Above: Bonnie Venable and Rodney Carpenter are the featured artists for a January 20, 2025, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. commemorative event in Cleveland.
I am often pleasantly surprised to find that there are so many wonderful artists, educators, and scholars right in front of me — or just a few blocks up the street from my home! But that is one of the benefits of living in Cleveland’s Larchmere / Shaker Square District, where there is no shortage of creative geniuses.
In December, for example, I stopped by Larchmere Arts to say hello to artist-owner Vince Robinson. Vince was not available, but I ended up having a wonderful conversation with Bonnie Venable and Rodney Carpenter. They are the founders of R & B 216 Studio. They are also the creators of all of the paintings, drawings, prints, and jewelry that were on display at Larchmere Arts during the year-end holiday season.
This chance meeting served as my introduction to Bonnie’s work. But, Rodney and I met years ago, when I asked him to paint a portrait of my late father, Nathaniel Williams, Sr., who was a U.S. Army veteran and one of the founding members of Cleveland’s New Joshua Missionary Baptist Church. The portrait that Rodney painted continues to be a family favorite.
Above: U.S. Army veteran Nathaniel Williams, Sr.(Rodney Carpenter, artist. Courtesy of Regennia N. Williams.)
On Sunday, January 20, 2025, 10 AM – 4 PM (EST) Rodney Carpenter and Bonnie Venable will be the featured guest artists for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. commemorative program activities. The artists’ contributions to the larger event are sponsored by African American History Initiatives at the Western Reserve Historical Society’s Cleveland History Center. Admission to the museum and the art exhibition will be free for all guests. You are cordially invited to attend. For more information, please see samples of their work below, and visit https://www.facebook.com/share/p/15b2RuVhGm/.
About Dr. Regennia N. Williams, Founder, President, and Executive Director
Dr. Regennia N. Williams is the Founder and Executive Director of The RASHAD Center, Inc., a Maryland-based non-profit educational corporation.
Williams holds a PhD in Social History and Policy from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. A native Clevelander and a four-time alumna of Cleveland State University, information on RASHAD's “Praying Grounds, African American Faith Communities: A Documentary and Oral History” project is now available online at www.ClevelandMemory.org/pray/, a site that is maintained by CSU's Library Special Collections, home of the Praying Grounds manuscript collections. Praying Grounds was the primary inspiration for the launching of the Initiative for the Study of Religion and Spirituality in the History of Africa and the Diaspora (RASHAD) at CSU, and links to RASHAD's scholarly journal and newsletter are also available on the Praying Grounds site. On April 28, 2020, the RASHAD Center, Inc. became a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
In 2010, Dr. Williams was a Visiting Fulbright Scholar at Nigeria’s Obafemi Awolowo University, where she taught history and directed a RASHAD-related oral history project that focused on the role of religion in recent Nigerian social history. Other research-related travels have taken her to Canada, China, France, South Africa, and Austria.
In 2013, she conceived and produced “Come Sunday @ 70: The Place of Duke Ellington’s Sacred Jazz in World History and Culture, c. 1943-2013,” a project that included scholarly presentations and performing arts activities. From September 1993 until May 2015, she was a faculty member in the Department of History at Cleveland State University. She served as a Fulbright Specialist at South Africa's University of the Free State in the summer of 2019, and completed a short-term faculty residency at Howard University in the fall of 2019. She is based in Cleveland, Ohio.
As a public scholar, her current research projects focus on African American history and culture, especially as it relates to music, religion, and spirituality. She is a member of the Oral History Association, the Western Reserve Historical Society, and the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
The RASHAD Center, Inc. 