Jameela F. Dallis. 2020. 4x5 Large Format Camera. 
Jemella F. Dallis is writer, artist and educator with a Ph.D. in English. Jamella’s publications range from love poems and dance reviews to scholarly book chapters on Gothic literature.

For every movement, there's anti movement. This reader experienced: in 2016 North Carolina passed the country's first bathroom bill — a law saying people have to use the bathroom matching the sex on their birth certificate.
A non consensual orgy of negativity spewed North Carolina's way, a toxic high five gang bang condemnation of all inhabitants. Millions of dollars in funding were with-drawn from the state; concurrently zero dollars were redirected to better fund the numerous LGBTQ's Centers serving communities that exist for North Carolinians. 
I wanted to take that negative energy and turn it into positivity by physically presenting the silent symphony of individuals who's ethos contributes to the landscape of The Creative State† by artistically sending their vibrations into the universe - imbued with love, science, and magic - captured on film of surrealism portraits abstract as music.
Between creating images, through every day routine, would over hear outlandish thoughts framed in misinformation; this unintentional sociological collaboration of material assisted "prompts"—further engaging the abstraction, pushing the work to create a plethora of artistic mediums that became naivety reflecting pools like a child personifying moving clouds.
Artists & Americans is an experimental documentation project of creatives practicing in North Carolina, captured as surrealist portraiture film stills on analog film cameras—in conversation with sculpture, painting, wall based text, stop-motion, and illustration. 
This body of work is the oddest of journey's: imagine kissing a thought - an ugly warty toad of thought - only to magically reveal sweet spirits, and the enchanted interconnectedness of art.


"If art doesn't make us better, then what on earth is it for?"                                                                —Alice Walker 





† formerly know as The Tobacco State, North Carolina is presently known as The Creative State