One of Eastern Michigan University's art students had the opportunity to showcase her talent by displaying her own art exhibition in the Student Center Art Gallery on Sunday, March 24, from 5-8 p.m.
Nia Crutcher, who intends to graduate in Fall 2024 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, and then later pursue a Master's, hopes to display the skills she's learned from her time at EMU.
"I've been dabbling more and like surreal art styles, too. More specifically, we are talking about how hair, nature, and how we as Black women and nature all like to fit together, and how it's similar in how we care for ourselves," Crutcher said.
Titled "A Black Girls Garden," Crutcher's exhibition will run from Sunday, March 24, to Friday, April 5.
"I've been painting and drawing since, like, before I could even remember. I started taking lessons and everything in elementary school, so I knew that this was what I wanted to do for so long. But what inspires me to make art is more of like my personal experiences, as a Black woman in white spaces, and also just dealing with my hair, and the experiences with that, and the struggles, and also the beauties of that as well, too," Crutcher said.
Read More: Women in art at EMU: Nia Crutcher
Though this is not Crutcher's first gallery as she has been featured in Ford Hall, and in the children’s museum in Detroit at the Live Coal Gallery at 80 Clairmount, this is her first solo exhibition at EMU. She described this experience as a "full-circle moment."
"Capturing the beauty of Black women in our hair, and also like the issues that come with that when it comes to being in the white spaces. Also, how frustrating it can be to have hair like this. People don't understand the experience or don't know how to take care of it the same way that we do," Crutcher said.
Despite this accomplishment, Crutcher has goals of owning her own art gallery.
"I eventually wanna have my own gallery space and cafe for people of color, and more specifically like women and non-binary presenting people, but if not that, just people of color in general, for sure, especially younger people of color, like more opportunities to show their work early, or be able to get that experience of maybe working in gallery spaces, but also providing jobs for young people to show they're artists and working on their careers. Hence the cafe part of that," Crutcher said.
