The walls of ARTISANworks pop with fine-art paintings, kitschy collectibles and even a pinhole camera built from a Tibetan skull. This month, the art-dense venue will also be home to woodworks that channel ancient mythology and wisdom via earthy presentation.
“Elevated Places,” a gallery event on August 8 presented by the Rochester Black Arts Council, centers 14 new pieces from artist Aaron Calvin directly inspired by the concept of the divine feminine. They’ll help set the tone and, as organizers put it, “breathe life into sacred narratives” as they mingle with musical and spoken-word performances.
Calvin, a pyrographer, created the stunning works with a wood-burning pen — a change-up from his earlier method of using acrylics.
“Once I started practicing, I started doing a little dibbling (and) dabbling and came up with an artistic view of doing more of a spiritual sense of art,” he said. “I wanted to mix that with the pictorial images to tell a story of our past or ancient times.”
The results are striking: highly detailed, textured images and words that leap from the plywood, thanks to what Calvin calls the “flavor” of the material. He makes the custom frames himself.
A Rochester native, Calvin spent time in Mississippi and North Carolina and studied computer science before beginning his pyrography practice. He aims to grab attention and with it, slow down a viewer’s gaze.
“I blend in different burning images so that you may see a full picture, but within the full picture, there are smaller pictures. It makes you focus on the entire picture itself,” he said. “It’s hopefully trying to hypnotize and be tranquil at the same time to absorb the knowledge and the spiritual essence of it.”
The Rochester Black Arts Council, anchored by lead program coordinator Dominique El Bey, strategically organized the show during Black August. The monthlong commemoration aims to honor freedom fighters and community builders “whose sacrifices continue to inspire the pursuit of justice, liberation and self-determination,” according to El Bey’s curator statement for the exhibition.
“‘Elevated Places’ calls upon each visitor to slow down, reflect and listen — to themselves, to their ancestors and to the wisdom carried within the work,” the statement continues. “It is an invitation to rediscover the sacred, to celebrate the beauty of the melanated aesthetic and to recognize Black creativity as both cultural inheritance and visionary expression.”
Joining Calvin are pianist Monique White, recording artists Khari Porchea and Emerald Dawn and poet Ja’Miah Smith.
Smith, who has worked with the council since 2024, attended School of the Arts for creative writing and Howard University for media, journalism and film. She will read new works meant to be in conversation with the music and the visual art from Calvin, as well as the broader themes of the showcase.
“A lot of my poetry comes from a space of femininity,” she said. “It comes from a space of Black experience. It comes from my experience in that realm. With my poetry, I aim to embody that depiction of divine femininity and how that takes place in our relationships, in the building of our community, in the unity of people.”
The aim of message-driven events like “Elevated Places,” Smith said, is to encourage this unity among “different aspects of the Black community” and to center “having our own wealth and pouring out into the community all that we have that may not always be displayed.”
For Calvin, that message is about balance.
“What I hope is to bridge a gap in the relationships throughout our community to focus on the importance of having a masculine and feminine balance in the nuclear family,” he said.
To do that, he’s harkened back to some of the earliest stories that exist. One of his works, “Put on the Full Armor of A Godly Woman,” channels St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians to underscore that theme of the divine feminine.
“It’s a divine attribute given to us by the Most High in order to not just heal our families but be a structural piece of unconditional love,” Calvin said.
“Elevated Places” will take place 12-4 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 8 at ARTISANworks. The event is followed by a 3 p.m. conversation on Sunday, Aug. 9 titled “Reclaiming Our Worth,” also at ARTISANworks. Find more information on both here.
