Shervone Neckles

This month’s installment of our Community Spotlight features American-born, Afro-Grenadian interdisciplinary artist, educator, and the designer of our 2020 Beam NYC Project, Shervone Neckles. As an artist, Shervone makes embellished textiles, prints, sculptures, installations, and public art in which she intricately melds Afro-Caribbean heritage into her diverse creations — capturing history across America.

We first met Shervone at the Brooklyn Museum’s NYC Youth Creative Summit in 2018. At the summit Beam led an electronic mask workshop and Shervone participated in it with her son. Speaking about the workshop, Shervone says, “We did this project together and we had a great experience; he came home with it and it still actually hangs in his room to this day.” In 2019, Shervone was invited to apply to our open call, and we’ve been collaborating ever since. “It’s been a really lovely evolution of our relationship. It’s been a real collaboration and partnership,” said Shervone. She also added that the relationship only evolved because Lewis Latimer House Museum, Beam Center and her understood that BEACON is “beyond just an object or an artwork, it actually symbolized something much larger that was important to make sure that other people were aware of… It’s been a wonderful journey of sharing what we know with others and hoping that others also pass on that knowledge.”

The idea for BEACON was a result of Shervone’s residency with the Lewis Latimer House Museum (LLHM) and her research on Latimer’s contribution to electricity as well as American History. Beam Center Fellows created BEACON in collaboration with the artist and Beam staff; and now BEACON sits at the birthplace of American Inventor, Lewis H. Latimer, in Chelsea, MA. Speaking about her experience collaborating with young people at Beam Center, Shervone says she “appreciated” that Beam Center believes in young people and their ability to accomplish things. She says, “They believe in the possibilities of young folks. They really get how important it is that young folks be immersed and surrounded by creativity and innovation and expansive thinking. Like that is the spark we all need in order for us to see ourselves doing more.”

Since its first installation at the Lewis Latimer House Museum in Queens, BEACON has been on a journey. BEACON was first installed in Downtown Brooklyn (NY), and later traveled to the Museum of Science (Boston, MA), and Latimer’s hometown (Chelsea, MA). Shervone drew inspiration from Latimer’s mechanical drawing of the incandescent light bulb and carbon filament in designing BEACON. Shervone says that she lived in New York City almost all her life but never learned about Latimer until her residency with LLHM in 2018. The lack of education about him encouraged Shervone to create something in hopes that it would educate others about his innovation and legacy. “I wanted to make something that would spark their [young people's] curiosity to learn more about Latimer,” says Shervone. She also adds, “I feel honored by it but I also feel like this is what he deserves and he deserves more. So it’s a way of honoring an ancestor, honoring someone who deserves this and hopefully he gets more as a result of this [BEACON].” Shervone hopes that one day Lewis Latimerwill be a household name, because “the lightbulb he created is a household item.”

In addition to her studio work, Shervone is an accomplished administrator who empowers artists to honor and preserve their legacies. Both her work as an artist and an arts administrator is informed by her training as an educator; she holds a Masters of Arts Education from Columbia University’s Teachers College. When serving artists, she is guided by the principle of practicality: what is most relevant and what can be put into immediate use.

Currently Shervone is working on another public art installation that will be installed in the beginning of 2024 at Westchester Square train station in the Bronx. Research is the foundation of all her work, and her new project has grown out of research she has done about an excavation in the early 1900s that uncovered Native American Artifacts from the 1400s and beyond. The installation will consist of metal windscreens that show images of Native American artifacts. Visit Shervone’s website to learn more and stay tuned for her new public art installations.

When asked how her collaboration with Beam Center helped her as an artist, she says, it has helped her shape a model for working with other institutions and collaborations. “So it’s given me a model of what it can be, so now it’s raised the bar for me in terms of working with other large scale projects — on what I would like my relationship to look like. A model of healthy work relationship, communication and strategizing, we really did that together.”

BEACON will continue its journey, and soon it will make its debut in the atrium of the Los Angeles Public Library during an art festival. BEACON doesn’t just illuminate physical spaces; it beckons viewers to delve deep into the annals of memory, reconnecting with ancestral roots and celebrating legacies.

We are really grateful to be able to work with artists like Shervone Neckles. Thank you Shervone for being part of the Beam community!