VA Alumna Named to Lucie Foundation $2500 Emerging Artist Scholarship Shortlist

Venice Arts' Alumna Angela Francis was recently named to the Lucie Foundation's $2500 Emerging Artist Scholarship Shortlist. The prestigious award is open to photographers worldwide and seeks to support emerging talent with vision and dynamic ideas that challenge and progress the art form of still photography into work that compels. We're so proud of Angela's continued accomplishments in the photographic field!

Since being named as a Presidential Scholar in the Arts in 2014, Angela has continued her photographic journey, and has returned to Venice Arts this summer to intern and mentor other youth. About her current body of work, Angela writes:

"If you don’t know where you come from, you can’t know where you are going. Much of my childhood was spent at the foot of my Granny’s bed, listening to the stories of her past. Her photographs, along with adaptations of our family history, taught me the art of conversation, the importance of carrying on the tradition of storytelling. From glimpses of Granny’s personal history, I learned how my family landed on South Orange Drive. My current focus is on black womanhood and the elimination of the notion of a single story. The project I propose is a reflection on the multifaceted nature of black female identities. For decades, black women have taken on the lessons and responsibilities of their mothers: offering their bodies up as testimony, contesting silence and suppression. The black female identity is a social product, and her intricacies are often overlooked and minimized by her social location and the oppressions that come with being Black and female in this world....This is an extension of Granny’s story, as well as the people who have influenced me, within and outside of my craft."