Okorie Johnson and Chaunesti Webb-Johnson obtained married in 2022. (photograph by Adinah Morgan)
If you happen to speak with them lengthy sufficient, you’ll uncover that Okorie Johnson and Chaunesti Webb-Johnson have a shared inventive imaginative and prescient that was destined to convey them collectively.
The couple desires to develop what Individuals — particularly Black Individuals — consider as Black artwork and the areas through which African American artists play and contribute.
It’s an idea they name “Large Tent Blackness,” the place what is taken into account authentically Black artistry goes past conventional classes akin to hip-hop and R&B for music; Jacob Lawrence for visible arts; or James Baldwin for literature. It celebrates nation music as Black, experimental theater as Black and some other artwork type created by a Black artist as Black.
“Now we have so many conversations about ‘Large Tent Blackness,’” stated Okorie, 50. “The concept is to query who will get invited to the get together of Blackness, what do you get to do as a Black artist and what do it’s a must to need to take part to be thought-about Black.”
It’s a problem that’s near the couple’s coronary heart. Okorie is a celebrated cellist who has recorded three albums, carried out on nationwide TV reveals such because the Tamron Corridor Present, opened for singer Maxwell and contributed music to an Atlanta Journal-Structure documentary that gained a neighborhood Emmy.
Chaunesti, 47, performs avant-garde theater, dance and improvisation that discover methods Black girls use to contest energy, declare company over their our bodies and picture a extra breathable, liberated world.
However typically they run into people who find themselves complimentary of their abilities however should not positive their work is their cup of tea.
“Each occasionally, I get people who find themselves like ‘Oh, wow, you pay your payments doing this,’” says Okorie, who performs beneath the identify Okorie “OkCello” Johnson. “I’m glad you are able to do it. I won’t come to your present, however you retain doing that.”
Chaunesti, who’s curator of collections on the Spelman School Museum of Fantastic Artwork, has additionally run into this in a few of her work, akin to Ready for the Cactus to Bloom, an experimental solo efficiency from 2024 that used soundscapes, poetry and deliberate pauses to dramatize rigidity in dwelling as much as the world’s expectations
“It’s not August Wilson; it’s not Lorraine Hansberry,” stated Chaunesti, including that Okorie did the music for the present. “It’s one thing that kind of falls between classes, not fairly visible artwork however not squarely dance both.”
That kindred want to convey outsiders into the large tent is how they bonded after assembly by means of social media in 2021. Chaunesti, a local of Durham, North Carolina, was dwelling in Chicago, engaged on her Ph.D. at Northwestern College on the time, and was considering shifting to Atlanta due to its vibrant Black arts scene. She was a fan of Okorie, who lived in Atlanta, and the pair discovered one another on-line.
They have been concurrently going by means of breakups with separate companions throughout these preliminary conversations and located consolation in one another’s firm at a troublesome time.
“There started this actually stunning present of an epistolary romance that’s virtually a year-and-a-half lengthy,” stated Okorie, a local of Washington, D.C. “We wrote one another lots.”
In a single alternate, Okorie penned a poem that Chaunesti cherishes to today. It reads partially, “I’m watching my cellphone, desirous to sort one thing to you uplifting, flirty, insightful. Wished to distract you — myself even — from the heavy work earlier than you, me, us. I don’t have that magic sentence — that mixture of phrases that makes all of it simple. However I then marvel at how soundly I’m standing, how peacefully I’m typing this, how optimistically I’m musing on the long run — despite the fact that it’s so heavy. One thing in me is buoyant towards its anchor.”
Regardless of their chemistry, the couple didn’t rush into the romance. Chaunesti moved dwelling to North Carolina to take care of her grandmother, who was ailing, however continued to write down to Okorie, who was in the course of a divorce from his spouse of 20 years.
However it didn’t take lengthy for them to comprehend they belonged collectively.
“Our discussions have been romantic and candy and, you understand, flirtatious,” Chaunesti stated. “However then they have been additionally like us, kind of unpacking our lives and speaking about our aspirations and our ambitions and discovering factors of connection and alignment. And it simply turned actually clear fairly rapidly that we discovered our particular person.”
The couple married in November 2022.
Okorie is engaged on his fourth album, which is anticipated to be launched on October 31. He bristles at being known as only a classical artist, saying the outline doesn’t do justice to the breadth of his artistry.
“I play modern music that’s on the intersection of classical and jazz,” he stated. “That intersection for me invitations an exploration of funk, blues, hip-hop, reggae, dance corridor — of all of this music that comes out of the African diaspora.”
Along with her work at Spelman, Chaunesti has develop into a demise doula. She took an interest within the subject about seven years in the past however determined to pursue it after the latest demise of a cousin.
“That was most likely the start of me pursuing deathcare as my kind of life work,” she stated. “So I’ve accomplished a certification program and am starting to work with hospice now.”
She additionally has labored with contemporary and dried flowers as a medium, sharing a few of her work with buddies. Subsequent month, Chaunesti will host a group gathering that blends open dialog about demise with intuitive flower arranging throughout November Nights at The Anchor, a efficiency house in Grant Park.
Whereas Chaunesti and Okorie share a want to develop the ideas round Black artwork, they’re opposites in a method: Chaunesti is an introvert, whereas Okorie is an extrovert.
However the couple says that performs of their favor. Okorie has discovered that on the times when he isn’t on the highway for a gig, he’s happiest when Chaunesti works from dwelling. It’s common for him to work upstairs in his dwelling workplace and name for her to return be a part of him to take heed to a brand new piece.
And if he doesn’t name, she might make a request herself, she stated. She finds his music and the cello soothing.
“I feel we do effectively collectively,” she stated. “I don’t know that each one {couples} would say they love working from dwelling collectively. However on the times that I’m right here and he’s within the workplace, it’s a deal with to have the ability to have these occasional check-ins and simply moments to see each other.
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Leon Stafford is an award-winning journalist with greater than 30 years expertise at varied newspapers, together with The Atlanta Journal-Structure, the Lexington Herald-Chief and the Knoxville Information-Sentinel. He has lined municipal authorities, enterprise, schooling, hospitality and the humanities throughout his profession.