, Kameelah L. Martin’s writing on “conjure feminism,” a
theory that centers Black women and their relationships with African
spirituality and ancestral legacies. Martin defines a “conjuring moment” as
the creative application of Black women’s ancient intellectual traditions
and “an ‘identifiable point in the text where conjuring or 
African-derived ceremonial practices occur and advance the narrative
action.’” In her art practice, Reed contemplates her reflection in the 
emerging imagery she creates, and at times, senses guardian spirits
dancing with her in the creative process. Her studio is a room that
becomes a womb for visioning. Her art making is about channeling spirit
and reaching into the void to create something meaningful. When creating
visual art, she feels that she is being guided as a vessel for spiritual
communication. Many times, in her creative work that 
directly involves the hand, she finds herself in a somatically driven, visual 
conversation with spiritual energies beyond her conscious awareness. In
these iconographies of transcendence, Reed centers Afro-Indigenous
worldviews in the autoethnographic study for her doctoral dissertation.
Artist Bio
Glynnis Reed is an accomplished professional visual artist, art educator,
and emerging scholar. She has exhibited her artwork widely in the U.S.
and internationally. She is a recipient of the Visions of a New California
Award and numerous other grants and awards. Currently a dual title
doctoral degree candidate in Art Education and Women’s, Gender, and
Sexuality Studies at The Pennsylvania State University, Reed was selected
as a member of the Phi Kappa Phi Society for excellence in her doctoral
work. She recently served as the Blockson Graduate Assistant at Penn
State University Libraries in the Charles L. Blockson Collection of African
Americana and the African Diaspora. In that position she curated the
exhibits “Haiti: Liberation of the First Black Republic” and “Black Feminist
Embodiments of Self-Love and Self-Recovery.” She is motivated by the
capacity of art to build world’s and act as a potential healing and liberating

force. Her scholarly activities weave multiple strands of study that include
art making practices, African spirituality, disability studies, and
autoethnography to bring greater awareness of the value of the lives and
contributions of intersectional marginalized individuals to the field of art.
Reed has two decades of experience as an art educator, working with
diverse students as a teaching artist, K-12 art teacher, museum educator,
and as a university instructor. She is a co-editor and contributor to the
Curriculum and Pedagogy Group volume, BIPOC Alliances: Building
Communities and Curricula and author of James Baldwin: Novelist and Critic.