Misty Sol
Artist-in-Residence, Water Spirit
Misty Sol is a writer, visual artist, and performer from small-town Pennsylvania who creates art that explores Black people’s connections to nature, wellness, and speculation. For the Lenapehoking~Watershed art project, Misty installs an earth oven at Bartram's Garden to act as a site for gathering and exploration of Black and Indigenous Identity in Philadelphia.
Her paintings, children’s book illustration, stories and eco practice are heavily influenced by Black history and aesthetics. Particularly, her grandmother’s history as a migrant farmworker, midwife, and gifted storyteller in early 20th century America. From her grandmother’s tales of dangerous journeys in the racist North and Jim Crow South, to her epic Bible tales and terrifying ghost stories, Misty’s work inherits a sense of narrative, sensuality, magic, timelessness, hope, the bucolic and fecund. Also contained are senseless abstractions, images of stark violence, and the weight of oppression. Ultimately she uses these elements to distill elements of dignity, legacy, humor, and connection. With acrylic color vibrant as her gardens, the gurgle of a stream, a hymn her grandmother used to sing, the smell of onions, and the coolness of garden soil, she creates a body of work that explores and affirms the experience of Black humanity.
Her work is currently on display at Slought Gallery in Philly as a part of a traveling exhibition produced by The Colored Girls Museum. Her work has also been shown at Burlington College, Headlong Theatre, The Moore College of Art, and Philadelphia Museum of Art: Art Splash. In 2016, Misty Sol received the Leeway Transformation award, for her commitment to socially engaged art.
Misty Sol has a BA in Literature from Penn State University Park and an MFA in Interdisciplinary Art from Goddard College. When she isn’t painting or writing, Misty enjoys making meals from scratch, gardening, and foraging for wild edible plants and medicines. Misty currently resides in Philadelphia.
