artist-IN-RESIDENCE
august 4-19, 2025
Senghor Reid
Senghor Reid earned a BFA from the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI); a Masters of Teaching in Art Education from Wayne State University (Detroit, MI) and attended the internationally recognized Marathon Program at the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture (NY, NY). He is currently Chair of the Fine Arts Department at Cranbrook Kingswood Upper School (Bloomfield Hills, MI) and is a National Board Certified Visual Arts Educator.
Reid is a practicing visual artist. He has received many awards including the Kresge Foundation’s, Kresge Arts in Detroit Visual Artist Fellowship prize, the prestigious Governor’s Award for Emerging Artist (Michigan), and a Michigan Regional Emmy Award for Best Documentary (Cultural). Reid’s work has been exhibited in the U.S. and abroad in galleries and museums including the Embassy of the United States in Paris, Cranbrook Art Museum, Muskegon Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Kentler International Drawing Space in New York, St. Catharine Museum in Canada and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City. His work is in many private, public, and corporate art collections.
Artist Statement
I intend for my work to inspire viewers to willingly engage with water and evoke consideration of it as a necessary resource in the survival of life on our planet. Our access and right to clean water lies at the core of my work and its visual intention. Thus, while completing my figurative work, I often conduct extensive 2-D case studies exploring new ways to construct water. Beginning with small studies, I build systems of gestural movements that simulate the movement found in large bodies of water. My drawing and painting decisions are dictated by these movements, along with my memories and past interactions with water. Small studies provide me with the requisite information necessary to construct a code through which larger, more expansive works could be created. These works concern themselves with negotiating separated components, perspectives, and forms so that they might work interdependently to create an invigorating visual experience. During my residency I endeavor to increase my studio workflow by completing multiple small works and studies in a short amount of time. Using Lake Michigan and the surrounding area around Good Hart as primary sources of reference, I wish for these small works to inform a larger work(s) to be completed by the end of the residency period.
Community Engagement
