“Bus-Hood” by Try Cheatham
Note: This VolunteerMatch Young Ambassador Series post is written by Abelard Lormond. The Ambassador series blogs offer practical insights into causes and volunteer opportunities championed by VolunteerMatch or members of our partner network, to provide personal insight and shine a light on the unique work of our nonprofit partners.
Every month, VolunteerMatch features the work of artists who are passionate about social justice causes. All the earnings that are made from promoting the artist’s work in VolunteerMatch’s Match Studio Collaborative shop are given to a charity of the artist’s choice.
For the month of February, VolunteerMatch is featuring the artist, Try Cheatham. Cheatham has worked on a variety of pieces, all which give messages of social injustices. “My work confronts the fundamentally opposing ideas of experience and metaphor,” says Cheatham on her official website.
One of Cheatham’s most inspiring works is one called “Bus-Hood.” In the painting, a little black girl is seen sitting in the front of a bus in the ‘whites only’ section. The art does well in providing the same message that those like Rosa Parks and Claudette Colvin were working to get out there.
To better understand Cheatham’s intentions as an artist and her motive for getting into art in the first place, I asked her a few questions regarding her work. Here are the questions and her official responses:
A: The same detractors also are the reasoning people support me because I’m unique and don’t provide stereotypes in my work.