Black Massillon Now| Event
Join Lake Erie College during Black History month and experience Amber Ford’s exhibit from the Massillon Museum Missing History of Massillon: Unheard African American Stories. Ford will hold an artist talk on February 15th from 5-7 p.m. at the Lincoln Library at Lake Erie College.
The Missing History of Massillon: Unheard African American Stories project was launched in 2020 to address the Museum’s deficit in content related to Massillon’s African American heritage while striving to be more welcoming to diverse populations. The exhibition opened on June 11, 2022 and the Missing History of Massillon Committee has been working to document the history of Massillon’s Black community, and to maintain and integrate representation of this history into the archives, collections, and shared memory of our community.
This event is free and open to the public. Ford’s talk will focus on her experience navigating Cleveland’s local art scene, where she is based, as a black woman and the commissioned works on display in the Lincoln Library, which were requested by Massillon Museum itself.
About Amber Ford:
Amber N. Ford is an artist and freelance photographer based in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. She holds a BFA in Photography from the Cleveland Institute of Art. While Ford’s practice is primarily in digital photography, she continues to explore other mediums such as alternative photographic processes, printmaking and collage art. Ford’s work in portraiture has gained national notoriety appearing in publication such as The Atlantic and Washington Post and she has exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, the Kent State University Museum, Transformer Station, SPACES Gallery, Youngstown State University and more.
Her work explores Blackness, identity and culture while questioning the accepted idealized conceptualization of “truth”. Ford describes her artistic practice as a “collaborative engagement between photographer and sitter,” wherein she, the photographer, establishes a platform to which the sitter constructs themselves. This allows the sitter to show up how they would like to be seen, unapologetically, and engages them in the conversation her works prompts.
Ford was a recipient of the Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award in 2017 and selected as a 2019 Gordon Square Arts District Artist-In-Residence for her outstanding achievements in photography. Her community-based photographic mural, “This Story is Mine and Ours” is located along the north wall of the Gordon Square Arcade on Alger Court. Ford was also a 2022 moCa Cleveland Artist-in-Residence where she is exploring the duality of dying and healing.