Virtual Panel Discussion
“Stories From Our Arts”
Thursday, June 29th at 7pm EST
We’re completing our 2023 celebration of Juneteenth tonight! Our final virtual panel discussion, “Stories from Our Arts” will focus on the importance of the arts in sharing ideas of freedom.
The Orange County 2023 Juneteenth Celebration will be held in person and online all month long. This year's theme, "Juneteenth 2023: Celebrating Stories of Freedom" will focus on sharing stories in exciting, multivocal ways, through music, art, history, foodways, and storytelling. One way we are doing this is through a month long virtual panel discussion series. Virtual Panels are held every Thursday in June at 7pm EST.
Meet Our Panelists
Anna Pillow was born and raised in rural Virginia. She currently serves as the Executive Director of The Arts Center in Orange. She holds an MA in East Asian Art from Sotheby’s Institute in London, earned her BFA in Painting from Old Dominion University, and believes that supporting artists is crucial for thriving, resilient communities. Anna has worked internationally with artists, institutions, and galleries including Japanese Living National Treasures, Takashi Murakami, Ai Weiwei, SculptureCenter, the Park Avenue Armory, Chambers Fine Art, and Asia House UK, among others. She is also an artist who works in porcelain to create objects that celebrate the beauty of everyday life.
L. Renée is a poet and nonfiction writer living in Harrisonburg, Virginia, where she works as Assistant Director of Furious Flower Poetry Center and Assistant Professor of English at James Madison University. Nominated for Best New Poets, Best of the Net and two Pushcart Prizes, her work has been published in Obsidian, Tin House Online, Poetry Northwest, the minnesota review, and elsewhere. The granddaughter of proud Black Appalachians, she won the international 2022 Rattle Poetry Prize and Appalachian Review’s Denny C. Plattner Award, among others. A recipient of fellowships from Cave Canem Foundation and the Watering Hole, L. Renée also holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Indiana University, where she was Nonfiction Editor of the Indiana Review and an MS in Journalism from Columbia University, where she was a Joseph Pulitzer II and Edith Moore Fellow. lreneepoems.com
LaRissa Rogers (b. 1996) is a Black and Korean visual artist raised in Ruckersville, VA. She is currently based between Virginia and Los Angeles. She holds a BFA in Painting from Virginia Commonwealth University and a MFA in New Genres from UCLA. Rogers has exhibited and performed in institutions such as Frieze Seoul (Korea), Documenta 15 (Germany), Fields Projects (NY), M+B Gallery (CA), 1708 Gallery (VA), Second Street Gallery (VA), Black Ground (Colombia), W Doha (Qatar), The Fronte Arte Cultura (CA), LACE (CA), Grand Central Art Center (CA), and the Museum of Contemporary Art (VA) among others. She received the Visual Arts fellowship at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (2022), the Black Artists and Designers Guild Creative Futures Grant (2022), and The Fine Arts Work Center Fellowship (2023-2024). Rogers attended the BEMIS Center of Contemporary Art Residency (2022), Black Spatial Relics Residency (2022), and SOMA (2019), among others. She is the co-founder of the alternative monument and community gathering space "Operations of Care" located in Charlottesville, VA and will be installing a public sculpture with the Rose Kennedy Greenway in Boston, 2024.