A Tale of Today: Emerging Artists Fellowship - Brittney Leeanne Williams & Jeffly Gabriela Molina

The Driehaus Museum has launched A Tale of Today: Emerging Artists Fellowship as a two-year pilot program that will engage with four Chicago-based artists of color each year to promote their careers and expand their networks using the Museum’s resources and its home, the Nickerson Mansion, as a springboard.

Below, we learn a little more about two of the Fellows in our inaugural class, Jeffley Gabriella Molina and Brittney Leeanne Williams. 

Jeffly Gabriela Molina - https://www.jefflyart.com/

Jeffly Gabriela Molina is a Chicago-based interdisciplinary artist from Táchira, Venezuela. Molina first moved to the U.S. in 2007 and lived in Miami, Florida for four years. In 2011, she transferred to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2013 and a Master of Fine Arts in 2016. She has been commissioned for three public sculptures: Nest, Casa de Turpiales, and Vaca-Mariposa, all of which are permanently installed in several locations in Miami and Doral, Florida.

Q: What mediums do you primarily work with?
JGM: Most of my time is spent painting, but I also write poems and have designed public sculptures.

Q: What themes does your work explore?
JGM: I collage images with poetry. I utilize and combine family photographs and information of the past found online and in books to reconstruct moments that are meaningful and curious to me because at present they have been transfigured by nostalgia. Fragments of an Imaginary Home is the theme that runs like a thread through all my recent work — images of loss, family, memory, and love are drawn loosely from the places I have lived, both in Venezuela and the United States.

Q: What is your impression of 19^th-century art/art history?
JGM: I am grateful to Theodore Van Gogh for supporting his brother who gifted us some of the most wonderful flowers, landscapes, rooms, and portraits ever painted. That century gave us Manet, Cézanne, Klee, and Hilma af Klimt! Certainly, it gave birth to Therese Bloom, Camille Lazuli, and Maria Dolores de la Piedad, but the latter were not known because they were women and did not perhaps have a room of their own. Art history is a dance of various arts, however, and because I adore literature and poetry my mind is conjuring images drawn by Eliot, Dickens, the Brontë sisters, Dostoyevsky, Whitman, and Poe to name a few.

Q: What excites you about working with the Driehaus Museum?
JGM: It is truly a magical place. There is so much beauty contained in its every detail. Today, the Driehaus is also preserved and revitalized by an excellent team. The show A Tale of Today: Yinka Shonibare CBE is brilliant and has allowed a younger generation of artists to see the museum in a new light. I am especially grateful for the uniqueness of the opportunities offered by this fellowship. So far, it has consisted of meaningful gatherings and fun conversations with curators, historians, patrons, friends, enthusiasts, and artists who with generosity and talent relentlessly enrich the cultural landscape of this great city.

Brittney Leeanne Williams - http://www.brittneyleeannewilliams.com/

Brittney Leeanne Williams is a Chicago-based artist, originally from Los Angeles. Her work has been exhibited in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami (Untitled Art Fair), and Venice, Italy (Venice Biennale), as well as in Chicago and throughout the Midwest. Williams attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2017) and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2008-09). Williams was a 2017-2018 artist-in-residence at University of Chicago (CSRPC/Arts + Public Life) and has held residencies at Chicago Artists Coalition (HATCH Projects) and Hyde Park Art Center (The Center Program). Her set design for the short film Self-Deportation has been featured at film festivals nationwide and internationally, including Anthology Film Archives (NYC) and the Pineapple Underground Film Festival (Hong Kong).

Q: What mediums do you primarily work with?
BLW: I work mostly in oils and acrylics. That said, in the sketch phase of my process, I use a wide range of materials, anything from markers, crayons, charcoal, or gouache.

Q: What themes does your work explore?
BLW: My work explores the relationship between body and landscape, memory, memorialization and how we carry place or more specifically home.

Q: What is your impression of 19^th-century art/art history?
BLW: I have a great reverence for what’s come before me. I’m convinced that the works that resurface from the past and influence my practice in the present disrupt time. These works created in the past are radically influencing, warning and prophesying the future.

Q: What excites you about working with the Driehaus Museum?
BLW: There are many aspects of the Driehaus Fellowship that excite me. The house museum itself is such a visual force to reckon with. But the networking, the cohort, and educational programming have been wonderful. That said, what most excites me is beautiful old things having a very purposeful collision with beautiful new things. The wrestle of my work, my identity, and my values placed within the Driehaus Museum has so many historical implications as well as unlimited possibilities.

Images Used Top to Bottom
Jeffly Gabriela Molina, Detalles de una Cosa Sencilla, 2017, Oil and graphite on linen
Jeffly Gabriela Molina, I Miss You, 2017, Oil and graphite on linen
Brittney Leeanne Williams, Untitled, 2018, Oil paint and acrylic on panel
Brittney Leeanne Williams, Untitled (Transcending the Bough), 2016, Acrylic on paper