Ellies Connect

Ellies Connect is a conversation series that invites previous winners of The Ellies to talk about their projects.

Tune in for a conversation between artists Reginald O’Neal and Terence Price II about their ongoing Ellies projects, previous collaborative projects, and how their practices use personal experiences as a source of inspiration. This conversation will be moderated by artist and Ellies Social Justice Award winner, Chire Regans.

About the Panelists

Chire Regans, also known as VantaBlack, was born in Saint Louis, Missouri, and relocated to Miami with her family in the late 1980s. Her passion for art began soon after. After graduating from Florida A&M University, Regans began to focus primarily on drawing from life and portraiture. As societal issues began to weigh heavily on her conscience, a message took shape behind the imagery. The emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement pushed her art in the direction of social awareness and change. Regans has dedicated both her artistic practice and her life to community advocacy and activism.

Reginald O’Neal (L.E.O.) (Miami, Florida 1992) began painting in 2012, soon meeting his friend and mentor, Alejandro Dorda, who would teach him classically. In 2014, L.E.O. took his first trip to Europe to complete murals in Austria, Norway, and Spain, as well as exhibit in a collective show alongside his teacher in Berlin, Germany. In the years since, Reggie has focused on canvas work, residencies, and murals that embody his community surroundings, experiences and beliefs.

Terence Price II Born in Miami in 1990, Terence C. Price II is an artist who emerges from a tradition of mid-twentieth-century street photography, capturing the world around him in evocative portraits and cinematic snapshots. He blends this history of the medium with a distinctly contemporary understanding of representation, collaboration, image-making, and the way media circulates in our culture. Using his camera to document the people closest to him, folks he encounters in his daily life, and the sites he inhabits within Miami, Price locates the rich territory in which the personal takes on shared and collective meaning. His photographs offer to the public record a depiction of the intimacies of place, family, and relationships.