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Elissa Blount-Moorhead

Elissa Blount-Moorhead is a Baltimore-based producer, artist, writer, curator and lecturer. She co-founded Red Clay Arts in NYC where she curated and produced over 20 groundbreaking exhibitions and multimedia projects in New York City, Europe, the Carribbean, and beyond. Blount-Moorhead is an advocate for social change through her interdisciplinary work in visual art, music, design, and film. She has produced public art events, gallery exhibitions, films, and education programs since the early 90s. She was the Director of Design, Programming and Exhibitions at Weeksville Heritage Center from 2007- 2013. Blount-Moorehead was appointed by Mayor Rawlings-Blake to serve as Public Arts Commissioner in 2015.

Education and Background

Elissa Blount-Moorhead was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She initially studied to become an entertainment lawyer, but changed her career path to follow her artistic pursuits. She was living in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn before her move to Baltimore in 2014, where she joined the Contemporary Museum Baltimore's curatorial advisory council. Elissa Blount-Moorhead studied at Syracuse University College of Law and received her degree in 1993, and later received her MFA in interior design at Parsons School of Design in 2007.

Work

Elissa Blount-Moorhead has worked to engender social change through the form of visual and auditory art. She has worked extensively as an educator in regards to existing racial inequalities in society, developing gallery and community-based exhibitions since 1991. She co-founded Red Clay Arts in New York City, an arts organization, and served as Director of RushKids, an initiative administered by Rush Arts Gallery. Moreover, she also led the Weeksville Heritage Center, an African American community, and Tandem, an arts and social practice team, with Rylee Eterginoso. She holds a partnership with award-winning filmmakers Arthur Jafa and Malik Sayeed in the film studio TNEG, and wrote a "raunchy" picture book, called P is for Pussy (2015), an alphabet book filled with double-entendres.

Work as an Educator

Elissa Blount-Moorhead created and taught the Cultural Pluralism course for Pratt Institute's Graduate School of Art and Cultural Management (1999-2011), and has been teaching at the Parsons Graduate School of Design at Cooper Hewitt since 2012. She has also directed RushKids, an arts education program, which was administered by Rush Arts Gallery (2001-2003). She lectures and publishes work internationally covering environmental design, history, and museology.

Red Clay Arts

Elissa Blount-Moorhead co-founded Red Clay Arts, a Brooklyn-based nonprofit arts organization dedicated to providing a platform for emerging media and experimental artistic expression. With Red Clay Arts, she curated and produced over 20 groundbreaking exhibitions and programs, both in New York and London. These exhibitions include "Random Occurrences" (2005), a multi-venue exhibition in conjunction with Project Diversity; "Cat Calls" (2001), a Street Harassment project at St Ann's Warehouse and the NYC Museum; and "Practicum" (2002), the inaugural experimental series at BRIC. With Red Clay Arts, Elissa Blount-Moorhead travelled to Jamaica, where she and her team taught children photography, photojournalism, new media and experimental artistic expression.

The Weeksville Heritage Center

Elissa Blount Moorhead was the Vice Director and later Director of Design, Programming, and Exhibitions at Weeksville Heritage Center, a multi-dimensional museum dedicated to preserving the history of the 19th century African American community of Weeksville in Brooklyn, New York. She led Weeksville alongside Public Programs Curator Rylee Eterginoso, using innovative programs to preserve and educate about the history of Weeksville. While working at Weeksville, Blount-Moorhead had not only taken a significant part in the development of its education and programming system, but also created and co-curated The Garden Party Series of music and culture. She is notable for bringing cutting-edge international music and food to Weeksville as part of The Garden Party Series. Blount-Moorhead had also taken part as the Internal Project Director and Design Consultant for the construction of the forthcoming LEED Gold Cultural Arts Building, which is intended to host more exhibitions.

TNEG

Elissa Blount-Moorhead began her partnership with cinematographers Arthur Jafa ("Daughters of the Dust," "Crooklyn," "Dreams Are Colder Than Death," "Florida Water") and Malik Sayeed ("He Got Game," "Belly") in 2013, establishing the film studio TNEG. Their goal is to develop and produce new black independent films, but films that will also “push what we understand to be new black cinema and to create not just new narratives, but also new aesthetics and technical parameters within black cinema." She says, "I feel like independent film in general is becoming more well-regarded and more supported. If you just think back 20 years there was no IFC, or things like that. There are more alternative platforms now, like Netflix, that are now commissioning and financing work that will go directly through their channels—those are the ways you are able to provide an outlet for people and to hopefully allow filmmakers to create a voice that is not contingent on mainstream and Hollywood expectations."