Critical Mass 2022… a double-digit decade marking the determination, drive, and do it like it’s never been done before attitude that Shreveport Regional Arts Council puts into celebrating the best visual and literary art of more than 100 Northwest Louisiana artists. Critical Mass 10 brings professional critical review to encourage the artists of the region to “up their game,” awards a $2,000 commission to those artists named “Best” by nationally acclaimed critics, and features a never-before-seen retrospective of winners of the last nine years of Critical Mass.
Critical MASS 10 Literary Works
Cherina Alford
Becoming
Yolanda Barnes
Thoughts and Musing
Tracy Lea Carnes
Dancing Lessons
Jrayis Deyond
Jrayis Deyond Poetry Collection
ML Dumars
Untouchable
June Rose Dowis
Reckoning
D.L. Holmes
“Words for No One Shared and Saved”
Dorie LaRue
Critical Mass Treading Charybdis
Rishard Lee
Untitled
Betsy Levels
The Leaves Were Falling
Tiffany Pennywell
Wings of Darkness
Kayvion Lewis
I Will Not Kill the Poet.
Debra Roberson
Listen and you will hear
Kendal Redel
Bodies of Water and Broken Things
Poetic X
“Braille”
Genaro Ky Ly Smith
A Napalm Lullaby
Kathryn Usher
I was 51. He was 36.
Crystalyn Whitaker-Nelson (Poetess Lady Munira)
The Colored Port Saga: Faithwalk Trinity
MEET THE CRITICS
Photo by John Gembitsky
Emily Wilkerson - VISUAL ART CRITIC
Emily Wilkerson is a writer and curator based in New Orleans. Deeply engaged in the concerns and issues of her community in the city of New Orleans, she enjoys writing about contemporary art as a departure point for exploring our shared social and cultural experiences around the globe.
Wilkerson's writing has been featured in Artforum.com, Art in America, BOMB, Art Papers, and the exhibition catalogs for the third, fourth, and fifth iterations of the Prospect New Orleans international contemporary art triennial. She has recently served as Assistant Editorial Director for Tulane's School of Liberal Arts and the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South, and held the position of Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs at Prospect New Orleans. She has worked on exhibitions and projects at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas, and the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans, among others. Wilkerson has consulted with organizations such as the Joan Mitchell Center and the Tennessee Triennial, and proudly serves on the board of directors of two residencies in New Orleans: A Studio in the Woods and PARSE NOLA.
Wilkerson completed her Master's at the University of Southern California in Art and Curatorial Practices in the Public Sphere in Los Angeles in 2012 and holds a B.A. from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. She is a native of Shreveport, Louisiana, where she attended Caddo Magnet High School.
Leigh Camacho Rourks - Literary Art Critic
Leigh Camacho Rourks is a Cuban-American author who lives and works in Central Florida, where she is an Assistant Professor of English and Humanities at Beacon College. She is the recipient of the St. Lawrence Book Award, the Glenna Luschei Prairie Schooner Award, and the Robert Watson Literary Review Prize, and her work has been shortlisted for several other awards. Her fiction, poems, and essays have appeared in a number of journals, including Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, RHINO, TriQuarterly, December Magazine, and Greensboro Review.