Where the Seed Remembers: A Celebration of Earth, Lineage and Memory

Allena Sweats is an artist from Minneapolis and is 26 years old. She fell in love with all art forms early in life and strived to create. She has learned dance, singing, drawing, tattoo artistry, painting, theater and many other forms of art. She loves beauty in the all its forms. She loves to create things to see and experience, as well as to make the bigger picture more perfect for everyone. She wants to be like and create flower fields, rabbit holes, deep water, villages. She is also a mother. Earth’s beauty and spirit is a central theme.

Ayolanda is an interdisciplinary artist and cultural practitioner whose work bridges art, ritual and community transformation. Rooted in the Sankofa principle, “It is not taboo to go back and reach for what has been forgotten,” her work honors Black ways of being fractured by the transatlantic slave trade and carried forward through generations of cultural continuity and innovation.

Her multimedia approach bridges ancestral knowledge with speculative imagination. In her words, Blackness is a broad stroke; liberation is the detail.

Her immersive narratives operate as sacred contemporary expressions, portals into remembrance, resistance and radical imagination.

Dizi (she/they) of Afrodisiac Arts is a self-taught multidisciplinary visual artist and creative based in the Twin Cities. They create in various media such as drawing, painting, digital art, mixed media, jewelry making, beadwork, tattooing, collage and photography.

Dizi's work is heavily motivated and informed by her cultural and spiritual identity, as well as her sociopolitical lens as a community activist. In her art, Dizi often centers and uplifts the likeness of Black and Indigenous women and nonbinary/Two-Spirit folks — identities that tend to be devalued or tokenized in our society. Dizi draws inspiration from her own identity as a queer, Afro-Indigenous person, paying homage to the resilient lineage of ancestors and matriarchs that came before them.

Dizi's strengths include capturing and centering people of color in portraiture, with an emphasis on incorporating themes of social justice, intentional representation of marginal identities, and depictions of community resilience and resistance. By creating spaces where individuals can see themselves represented with pride in their cultural identity, Dizi hopes to foster a sense of empowerment, belonging and resilience within her Black and Brown community members, ultimately contributing to a more inclusive and equitable artistic landscape.

Imani Mansfield is a passionate creative from Minneapolis. She specializes in intimate portrait photography, and she uses her skills with set building, lighting design and concept direction to capture subjective stories through lush imagery. Many of her projects include documenting the spectrum of femininity in all forms. She focuses on vulnerability, strength and the multitude of expressions in between.

Being the surreal creative mind that he is, it is almost as if Jaali Isaiah Griffin was born to paint. Sharing the same birthdate as Vincent Van Gogh, he felt called to the arts from a young age. At age three, he began drawing the life around him, twisting and contorting the subject to how he saw fit. Over the years it became like an addiction. Art  was more than a class or hobby — it is his life’s work, his passion and his reason for living. Seeing the movement of viewers’ eyes on his pieces and the happiness that they express are the reasons why he is so passionate. Showing what is encased in his imagination and seeing how people react is a sight to behold for him. He believes that art can turn a viewer's day from gloomy to bright. The power of creation is why he creates art.

Jordan Hamilton was raised by artists. His father is a sculptor and painter and his mother is a photographer and mixed-media artist. He was surrounded by artistic practices and communities. He is grateful for that influence and support. He got to know some of the great Twin Cities artists, such as Seitu Jones & Ta-coumba Aiken as a youth. In high school he began developing his own artistic practice. He was heavily influenced by graffiti art within the city. Around that time, he met one his mentors Chaka Mkali, who trained him in creating collaborative murals as a form of community building.

His paternal grandparents exposed him to African arts and culture within the diaspora, especially Afro-Brazilian and other parts of the Lusophone world. His late grandfather was a scholar and professor specializing in Portuguese, Brazilian, and Lusophone African literatures. His grandmother, who became an ancestor this past winter, was a textile artist; as was his aunt. His uncle gave him his first musical instrument, a bass guitar. His maternal grandmother  played piano. All of these people informed Jordan's creative path.

The art works in this exhibition are meditations on remembrance. Brought about through the creative practice, the common thread is tuning into what energy is beneath the surface, beneath the apparent, visible and audible … to the inherent unique expression & purpose of a seed of creation, which carries the knowledge of its design and signature frequency. 

Kat Roman is a healing practitioner, educator and lover of nature. Her creative practice interweaves poetry with visual art including collages, drawings, photography and paintings. She has been writing poetry for 15 years and painting for six. She has publicly shared her work for the past three years and has recently begun curating her works into a collection. Her vision is to publish a series of books containing her hundreds of poems, alongside her paintings and drawings. They will reflect reflection on her experience of being a detribalized (separated from generational tribal affiliations due to cultural genocide) Indigenous person of Mexican/Colombian heritage, while also initiating universal conversations about trauma, depression, substance misuse and the process of healing. Her intent is to inspire others to find resilience in their own journeys. Her work interweaves nature, our connection with the land, and how that entwines with our healing and reconnecting journeys. 

 For more than two decades, Ron Brown, a multidisciplinary Afrocentric artist, storyteller and community health advocate, has built a career rooted not just in creative expression, but in cultural elevation, healing justice and radical Black love.

Whether on canvas, in digital realms, via collage and murals or wearable art, Brown’s work pulses with the rhythm of the African Diaspora. “Art is how I tell our stories. It's how I process pain, channel joy, and project futures where we are whole,” he said.. Through his work with Hennepin County and as the founder of the MAN Clinic (Male Access Now) at NorthPoint Health & Wellness Center, Brown has championed sexual health, education, and culturally competent care for Black men and boys.

For Brown, art and public health are not separate. “Art is wellness. It’s community care. It’s how we reclaim narratives that have been distorted or erased,” he said. 

Born in Gary, Ind., Brown relocated to Minneapolis seeking fertile ground for his creativity and a deeper sense of community. He found both. His work speaks to a liberated Minneapolis, one where Black stories are centered, not sidelined. He doesn’t just paint what is — he paints what could be. 

Sunmisola is an emerging oil painter influenced by her esoteric studies and inspired by nature and the realms beyond its veil. Her love for the playful, whimsical and downright bizarre creates immersive universes where symbolism and imagination intertwine. Drawing from her spiritual practices and reverence for the Earth, her work invites viewers to honor their curiosity, reflect on their own internal world, and recognize the unseen forces that shape their reality.

Tomas Araya is a local artist based in the Twin Cities. His work centers around nature and environmental awareness. He loves creating art pieces that play with the idea of powerful, mystical, organic shapes that allude to connection with natural elements. Creating images that praise mother earth has always been his artistic goal. As a teaching artist, he promotes the idea that when you believe in something, you create it. This mindset enables us to embrace the diversity of our own creativity in order to grow into people who, in turn, embrace the diversity of all people around us.