STARGAZERS is an exhibition of poetry and graphic illustration by Shaya Robinson and Stacey Robinson on display as part of the Artist of the Corridor Exhibition Series.
The Robinson Art Collective is pairing illustration with poetry in a story of how a young girl journals to help her navigate difficult decisions in life. Her journal is a portal to her ancestors who help guide her. Star is a young girl ready to let her imagination along with her spirit guides lead her through life.
Shaya Robinson has been a Champaign Resident since 2007 and serves as an advocate for the underrepresented in a variety of ways. As an artist, she’s performed for charity events for local groups including for Lupus awareness, R.A.C.E.S (Rape Advocacy Counseling & Education Services), Courage Connections (a women's homeless shelter), and Cunningham township (homeless assistance agency). As an advocate for the arts, she runs a poetry and arts space called S.P.E.A.K Cafe (Song Poetry Expressions Art Knowledge) that focuses on social and political issues. She's won an ACE (Arts Culture Education) award for fostering and maintaining a safe space for artists of all ages to weave social justice ideas and the arts to shine light on and uplift the most underserved communities. Shaya has been a poet as long as she has been able to write and has always loved a variety of art forms from live music to art festivals. She hopes to leave a legacy that shows her love for local raw art and the need for political and social change merging and making a difference. Her plans for the future include networking and using all her available resources to create opportunities for change.
Stacey Robinson is an Assistant Professor of graphic design at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He was a 2019 Nasir Jones Hip-Hop Fellow at Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African & African American Research who completed his Masters of Fine Art at the University at Buffalo. For the last several years he has traveled internationally discussing the complexities decolonized future spaces. As one half of the collaborative team “Black Kirby” with artist John Jennings, Stacey creates graphic novels, gallery exhibitions, lectures, and workshops that use world-building strategies to imagine new worlds inspired by Design, Hip-Hop, the Arts and Sciences, and diasporic African belief systems. His latest graphic novels are, I Am Alfonso Jones written by Tony Medina (2017), available from Lee & Low Books, and Across the Tracks: Remembering Greenwood, Black Wall Street, and the Tulsa Race Massacre, written Alverne Ball (2021), available from Abrams Books.
Sponsored by the Urbana Arts and Culture Program and The Urbana Free Library. Funded in part by an Urbana Arts and Culture Grant.
Conveniently located at the corner of Race and Green in downtown Urbana.
