I consider myself to be an accidental professor, teaching since 2018, I am a full time Associate Professor of Industrial Design at my alma mater, Rhode Island School of Design where I received my Master’s Degree in Industrial Design with an emphasis in system’s design in 2009. My course offerings span from Sophomore Design Principles, to advance courses in Toy Design, Experiential and performative design and Graduate Seminars. It’s my goal to not only teach design, through my lens, but to create thoughtful, community minded, confidence citizens.

PRONK! (Providence Honk Fest) is a free, family-friendly, activist outdoor justice + music + art festival, featuring activist-centered brass bands + percussion ensembles + musicians + performers + artists. Since 2007, PRONK! has practiced creative activism in collaboration with local, national and international musicians + artists + performers + spectacles in Providence, RI.

PRONK!

RECLAIMS the streets with brass, beats, and feet!

IS a free occupation of public space.

IS people-powered music + art + justice + community.

IS spawned from the original HONK! Festival in Somerville, MA that has “grown into a new type of street band movement—throughout the country and across the globe—outrageous and inclusive, brass and brash, percussive and persuasive, reclaiming public space with a sound that is in your face and out of this world.” - HONK!

SUPPORTS education & questioning of mainstream narratives.

IS an antidote to mainstream culture.

IS a celebration of resistance to consumerism, colonialism, hatred, and injustice.

CELEBRATES Providence.

IS NOT consumer-driven.

ENCOURAGES youth to engage with music and art as a platform for social change.

IS family-friendly.

AIMS to build relationships between and among artists and organizations.

IS NOT a Columbus Day celebration.

BELIEVES artists and musicians have something to contribute AND LEARN from social justice movements.

DOES NOT support complacency and unquestioned acceptance.

ASPIRES to spark meaningful dialogues around challenges dividing our communities.

SEEKS to utilize the the visual and auditory noise of artists and local, national, and international street bands to highlight the important work of activists making change in our own community.

We, the PRONK! community, recognize that we have a long way to go...

FOLLOW PRONK! ON INSTAGRAM + FACEBOOK + EMAIL: providencehonkfest [at] gmail [dot] com

THANK YOU TO OUR MOST RECENT PRONK! PHOTOGRAPHERS: ANTHONY ANDRADE, JULIO BERROA, ALLAM MELLA. EFREL SOLARES, CHERYL ADAMS-JOHNSON, JUSTIN CASE & DWIGHT WILKERSON

Welcome to the Rhode Island Greenbook- Revival of the Negro Motorist Greenbook. 2023 Edition.

In this guide, you’ll find Where to eat, Where to live, How to find Community. This project originally came out of the need for newly admitted RISD Graduate students to understand the city they were coming into for the next few years. Rhode Island is a State that really makes you work for it’s affection. Nothing is on the surface and very much hidden. So this guide was a response to this need. Back then, I created a 30 page guide of neighborhoods, realtors, places to eat, where to shop, and where to have fun.

Since that time, as a Hasbro employee, they adopted the guide as a way for new interns from out of State to feel welcomed. It of course had a Hasbro touch. And now, we are back at RISD, where it all started, based on all of the questions that I get from new faculty, staff and students. And not just from RISD, but from companies all over Rhode Island. So instead of getting frustrated or spending time answering questions individually, I revived this guide.

This 160pg guide is jam packed with Rhode Island facts, tidbits, hangouts, landmarks and everything you need to know- and things you didn’t know you need to know. Illustrations by: Nicholas Edwards Book layout by: Zoe Pulley

Please note: the image shown in a printing proof. The final product is stunning.

Available for PreOrder Print: $25. or PDF download $10

Venmo: Jessica-Brown-205 or Cash Ap: $theladyjbrown

MISSION:

We create safe and social healing spaces for Black Women and Women of Color to rest, recover, release, and rejoice at the water together. Our rest is not performative, it is preservation. We are reclaiming the water.

VISION:

To empower 1 million Black Women and Women of Color to learn to swim, offer access to bodies of water, and to create a space where we can gather in order to rest, dream and imagine, encourage and realize, confide and confront without judgement, and out of the white gaze.

At Float, we return Black Women back to the water, in the water and into themselves by providing access to bodies of water, hosting workshops, interventions, retreats, and gatherings.

Through a host of workshops, events, and kiki’s on land in the water, we come together to congregate and celebrate. Gatherings range from indoor sound baths, spa visits, beach visits, deprivation tank experience, chartered boat rides, ferry trips to nearby islands, picnics on the beach. Each woman that joins float, will also learn to swim.

We do this in private spaces so that we can gather without fear and judgement, to see ourselves reflected, allowing us the ability to build confidences on mutually shared experiences and to not feel obligated to perform or explain. And when we get together, we get loud. We get loud because we ARE loud. Our JOY is loud. And our REST is loud.

Our REST is loud because we are FREE. We are EBULLIENT and JOYFUL. When we are together, there is splashin’ and singin’, cryin’ and laughin’, cussin’ and fussin.’ Float is a space where it’s ok to be free in our bodies and demeanor. We are not self-conscious, embarrassed, or ashamed.

By removing barriers of transportation, costs, resident passes, or general lack of understanding of where to go, we give our Womxn a space to get “rest and relaxation without humiliation.”

At Float, we are at home. Welcome home. The water is divine.

Join us for workshops, activities, and Float Sessions. Upcoming: Black Women’s Private Water Journey at Bodhi Day Spa, May 19, 2pm. 15 Spaces Available 2.5 hrs, $95. Please email to reserve a space.

