2019 Fellows

The 2019 Suzanne Deal Booth Fellows

McGovern College of the Arts–Project Row Houses 2019 Suzanne Deal Booth Fellows: Texas-based Libby Bland and California-based Sarah Rafael García.

Libby Bland

Libby Bland is a recent graduate of the University of Pennsylvania where she earned master’s degrees in architecture and city and regional planning. Her undergraduate degree is from Sarah Lawrence College where she studied narratives of place, children’s literature and costuming. She was born and raised in Southeastern Virginia in the shadow of The Great Dismal Swamp. Her background is in oral history, arts-based community design and the history of self-planned Black communities throughout the rural South. Previously, she worked with the Community Futures Lab in Philadelphia, an oral history and arts project around gentrification in a neighborhood after public housing towers had been demolished. She also worked for the Village of Arts and Humanities, focusing on economic development and housing stability for long-time residents in North Philadelphia. She currently works full time at Texas Housers as a neighborhood and housing equity planner and analyst.

The through line of Bland’s work is trying to understand the narratives that Black people tell (and omit) about our experiences, and figuring out clear and compelling ways to connect us across the stories and lessons that have been lost to time and trauma.

Building an Emotional Atlas to Guide Preservation
The through line of Bland's work is trying to understand the narratives that Black people tell (and omit) about their experiences, and figuring out a clear and compelling way to connect across the stories and lessons that have been lost to time and trauma. Through a series of community meetings and mapping exercises, she has begun to put together a narrative of how neighborhood changes effect various people in a neighborhood, and what this tells us about how the physical environment is embedded in our psychological experience.
Summer Update
The beginning of August marked the end of the 2019 Summer Studio program with local college students from the University of Houston, Texas Southern University, and St. Thomas University. Working with the 8 young artists every week over the course of about two months was an absolute highlight of the summer for me.
Fellows Update- Spring
I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to do ethical engagement in a community that has been under a microscope for years. It’s very easy to have good intentions and still be exploitative. It’s very easy to be an “askhole” where you demand input and engagement from people without offering anything in return.
Introduction Lecture and Framing
Libby shares some of her prior work and her goals for the Fellowship.

Sarah Rafael García

Sarah Rafael García is a writer, traveler and arts educator. Born in Brownsville, Texas and raised in Santa Ana, California, she considers herself “a first-generation everything,” including being an artist. Since publishing “Las Niñas” (Floricanto Press 2008), she founded Barrio Writers, LibroMobile and Crear Studio. In 2015, she completed an M.F.A. in creative writing with an emphasis in fiction and cognate in media studies. She is an editor for the “Barrio Writers, pariahs: writing from outside the margins and Latinx Archive” anthologies. In 2016, García was awarded to develop the multi-media project titled “SanTana’s Fairy Tales” (Raspa Magazine 2017), supported in part by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, through an artist-in-residence initiative at California State University, Fullerton’s Grand Central Art Center. In 2018, she held an artist residency at The Guesthouse in Cork, Ireland and was honored as an emerging artist at the 19th Annual Orange County Arts Awards. In March 2019, she will exhibit her first installation as a conceptual artist: “A Book’s Journey,” a collaborative recycled book project.

As a writer and conceptual artist, García offers historical counter-narratives for her gender and culture, while integrating contemporary social justice themes and creative narrative structures of people of color without the constraints imposed by society or traditional storytelling. For the KGMCA-PRH Fellowship, she is interested in expanding her ethnographic work by researching and incorporating Houston’s Third Ward history along with its social justice and gentrification issues and further develop a multi-media, literary-arts platform.

Learn more at https://sarahrafaelgarcia.com/.

Reality Check 3rd Ward
Reality Check 3rd Ward: An Oral History Time Capsule Chronicling Futuristic Joy

Over the last year Garcia has expanded her ethnographic research to intersect history, sci-fi and storytelling. Through her work, she explores how conceptual art can be a driving force in combatting gentrification and how the retelling of history and the future, from a person of color’s point of view, can reclaim and reinstate historical context, current social justice narratives and storytelling in urban neighborhoods.
Fall Update
Until recent months, I was unaware how much Houston’s POC art scene had developed in between two spectrums: from what some refer to as “rasquachismo”2 or “guerrilla art” to the traditional “high art” established by white culture. In the name of research and personal inspiration, and with support from the fellowship, I attended a walking tour in Third Ward, the Latino Arts Now! Conference at University of Houston and met a diverse and amazing Houston artists community at the “Brown Artist Retreat” hosted at DiverseWorks3, organized by renowned artists Rafa Esparza and Risa Puleo.
Spring Update
On my first day, I purposely asked the Lyft driver to drop me off in front of Project Row Houses. I felt compelled to start my first visit at the iconic shot gun houses. Maybe I was echoing other tourists too by romanticizing the history. But as I stared down the sidewalk towards the white peaks, the rain made me hesitate. Being familiar with Texas storms, my enthusiasm evolved to worries that a downpour would soak my laptop in the next five minutes. With disappointment, I forced myself to take an alternate route and walked down Division Street, which introduced me to the second-story buildings with porches. What did it divide?
Introduction Lecture and Framing Questions
Sarah shares some of her prior work and the framing questions for the Fellowship.