The Robinson Art Collective is pairing ill ustration 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 ances tors who help guide her. Star is a young girl ready to let her imagination along with her spirit guides lead her through life.
\n\nShay a Robinson has been a Champaign Resident since 2007 and serves as an advoc ate for the underrepresented in a variety of ways. As an artist\, she&rsqu o\;s performed for charity events for local groups including for Lupus awa reness\, 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 po etry and arts space called S.P.E.A.K Cafe (Song Poetry Expressions Art Kno wledge) that focuses on social and political issues. She's won an ACE \; (Arts Culture Education) award for fostering and maintaining a safe spa ce for artists of all ages to weave social justice ideas and the arts to s hine 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 variet y of art forms from live music to art festivals. She hopes to leave a lega cy that shows her love for local raw art and the need for political and so cial change merging and making a difference. Her plans for the future incl ude networking and using all her available resources to create opportuniti es for change.
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\nStacey Robinson is an Assistant Pro fessor of graphic design at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign . He was a 2019 Nasir Jones Hip-Hop Fellow at Harvard University&rsquo\;s Hutchins Center for African &\; African American Research who completed his Masters of Fine Art at the University at Buffalo. For the last severa l years he has traveled internationally discussing the complexities decolo nized future spaces. As one half of the collaborative team &ldquo\;Black K irby&rdquo\; with artist John Jennings\, Stacey creates graphic novels\, g allery exhibitions\, lectures\, and workshops that use world-building stra tegies to imagine new worlds inspired by Design\, Hip-Hop\, the Arts and S ciences\, and diasporic African belief systems. \;His latest graphic n ovels 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)\, a vailable from Abrams Books.
\n\nSponsored by the Urbana A rts and Culture Program and The Urbana Free Library. Funded in part by an Urbana Arts and Culture Grant.
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