Nationality American Website kristafranklin.com | ||
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Writers on craft krista franklin
Krista Franklin is an African-American poet and visual artist, whose main artistic focus is collage. Her work, which addresses race, gender, and class issues, combines personal, pop-cultural, and historical imagery.
Contents
- Writers on craft krista franklin
- Krista franklin reads at phoenix military academy
- Early life and education
- Art
- Poetry
- Exhibitions
- Books
- Awards and fellowships
- References
Krista franklin reads at phoenix military academy
Early life and education
Franklin is originally from Dayton, Ohio. She received her BA from Kent State University, and her MFA in Interdisciplinary Book & Paper Arts from Columbia College Chicago where, in 2013, she wrote her thesis titled The Two Thousand & Thirteen Narrative(s) of Naima Brown that brought to life a girl changeling on the precipice of young adulthood and has received recognition for her work from such prestigious programs as the Arts Incubator at the University of Chicago. She is based in Chicago, Illinois, where in 2007 she was the recipient of a Chicago Artist Assistance Program Grant for her art book SEED (The Book of Eve), which she says was based upon the dystopic visions of the award-winning African-American science-fiction writer Octavia E. Butler.
Art
Franklin's artwork includes themes of surrealism and utopic and dystopic visions, with subtexts of black beauty, self-reflection, and the African Diaspora. She has described her approach as both Afro-Futurist and Afro-Surrealist. She has stated, "Inspiration is a myth created to feed the romantic lure around artists and artistry. Art is thinking and labor."
Her artwork has been featured in the television series Empire. Her collages have also been used on the covers of several poetry collections, including John Murillo’s Up Jumps the Boogie (2010) and Lita Hooper’s Thunder in Her Voice (2010). She has also had her work published in American Studies, Callaloo, and Ecotone.
Regarding her talent in the art of collage, Franklin said, “I learned the art of collage through watching my family make something out of nothing,” she said, “That’s really where my collage aesthetic comes from. It comes from an idea of necessity, you know, how you make something beautiful out of scraps.” In one of her series exploring race and gender, particularly in the context of the grotesque, she used human hair as a main material.
Poetry
Franklin's writing was influenced by the poets of the Black Arts Movement, including Nikki Giovanni and Sonia Sanchez.
Her poetry is included in the anthologies The Bust Guide to the New Girl Order (Penguin Books, 1999) and Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam (Penguin Books, 2001). She has had her poetry published in Black Camera. In 2011, she was a featured performer as well as a celebrity judge at the Gypsy Poetry Slam held in Lexington, Kentucky.
Exhibitions
Books
Awards and fellowships
