DeSande R | Labor of Love

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ink drawing of a female welder

DeSande R | Labor of Love
Febrary 18 - April 5, 2025


In partnership with the Black Student Resource Center, DeSande is our fetured artist for Black
History Month. DeSande R is an educated artist born in Chicago, Illinois, and currently resides in
Carbondale, Illinois. In college she researched African American artists such as Laura
Wheeler-Waring, Adrian Piper, Archibald Motley Jr, Jacob Lawrence, and Elizabeth Catlett. Other
influential artists during her gradu-ate school years were Rembrandt van Rijn and Odd Nerdrum.
DeSande worked closely with Professor Najjar Abdul-Musawwir (International Artist), the Emeritus
Robert Paulson, and many other excellent art professors at Southern Illinois University. She
received her Master of Fine Arts degree in Painting from SIU Carbondale in 2002.

DeSande taught at John A. Logan College in Carterville, Illinois, for 20 years. She previously worked on paintings concerning influential people in the community, Billie Holiday, and Nina Simone. She also ventured into analog photography within the subject of portraiture. Some of her previous works encompass using pens to do expressive drawings and doing print making of linoleum block prints. DeSande is currently working on a series of linoleum block prints portraying the natural hair styles of African American men and women, African symbols and the history behind it, and iconic musicians and singers.