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BabsonARTS exhibit comes of age at Hollister Gallery

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BabsonARTS Announces A Coming of Age: Paintings by LaShonda Cooks and Jamaal Eversley Artist Talk and Reception: Friday, September 15, 4:30 P.M. Exhibit on View: September 15-October 26 Hollister Gallery, Babson College Wellesley, MA — BabsonARTS is pleased to announce A Coming of Age: Paintings by LaShonda Cooks and Jamaal Eversly, from September 15 through October 26 at the Hollister Gallery, Babson College. The exhibition will open with an Artists Talk and Reception on Friday, September 15 at 4:30 P.M. in the Gallery.   This joint exhibition features two new series by two 2010 alumni: The Pursuit of Womanhood by LaShonda Cooks and Smells like Teen Spirit by Jamaal Eversley. Cooks has found strength and solace in painting women who define and defy societal roles. In this exhibition she combines her paintings with text collage to create a large mixed-media installation depicting her favorite female identifying influencers and icons, from familial to famous. Eversley’s bold paintings and drawings integrate influences of Geometric Abstraction and Pop Art with the West Indian palette of Barbados. His compositions are driven by the fictional characters that inhabit them; the focal character in this series is Eversley’s alter ego, Spencer Ward, a nerd in pursuit of love.  Jamaal Eversley, born in 1988, hails from Randolph, MA. With a business degree from Babson College, he has decided to pursue his talents as an eccentric abstract artist, intertwining business with the arts in order to serve the community. His art has been exhibited at Massachusetts General Hospital and shown throughout the South Shore and Boston area including Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. In the past couple of years, he has received several public art grants to bring his colorful patterns to the community and was featured in the Boston Globe for one of his grant funded murals. This year, he has received three grants to create bold abstract paintings for this exhibition and to establish a scholarship fund for Massachusetts high school seniors. Mor information about him, his scholarship and his work can be found at jamonit.carbonmade.com LaShonda Cooks is a Dallas-based artist and writer who loves exploring cultural norms, identity and beauty through words and images. She received her BS from Babson College in 2010. While there Cooks, the daughter of an art teacher, balanced her business education with her life-long interest in the arts, by working in the college’s ceramic studio and exploring color in glaze and underglaze tiles. Those color studies birthed her signature pointillist painting style that features short fluid strokes and multiple layers of colors. Painting people is her specialty. She regularly captures the features and essence of clients for commission pieces of all sizes and depicts her favorite icons and influencers on canvas as well. Her work has been featured in the Conception Dallas Art Show, Pancakes and Booze Art Show, ArtLoveMagic Girl Show and UrbanChatter Art Show. Her work can be found at www.shondasart.com or on her six-year- old blog, The Re-Education of LaShonda.  This exhibition is supported in part by grants from the Bridgewater, Brockton, and Randolph Cultural Councils, local agencies that are supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency. BabsonARTS presents visual and performing arts events and exhibitions at the Sorenson Center for the Arts and other venues on the campus of Babson College in Wellesley, MA.  Program offerings include works produced by Commonwealth Shakespeare Company, Babson’s theater-in- residence; visiting artists, performers, and speakers; and the activities of Babson’s faculty-directed student groups.  The mission of BabsonARTS is to serve the educational needs of students, to provide cultural avenues to the residents of communities surrounding the campus, and to explore the connections among entrepreneurship, innovation, and creativity through the arts.  For more information call 781.239.5880, or visit  www.babsonarts.org.

BabsonARTS announces its upcoming exhibition,  A Coming of Age: Paintings by LaShonda Cooks and Jamaal Eversley.

Artist Talk and Reception: Friday, September 15, 4:30 P.M.
Exhibit on View: September 15-October 26
Location: Hollister Gallery, Babson College

This joint exhibition features two new series by two 2010 alumni: The Pursuit of Womanhood by LaShonda Cooks, and Smells like Teen Spirit by Jamaal Eversley.

Cooks has found strength and solace in painting women who define and defy societal roles. In this exhibition she combines her paintings with text collage to create a large mixed-media installation depicting her favorite female identifying
influencers and icons, from familial to famous.

Eversley’s bold paintings and drawings integrate influences of Geometric Abstraction and Pop Art with the West Indian palette of Barbados. His compositions are driven by the fictional characters that inhabit them; the focal character in this series is Eversley’s alter ego, Spencer Ward, a nerd in pursuit of love.

This exhibition is supported in part by grants from the Bridgewater, Brockton, and Randolph Cultural Councils, local agencies that are supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency.

For more information about BabsonARTS call 781.239.5880, or visit BabsonARTS.

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