ARTIST STATEMENT: ANDREA “PHILLY” WALLS

“In the Sweet Summer Time” reflects the ordinary delights of Black Life in Philadelphia—the simple, unsung moments known only to ourselves.

Good Foot

The View From Up Here

HBCU Pride

Couples Skate

Big City Beautiful Women

Shimmy

Fabulous

Quenched

Moko Jumbies

Candy Lip Lovers

Andrea “Philly” Walls is a poet and multi-media artist. She finds beauty, complexity, depth and contradiction in every sight and sound, taking solace in the creative process, making art across genres as an act of resistance. She is grateful to the Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation, The Leeway Foundation, The Hedgebrook Community for Women Authoring Change, and The Women’s Mobile Museum for their ongoing support and sustenance. She is pleased that her poetry and visual art have found homes in publications she admires, including Callaloo, Journal of African Diaspora Arts & Letters; Solstice Literary Magazine; Tidal Basin Review; Kweli; The Fourth River; bozalta: Arts, Activism & Scholarship and heart (human equity through art) online journal. She lives and makes art in Philadelphia and is the creator of The D’Archive and The Black Body Curve.

“In the Sweet Summer Time” is the winner of the 2019-20 Ryan R. Gibbs Award for Photography, judged by Elliott Jerome Brown Jr. Please see our contest page for more information.