Tuesday, March 22, 2022, 6:00 – 7:30pm
Advance ticket sales for this event have ended, but tickets are still available at the door! Visit the CCAC Box Office at Immanuel Presbyterian Church starting at 5:30 p.m. to purchase your ticket.
Art transcends cultural barriers, conveying powerful, sometimes provocative messages through brush strokes, color, subjects and symbolism – and artists have long leveraged their position to protest and critique current events. Join our panel of esteemed local artists for a compelling discussion on the persuasive power of art to challenge perspectives and facilitate social change.
Featured Panel
- Brandon Isaac, Youth Program Coordinator and Teaching Artist at WordPlay
- David Anthony Choate Jr., Revolution Dance Theatre
- Devan Horton, Artist
- Saad Ghosn, SOS ART
- Panel facilitated by Toilynn O’Neal Turner, Robert O’Neal Multicultural Art Center
Location
Immanuel Presbyterian Church
3445 Clifton Avenue
Cincinnati, OH 45220
Tickets
$10 in advance, $12 at the door
About the Panelists” title_tag=”h3″][vc_column_text]
BRANDON ISAAC is a Lyricist, Teaching and Performing artist born and raised in Cincinnati Ohio. He has spent over a decade honing his craft; performing in local bars, laundromats, and comedy clubs in the Midwest. After experiencing homelessness and many hard lessons, his creative channels and sustained spirituality has brought him to a season of gratitude by uplifting and duplicating his experiences into young artists. Brandon started this journey as a connector in the conduit of arts and healing in Cincinnati Public Schools. He worked as a paraprofessional and used his vehicle to guide children, teach performing arts, and coach basketball. Brandon is delighted to step into this new role as Program Coordinator. He is passionate about developing relationships and serving as a guide; for young creators searching for their artistic voice.
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DAVID ANTHONY CHOATE JR., born in Charlotte, North Carolina, spent most of his life here in Cincinnati where he attended the School of Creative and Performing Arts. During his time at SCPA he majored not only in Dance but Stage Management as well as Lighting Design & Technology. Upon his graduation from the school, all of those skills would be put to work throughout various parts of his career.
Post SCPA dance training includes time at the Cincinnati Ballet Academy, DeLa Arts Center and Planet Dance. After a strong recommendation from his long time Modern Dance Instructor, Cynthia Riesterer, Mr. choate became a member of Dayton Contemporary Dance Company 2, and later, a touring artist with Bi-Okoto Drum and Dance Theatre. During this time he also pursued a degree in Business Administration from Union Institute and University.
It didn’t take long into his career to notice the huge absence of black and brown people in the space of professional dance, particularly ballet. Driven by a passion to change the climate of dance, Mr. Choate decided his talents were best suited not solely as a performer but as the Founding Artistic Director of Revolution Dance Theatre, a non profit organization dedicated to building cultural diversity in dance and leveling the playing field for minority dance students.
Today Mr. Choate’s work have become a staple at Cincinnati’s Aronoff Center for the Arts, taped for Nationally syndicated show “Iyanla Fix My Life”, repeatedly featured for America’s Fastest Growing Church- Crossroads, has graced venues such as Cincinnati’s Music Hall and the Duke Energy Convention Center as well as travel to other cities including Chicago and New York. He remains the resident Lighting Designer for Crossroads Uptown and is an active member of the International Association of Theatrical Stagehands for which he has been on local crew for such entertainers as the Foo Fighters, Imagine Dragons, Michael Buble and Cirque de Soleil to name a few. He has been invited to become a member of Cincinnati Ballet’s Young Professionals Program and Advisor to the School of Creative & Performing Arts Alumni Panel.
He hopes that for all of his knowledge, connections, abilities and skill he can be a catalyst for change and purveyor of opportunity for other young black and brown artists who want their shot in the arts.
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SAAD GHOSN, a native of Lebanon, has been living in Cincinnati since 1985. A retired medical professional and educator, a Professor Emeritus of Medicine at the University of Cincinnati, Saad resorts to visual and spoken art to express himself and convey his social and political views.
Saad strongly believes that activism is at the heart of art expression. He is the Founder of ‘SOS (Save Our Souls) ART’, an organization that promotes the use of art as a vehicle for change and for a better world and which holds, now in its 20th year in Cincinnati, Ohio, a yearly collective art exhibit and an art festival of creative expressions of local artists for peace and justice. He is also the editor and publisher of the yearly ‘For a Better World, Poems and Drawings on Peace and Justice by Greater Cincinnati Artists’, now in its 19th year.
Saad has also written about many of Cincinnati’s Artists Activists, including in his monthly column, “Art for a Better World,” that appeared in Aeqai, the online art magazine, between 2012 and 2015, and in his column ‘Artists as Activists’ that ran between 2009 and 2011 in the alternative newspaper Streetvibes. He has authored and published in 2015 a book titled: “Greater Cincinnati Artists as Activists” featuring 50 such local artists.
Saad is the President of “SOS ART” (sosartcincinnati.com) the non-profit organization incorporated in 2015 whose mission is to encourage, promote and provide an opportunity for all the arts as vehicles for peace and justice and for all the artists to use their art as their voice for a change and for a better world.
For the past few years Saad has mostly used printmaking in his art. In 2008 he received a Cincinnati Individual Artist Grant for his printmaking work that resulted in the creation of “SCREAM”, a socially and politically themed portfolio of 20 b&w woodcut prints. He has shown his work locally, nationally and internationally in hundreds of solo and group exhibits and his work is in many collections, private and public including the Cincinnati Art Museum.
In addition to his own work, Saad has been curating art shows locally and internationally for the past thirty five years. His focus is on empowering local and other artists and on promoting their use of art as a vehicle for a change.
In 2016, he took SOS ART to his native country Lebanon.
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Toilynn O’Neal Turner is a talented artist, artistic entrepreneur, and cultural activist who passionately promotes diversity through the arts, connecting local artists, businesses and cultural institutions. She is the founding director of the Robert O’Neal Multicultural Arts Center (ROMAC) and serves as the Executive Director of the Queen City Foundation. With her long history in the nonprofit sector and demonstrated expertise in fund development, coaching, DEIA, and arts and event management, she is looking forward to utilizing these skills to shape the future of CCAC.
