I am a fourth-generation Harlemite. Both my maternal and paternal grandparents lived in Harlem, and I have lived and worked here for over twenty-one years. Harlem is not only my home — it is the spiritual foundation of my identity, my inspiration, and my life’s work. The streets, sounds, and people of Harlem shaped my creative vision from childhood, when I first absorbed its rhythm, pride, and beauty.

My art reflects a deep love for Harlem’s history and its continual rebirth. From the Apollo Theater and the Schomburg Center to Rucker Park and Lenox Avenue, I see Harlem as a living museum of Black excellence, creativity, and resilience. My public artworks, educational programs, and community collaborations celebrate that legacy while helping to shape the new Harlem Renaissance emerging through art and technology.

Through my mural Planet Harlem, my teaching programs in local schools and senior centers, and my digital arts initiatives with Harlem youth, I invest directly in this community’s creative future. I collaborate with neighborhood institutions, businesses, and cultural leaders to elevate Harlem’s identity locally and globally. My connection to Harlem is generational, spiritual, and professional. Every brushstroke, workshop, and innovation I create is an offering of gratitude to the neighborhood that raised me — ensuring that Harlem’s light continues to inspire the world.

Antonia Badon is an interdisciplinary artist whose work synthesizes public history, performance, digital media, and education to create immersive cultural experiences rooted in Harlem. A Public Historian, TV Segment Producer, Digital Media Artist, Author, Educator, and Theatre Producer, her practice bridges literature, sound, visual storytelling, and emerging technology to preserve and reanimate the cultural soul of Harlem. She is a multi-grant award winner and NAACP Women in the Arts Award recipient, recognized for using art as a tool for cultural preservation, intergenerational learning, and civic engagement.

A SAG-AFTRA and AEA actress and former Co-Segment Producer for It’s Showtime at the Apollo, Badon gained national acclaim for her one-woman play ZORA! — written by multi-AUDELCO Award–winning playwright Laurence Holder — which explores the life and brilliance of Zora Neale Hurston. Her performance has toured nationally, from Harlem stages to the University of Pennsylvania. She won the Best Actress Award at the NYC Strawberry Theater Festival and the WBLS/WLIB Circle of Sisters Community Honors Award for cultural tourism.

As a NYC Gold Star Licensed Tour Guide, Badon extends her interdisciplinary approach through TTGirlz: Harlem Renaissance Time Travel, a children’s digital storytelling series, and iCu2: The Culture Dome, a platform combining media art, wearable history, and educational design. Her work has been supported by the New York Council on the Arts, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the Creative Heights Society Grant, and NYC Arts in Education.

Her NYSCA-funded radio play Culturati Gadflies, broadcast on WHCR 90.3 FM — The Voice of Harlem, revives Harlem’s mid-20th-century cultural pulse through sound, narrative, and archival research. Across theatre, sound art, children’s media, and immersive digital projects, her mission is clear: to honor Harlem’s legacy, amplify underrecognized voices, and transform neighborhoods into living classrooms of culture, pride, and possibility.

Sheila is a resident of Harlem and an internationally acclaimed artist known for her exhibitions and features across many mediums. As a globally awarded visual artist, she has consistently published works and showcased exhibitions, even during the pandemic. Her exhibitions have spanned major cities worldwide, including NYC, Tokyo, London, Paris, Johannesburg, Sydney, Osaka, Jamaica, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Downtown LA, and South Korea.

Notable pandemic-era showcases include exhibitions in South Korea, the Dyckman Farmhouse Museum in NYC, Conception Arts (virtual), the Meta Biennale on Art Gate VR, and the ExpoMetroNY & ExpoMetroLA Global NFT Collaborative Billboard Exhibition. Sheila’s work is held in diverse private collections and has gained significant media attention, with features in The Guardian UK/USA, NY1, NBC4, The Daily News, African Voices Magazine, and Hyperallergic.com, among others.

Some notable exhibitions and public art include “Only One Earth” at Rockefeller Center’s The Flag Project, a Storybook Tabletop Art Book released in September 2022, the “Stratosphere 2022” NFT Art Exhibition at Samsung 837 during NFT.NYC Week, and serving as the official visual artist for the Jazz In The Valley Music Festival, 2022–2025.

Omo Misha means “Misha’s children” in Yoruba — a name that has come to identify curator Misha McGlown and her multi-faceted practice in the arts. Misha currently serves as curator for the Windows on Amsterdam Gallery on behalf of City College Center for the Arts, Gallery Director for the Irwin House Global Art Center and Gallery in Detroit, MI, and has been a member of the Arts & Education staff at Symphony Space since 2003.

She has held the title of Program Director for both The Children’s Art Carnival and the LeRoy Neiman Art Center in New York, and independently curated exhibits and cultural programming for institutions including the Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art & Storytelling, The Colored Girls’ Museum (Philadelphia), the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, NY Federal Hall, chashama, FLUX Art Fair, No Longer Empty, The Arsenal/NYC Parks Department, and Columbia University.

Her work as a visual artist has encompassed public art installations commissioned by the 125th Street BID, the Harlem River Park Task Force, and UberEats on behalf of Harlem Park to Park. She has received recognitions from the U.S. Congressional Record (Volume 157, Part 7), the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, UMEZ/Harlem Arts Alliance, and the Puffin Foundation. Misha studied at the Center for Creative Studies and Wayne State University in Detroit. She is a two-time published author and a contributing arts and culture writer for Huffington Post, ArtSlant, Of Note Magazine, Rolling Out Magazine, and the Detroit Metro Times.

Roosevelt “Black Rose” Taylor is a multi-disciplinary master artist whose practice bridges portraiture, diaspora memory, and contemporary myth-making. Rooted in a lineage of artists and shaped by Harlem’s deep cultural vibration, his work captures the emotional architecture of Black life: its brilliance, resilience, intimacy, and legacy.

Roosevelt creates powerful narrative pieces that honor the histories, identities, and futures of the people and communities he paints. He brings generational artistic knowledge, technical skill, cultural stewardship, and a deep sense of emotional intuition to every project.

Powerful Allah, a.k.a. Lamarr Little, grew up in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn and came home after a 25-to-life prison sentence. During his life on the streets, he was shot by a New York City police officer. While incarcerated, he began doing artwork — first painting stage sets for Rehabilitation Through the Arts, and later powerful posters for organizations like RAPP, Queers for Justice, and Transforming Lives.

His strongly emotive work can be both seen and felt in the over 2,000 images he has created, ranging from pencil drawings to oil and acrylic paintings. Lamarr’s artwork is intended to convey positive messages with the power to lift the spirits of all who view them. From 2003 to 2007, he was a member of the Reality & Pain Life Skills Peer Counseling Program at Green Haven Correctional Facility, teaching workshops in drawing, painting, and poetry to fellow incarcerated individuals.

From 2018 to 2019, while at Eastern New York Correctional Facility, he chaired the Inmate Liaison Committee. Today he is a facilitator with the Alternative to Violence Project, mentors the newly incarcerated, and teaches others to express themselves through art. He recently founded The Erasure Project, which examines the racial roots of mass incarceration through images.