This is my house is a site-specific art performance piece meant to invite in communites of color and highlight where we have been left out.

It all started in 2018, when I was invited as a local artist to respond to a space inside of the museum. "This is MY house" started as a response to the coveted Grand Gallery, representing works from The 16th-19th centuries. The European works of art are considered the epitome of high art....but to whom and by whom? When I look around, I am not represented in this space. Thus I am not considered to be worthy as representative of "high art."

In collaboration with the Haus of Glitter Multi-cultural queer collective, we activated this space by creating a full spectacle with custom soundtrack, lighting, a vogue runway every 30 mins, and drum circle by Malian drummer Sidy Miga.

"This is MY House" is a thoughtfully curated [black] space about representation of native Sub-Saharan African Nobility and desired subjects- or the lack thereof. This is an immersive art performance piece wherein you will experience selected visual art pieces straight from the history books. I am raising awareness that the presence of Black people has conveniently been left out of the lessons of our arts history education and further has been left out of art history.

Working with a researcher, we were able to locate and highlight these magnificent works of art. My criteria: had to be made between 1500-1800 and couldn't show us in chains, enslaved or brutalized. Below are a few examples of what we found. It’s crazy how when you ask specific questions and broaden your search, you can find what you are looking for….

In my work, I create layers of engagement- giving audience members opportunities to enter the work in ways that feel comfortable to them. At the gallery, if they didn’t want to fully immerse themselves into the spectacle, or participate, they could grab a brochure and walk around the room to observe the new artwork. Or you could just sit and watch and meditate with the music and watch what was going on. If you had questions, there were people in the audience to answer them. Here is a portion of the brochure.

As Queen Mother, I didn’t speak during the show and had my Ladies in waiting speak for me and engage with the audience.

During the event, we opened up space for audience members to vogue, walk the runway, or dance. The museum has never been the same.

Since that event, we have performed TIMH at the Cedarhurst Musuem in Mount Vernon, IL, the Esek Hopkins House and Dexter Park in Providence, RI.

—”She is also extremely personable, witty, quick spoken and hospitable.” Whether straight up Lady J, or one of her characters, hire us for your next event.

We find creative opportunities in Rhode Island for youth and young adults to engage in community projects through art and design. Optimistic People Project!

We are a passionate mulit-media design/build collective of humans who create moments of uplift for our communities through acts of JOY and CELEBRATION as we continue on our path toward freedom and liberation.

We target high school and college aged artists, from schools and from the community in order to co-create and build our ideas.

We prioritize Black issues and issues facing other marginalized populations including Black Womxn, Womxn, People of Color, LGBTQIA, and Low/No income. We are Equity Centered and Equity Driven.

This exercise will be a blueprint on how to use arts and design to engage and respond rapidly on issues of social change whereby I can pull in students, youth, and citizen volunteers who want to use their skills and bodies as art performance and protest.

Additionally, we teach young artists how to work with clients, read and create contracts, how to price their work and how to advocate for themselves.

Soul Bingo 2017- Present

Welcome to SOooouul Bingo. This is not your Grandma's bingo game. Your favorite host Erma-Jean So-Fly will be spinning on the "Bs" and "Os" and you already know. Raise those daubers high, wax nostalgic as you watch vintage SoulTrain videos, and don't get left behind as we show off our flyest dance moves under the shimmer of the disco ball during the Soultrain

line- toot toot! Bring your friends and your good luck charms. I'll see you B4 and after! Someone's gotta win, and it might as well be yous. Be there or be triangle!

Contact me to book Mz. Erma- Jean So-Fly for birthday’s, events, or schools.

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Products “for the culture”

AKA the BEBO (because that sounds jive).

Concept born in 2017, this is still a Work In Progress. Agency will go live in September 2018.

The clandestine agency is modeled after the FBI and the CIA. It is now known as place that people can submit all racial questions to me, and I issue responses on behalf of my entire race, and the final decision is followed by a cool handshake and a head nod.

This project will feature a website, phone hotline, social media page, product line, lesson plans, and short form video content. Featured here are product concepts. Coming soon will be full member kits including: identification badge, shield, a set of stamps saying: “GET WOKE,” “READ THE ROOM,” and “CHECK YOUR PRIVILEGE;” note pads, memo’s, time cards, pen’s and pencils, and more.

—”I do serious things in a silly way.” This work ranges from creating characters, making performance art, music and television.

— From household objects, to furniture, to toys and games, to adaptive use, I’m always making something.

CLICK IMAGE TO PLAY. This is my official Spring 2023 Out of Office. I’m so ready for this sabbatical, well technically my pre- critical review leave. SABBATICAL noun: a period of paid leave granted to a university teacher or other worker for study or travel, traditionally one year for every seven years worked.

I would like this for every educator K-12. Hell- think almost every profession could use this. I’m excited to set and hold to my boundaries, to get rest, to center myself and get myself Healthy again. To nest, to open my new studio, and to play. PLAY!!! I said it. With this rest and space, I will be abundant in what I create. I also won’t enter back into my institution the same way I left. Please enjoy this video. Share out. Send to your institutions, non-profits, and corporations on behalf of yourself, because you need a break. See y’all on the other side💙🌊🧜🏾‍♀️

🙏🏾to the funkiest dude alive@avidavidmusic for playing on and producing this music for me. I truly love you homie and am way better with you!

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RISD Master’s Industrial Design Thesis 2009, Sustainable Food Waste System