art.
about.
Designs By Bolaji
Designs by Bolaji is an art consultant company that creates and celebrates diasporic art. We bring art from the African Diaspora to Universities, Businesses, and various other organizations.
We believe deeply in social entrepreneurship and pursue social justice by hiring formerly incarcerated youth to create art. Since the owner is currently enrolled in Law School, the activism portion of the buisiness is suspended. However, we look forward to hiring youth in the near future.
When active, our youth will be paid not just to create art, but to pursue an education so that they can transition well back into society and earn money to rebuild a life post-incarceration. The program lasts for 2 years and is designed to equip youth with the understanding that is necessary to pursue self-determination. The end goal of the 2 year employment program is a deeper awareness of self and societal injustices, healing, and Industry Placement or Higher Education in the form of College or Vocational Education dependent on each youth. Our work study aspect of our employment includes Roots Programming, African Language Acquisition, and Civic Engagement.
Roots Programming
For the sake of self determination and greater awareness of self, youth will learn about Black History from the inception of this country through Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and Current events reading authors including but not limited to W.E.B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King Jr., Sojourner Truth, Malcolm X, Ta Nehisi Coates, and Michelle Alexander.
African Language
In order to pursue a global perspective, each youth will be given the opportunity to choose to study an African language one-on-one with a college mentor. Languages may include Yoruba, Hausa, Swahili. We are working towards potentially planning a trip for each youth to the country whose language they've studied at the end of the two year program.
Civic Engagement, Life Skills, & Community Service
In order to encourage civic participation and intellectual engagement with society - at - large. Our youth participants are also taught life skills including financial literacy courses, interview skills, time management, conflict resolution, and stress management skills.
Youth will also be taught about civic engagement and required to do community service in a placement of their choosing.
Mentorship
Each youth will be paired with a college mentor to help aid in their reintegration back into society and to invest in their academic development.
Biography
Bolaji Ogunsola is a Nigerian-American from Baltimore, MD. She has lived in Cuba, Brazil, and Nigeria so she is Baltimore style with Nigerian flair accompanied by Cuban and Brazilian rhythms.
She graduated with an AB in Sociology from Harvard College in 2010 and a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School in 2014.
She spent 11 years living in Boston, MA where she worked as a Summer Director of Programs at the Phillips Brooks House Association in Harvard Yard and also served as staff support for the Youth Prison Tutoring partnered with the Judge John Connelly Youth Center. Additionally, she was a Teaching Fellow at Harvard Divinity School and is the Lead Organizer for the Sankofa Black Business Collective where she established a long-term partnership with the Harvard Black Law Students Association and Black Lives Matter Cambridge.
Bolaji is currently lives in NY and is enrolled in Columbia Law School where she is focusing on criminal justice. She will receive her JD in 2020. She seeks to live at the intersection of art, faith, justice, and healing.
In her own words:
"I am a growing artist who paints furniture. I’ve been interested in art and design for a while now. I started sketching in middle school and continued on and off as a hobby through high school. I designed jewelry for friends and family members using beads or painted mussel shells. When I got to college, I stopped making jewelry and the only sketching that I did was in the margins of my papers while taking notes for classes, besides a huge butterfly that I painted one day on my bedroom wall—I’ve always loved butterflies. At the end of my Master’s program, in the midst of writing my final papers, I found my way back to art through a different medium—furniture.
Honestly, I painted my first table as a result of having acquired a hideous pale blue table that clashed with the color scheme of my apartment. I decided to spray paint the table black. After butchering the spray-painting job, I decided to cover my errors with a design—a butterfly. This was the genesis of my furniture-painting journey."
Artist's Statement
What is the relationship between art and beauty? What about art and truth? What is beauty? What is truth? Where does art belong? Where does beauty belong?
These are the questions that I am pursuing as I create art.
Where does art belong?
My canvases are unorthodox. I paint furniture. I paint furniture because it is unexpected—it is not a place, for many reasons, that art is thought to belong. I want to challenge the way that we think about art and where it can be located. I would like to be part of turning ordinary pieces of furniture into masterpieces.
What is beauty?
I find joy in painting black women in brilliant and bold colors because for so long our beauty has been questioned—we have not been thought to be nor have we often been represented as beautiful. In painting black women, I hope to affirm our beauty.
What about art and beauty?
My hope in painting is to combine colors to create pieces that leave my viewers visually mesmerized and in awe—that is to say, to create beauty. I believe that in a world that feels overwhelmingly dark at times and where it is easy to become hardened by cynicism and slide into a space of despair, the creation of beauty is important. If there is still beauty in the midst of ugliness then perhaps, there is hope. And if there is hope, then maybe we’ll begin to think, from whence does a true and enduring hope come from? For me, my deepest hope comes from a belief in a God of love, justice, healing, and redemption. He is the original Creator who spoke and it was. While I am painting, I am usually praying. I hope that my art reflects that I am an image-bearer of the Most High and I hope that as people gaze upon the beauty of the pieces that I create, that people will somehow feel cared for—that they’d feel loved.
Exhibitions & Shows
Solo Exhibition: Art Installation in The Harvard College Women’s Center
Solo Exhibition: Art Installation in Pforzheimer House, Harvard University, 2015-2016
Gallery Feature: Dr. Walter J. Leonard Black Arts Festival at Harvard University, February 2015
Solo Exhibition: Our Bloc Conference, November 2015
Solo Exhibition: Sexual Assault, Faith & Healing Movie Screening & Interfaith Panel Conversation, March 2016
Smith College, Self-Love Symposium, March 2016
Solo Exhibition, Smith College, April 2016
The Harvard Phillips Brooks House Association Summer Urban Program Auction, April 2016
New Profit's Conference Pipelines for Purpose: Diversifying the Social Sector for Greater Impact, April 2016
MIT Art Exhibition, May 2016
Solo Exhibition: The Boston Black Arts Music Festival, June 2016
Solo Exhibition: Harvard Black Law Students’ Association, October 2016
The Dorchester Open Studios, October 2016
Solo Exhibition: Our Bloc Conference, Building Black Legacy, November 2016
The Sankofa Black Business Pop-up in Harvard Yard, November 2016
Harvard African Law Association Empowering Africa by Empowering Women Benefit Dinner, November 2016
Solo Exhibition: Tufts University, African Students’ Organization, November 2016
Harvard University, Cabot Cafe, January 2017
Solo Exhibition: The Harvard African Student's Association 40th Anniversary Royalty: The History of the Empire, March 2017
Harvard Law School, Harvard Black Law Students' Association Spring Conference: Black Brilliance, Black Joy: A Celebration of Business & Culture, April 2017
Columbia Law School, The Black Law Students' Association 24th Annual Paul Robeson Conference, The Way Forward: Living in Power, February 2018
Publications
For Harriet The Culture. “Get Your Hands on One of these dope pieces from Designs by Bolaji,” June 2014
The Root. “50 Gift Ideas from 50 Black Owned Businesses”, December 2014
Afropunk. “Feature: Unorthodox Canvases: Furniture Painting by Bolaji Ogunsola”, April 2015
contact.