There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens
- Ecclesiastes 3:1

At Spark+Echo Arts, one of our primary goals is to support our artists. It was with much excitement that we invited Marlanda Dekine-Sapient Soul (she/her/they/them) to be our 2020 Artist in Residence. The excellence and thoughtfulness of their work is stunning. Their respect for the process and responsiveness when working with the administration portion of a commission makes working with them a dream. They also served as a curator in the Bible Illumination Project. In short: they are an incredible artist on many levels.

Shortly after the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, Aja Raquell Rhone-Spears and so many others, however, Marlanda realized the need for a different direction of work. After much thoughtfulness and discussion, they decided to leave our program. Thus, we are only able to offer the single posting of their work from this year. While we are of course disappointed, we support their decision and are thankful for the time that they were active in our Artist in Residence program.

If you would like to explore their work for our project, you can read their works stemming from our commission: “Know Thyself” (2016), “Getting Lighter” (2019), “Diptych: Unpacking the Self” (2020).

We also encourage you to follow them and support their ongoing work at http://sapientsoul.com/.