Experiential Creative Direction | Original Concept Development | Curatorial Strategy | Institutional PartnershipsKitchen Sessions
My Role | Creator | Creative Director | Lead Curator
2015–2019 | Seattle, Washington
Partners: Central District Forum for Arts & Ideas, Theater off jackson, Seattle Art Museum, Bellevue Arts Museum
Turning art into an immersive conversation.The Creative Challenge
What happens when we stop asking audiences to simply look at art and instead invite them to become part of the conversation?
Art exhibitions offer opportunities to encounter new perspectives, but the relationship between artwork and audience can often feel predetermined. The artist creates, the institution interprets, and the visitor observes.
I was interested in disrupting that relationship.
I wanted to explore what might happen if Black women artists were invited to respond to exhibitions through their own creative practices, transforming the experience of viewing art into something intimate, unexpected, and alive.
The challenge was to create a program that could bring new perspectives and audiences into established cultural institutions while allowing the artists themselves to shape the experience.
What if we could step inside a work of art and experience it through the stories of Black women?
The idea for Kitchen Sessions emerged during a visit to an art installation at a historic site in Seattle, Washington. I found myself sitting in a kitchen surrounded by some of the city's most prominent Black women creatives. The intimacy of the space, the richness of the conversation, and the collective creative energy sparked a question:
What if we transformed this moment into an immersive experience in response to art?
I imagined a program where Black women artists could respond to exhibitions and artworks through performance, storytelling, and conversation. Rather than simply viewing art, audiences would encounter it through the lived experiences, interpretations, and creative expressions of Black women.
I pitched the concept to Central District Forum for Arts & Ideas, transforming that initial moment of inspiration into Kitchen Sessions—an original, interdisciplinary performance series developed through partnerships with cultural institutions, including Seattle Art Museum and Bellevue Arts Museum.
Over four years, Kitchen Sessions evolved into a multi-partner, multi-year program that brought artists and audiences into new relationships with art, cultural spaces, and one another.
The central creative idea: Turn the experience of encountering art into an immersive, communal conversation—one where Black women are not simply subjects of cultural interpretation, but the artists shaping it.
The Big Idea
How?
From Inspiration to Experience
Kitchen Sessions began with a simple observation: the most transformative encounters with art sometimes happen through the conversations surrounding it.
I translated that observation into an immersive performance concept where artists could bring their own interpretations, histories, and creative practices into dialogue with existing works of art.
The experience was designed to feel less like a conventional performance and more like entering an ongoing conversation.
Art as a Creative Catalyst
Rather than developing performances independently of their surroundings, Kitchen Sessions invited artists to respond to the exhibitions and artworks being presented.
Each iteration became a new interpretation of the original concept.
The artwork provided a point of departure. The artists brought their own perspectives. The audience encountered something neither could have created alone.
This approach allowed the program to remain recognizable while continually generating new creative possibilities.
Building Institutional Partnerships
After pitching Kitchen Sessions to Central District Forum for Arts & Ideas, I helped bring the concept into partnership with cultural institutions, including Seattle Art Museum and Bellevue Arts Museum.
These collaborations created opportunities to experiment with how museums could engage audiences through contemporary Black performance and storytelling.
The program offered a different kind of encounter with art: one shaped by the creative voices of Black women and the relationships between performers, audiences, and institutional spaces.
Designing for Connection
The kitchen remained the conceptual heart of Kitchen Sessions.
Not simply as a physical setting, but as a metaphor for the places where stories are exchanged, ideas are challenged, memories are preserved, and relationships are formed.
I wanted audiences to experience the intimacy and spontaneity of those exchanges, even within the formal architecture of a museum.
Through performance and conversation, Kitchen Sessions encouraged audiences to move beyond observation and engage with the work through multiple perspectives.
Evolving the Concept Over Four Years
The strength of Kitchen Sessions was its ability to evolve without losing its identity.
Across four years, different artists, exhibitions, and institutional settings created new possibilities for the program.
Each presentation became an opportunity to reinterpret the original question: What happens when we invite artists to transform our experience of art?
The result was a flexible creative format that could respond to different artistic contexts while maintaining a consistent vision.
Outcomes & Impact
An original idea became a sustained, multi-partner creative experience.
Four years of original programming: Created and curated Kitchen Sessions from 2015 to 2019, sustaining and evolving the concept across multiple presentations.
Institutional partnerships: Developed the program through collaboration with Central District Forum for Arts & Ideas, Seattle Art Museum, and Bellevue Arts Museum.
Original experiential format: Established an adaptable approach to exhibition-responsive performance that connected visual art, storytelling, and audience engagement.
Artist-centered interpretation: Created opportunities for Black women artists to shape how audiences encountered and interpreted works of art.
Audience development: Helped cultural institutions engage communities through programming rooted in contemporary Black creative expression.
Creative longevity: Demonstrated the ability to move an original concept from pitch to production and sustain its relevance through changing collaborators, exhibitions, and venues.
The Result
What began as an unexpected moment in a Seattle kitchen became four years of artistic experimentation, institutional collaboration, and shared imagination.
Kitchen Sessions transformed a personal creative observation into a public experience that invited audiences to encounter art differently.
It demonstrated that a compelling idea doesn't have to remain tied to its original setting. With a clear creative vision, thoughtful partnerships, and room for interpretation, it can become a framework for entirely new experiences.
For me, Kitchen Sessions represents the heart of creative direction: recognizing a possibility that doesn't yet exist, bringing others into that vision, and building something that continues to evolve beyond the moment that inspired it.