In the Studio with Hope and Faith (Tonisha Hope and Eleisha Faith McCorkle)
Today, we’re going In the Studio with artists Hope and Faith (Tonisha Hope and Eleisha Faith McCorkle). Their artwork is on display in the Chesapeake Arts Center’s Creative Freedom: Celebrating Black History Month gallery exhibit, on view from January 29 - March 3, 2024.
The gallery reception for the show is on February 22, 2024 6 - 8 pm.
Eleisha Faith & Tonisha Hope McCorkle (b. 1999)
D.C.-born, Hyattsville raised twins Eleisha Faith & Tonisha Hope McCorkle hold BFA’s from NYU in Studio Art. Formerly enrolled in the Visual and Performing Arts program at the Jim Henson School of Arts, Media, and Communication, the two have been cooking and curating, studying, and creating art since they were 7 years old. At 17, the twins lost their mother to the rare lung condition of Sarcoidosis. Since then, the two have used their art as a space of healing, creating immersive experiences that engage with loss, grief, and identity, coming together to form an interdisciplinary collaborative. Their work speaks to their profound relationship as twins, conceptualizing their endured shared experiences, yet different perspectives.
Depicting their experiences, their work speaks to the candid, yet uncanny truth of Black life, while simultaneously severing from a cyclical narrative deeply rooted in pain and disenfranchisement. Collard greens, hair, and faith are some relics represented in their work. Sourced from their own lives, the pair began to see their worlds collide as they grew into a new state of consciousness as one, traveling multiple dimensions in their work and conflating the ideas of reconstruction and resilience. Their work serves as a spiritual process towards completion–utilizing 2D, 3D, and 4D elements as puzzle pieces to form the bigger picture. Deconstructing materials in their practice, the dynamic duo reconstructs narratives through veracious and symbolic imagery to communicate stories of Black life, food, rituals, healing, spirituality, and magic.
Visionary Art Collective, PGCTV News, VoyageBaltimore, and the DC Public Library have recognized the pair's work. They have been the recipients of a DC CAH Art Bank Grant, a Martin Luther King Jr. Scholarship, an MSAC Creativity Grant, and a 2024 Grit Fund Grant and have work permanently installed at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in D.C. They are currently expanding their practices individually and collectively as artists-in-residence at Creative Alliance in Baltimore, Maryland.
What does your artwork represent?
Our work represents elevation, it reaches, expands, and shines! It represents the overlapping of timelines, styles, and colors within the Black experience. Our work speaks to community and soul elevation, depicting Black bodies and stories through spiritual narratives to challenge routine images and thoughts of Black bodies as constant subjects of adversity. Oftentimes our pieces serve as a mirror of reflection to challenge and empower viewers to contemplate their existence. We create our own matrixes for the stories told, constructing a scroll structure that alludes to there always being more to the story. Our work is love and light, healing, togetherness, and hope and faith.
What’s in a name; how do you title your artworks?
It depends! Our titles can be born while a work is being created or after a work has been finished. There also have been times we started with a title with its concepts we wish to bring to life creating the sketch for the piece. Names and titles are important to our works, they carry the weight of labeling the experience depicted. For us, they’re equivalent to the titles of book chapters, with each giving you a glimpse into the turning point of the story written. Our names, Hope & Faith are viewed the same way. They were given to us as middle names by our mother who was ill and had a risky pregnancy with us. We had to earn our names through the continuation and elevation of our souls through this thing called life. Just like our pieces, Hope and Faith are the titles of our lives as works of art.
How long have you been creating art? How did you begin?
We started creating when we were children, our first form of creating was actually in the kitchen! We started cooking at 7 years old, with one of us on the mains and the other on the sides. Our staples are soul food and Caribbean cuisine, we used to cater all of our family events, birthdays, and holidays. This was our first form of collaboration. We then branched into art individually when we got to our middle and high school creative arts program. It was there we honed in on our respective disciplines and began exploring new forms of art. During our undergraduate studies at New York University, we magnified our interdisciplinary practice and deepened our understanding of Color Theory, performance and film, exhibition design and proposals, and collaboration.
We decided to form our collaborative collective during our senior year, merging all of the knowledge and keys learned individually to form a new understanding and consciousness as one.
Where are you from and how does that affect your work?
We’re from outer space, the ethers. But if you mean geographically, we are from Prince George’s County! We were born in Washington D.C. like our mother, with indigenous roots in South and North Carolina. Our father is from Kingston, Jamaica. Our food, rituals, hair, and art are heavily influenced by the energies that these areas carry. Southern hospitality and service runs through our veins as we’ve been giving back, volunteering, and sharing our food and creations with others since elementary school. PG County installed the drive within us to keep pushing regardless. The multidimensional energy that we hold within us from all our bloodlines and backgrounds manifests in our practice, showing up as colorful, textured, and overlapping stories.
How do you prepare to start a new piece? (do you have a ritual, do you do research, do you sketch it out, talk it out...)
We are often inspired by our past individual and collective artwork, experiences, spiritual elements like astrology and the universe, family, dreams and downloads, and more. When we meet we fuse our individual thoughts and piece together a small sketch based on both of our perspectives. Sometimes we decide what materials to use before creating, other times we go to the art store and are attracted to patterns and textures that would complement the image and overall tone of the artwork. The result is always a magical expansion of the sketch, becoming something more beautiful and powerful than we imagined!
To find out more about Hope and Faith, visit their website.
