Thank you for joining us for a special AIRIE Asks with March Fellow, Charles Humes Jr., as he reflected on his time in residency at Everglades National Park. In an interview led by Donette Frances, Humes shared an intimate look at his practice, process, and month-long stay in the Florida Everglades. See photos from the AIRIE team below!

Miami-born, Charles Humes Jr., comes from a rich family heritage of the Grand Turks, Exuma, and Eleuthera Islands of the Bahamas. A nationally acclaimed painter, printmaker, draftsman, and educator. Humes's early expressions found a voice championing the plight of the homeless, urban conditions, and stereotypes predicated on socio-political, educational, economic prejudices, and bigotry. Humes Jr. has received many national and regional awards for his signature depictions of the African-American condition. His studies include Florida State University, Florida International University, and Miami-Dade Community College, earning arts degrees in painting, printmaking, and arts education. A recipient of the State of Florida Individual Arts Grant in painting, A Smithsonian Southern Arts Fellowship Printmaking Fellow, a Bakehouse Residency Award, a Visual Arts Scholar and Residency at The University of Miami’s Center for Global Black Studies, and most recently an Ellies Creator Award Recipient and a Oolite Home And Away Mass MoCa Residency. Humes Jr.'s paintings and drawings have been exhibited in galleries, universities, and museums throughout the United States and most recently completed a solo exhibition entitled MOTIC an acronym for ‘Matters of the Inner-city’ at the Miami International Airport Concourse D, March through September 2023.

Donette Francis is the director of the Center for Global Black Studies and past director of the American Studies Program at the University of Miami. An Associate Professor of English and founding member of the Hemispheric Caribbean Studies Collective, her research, and writing investigate place, aesthetics and cultural politics in the African Diaspora. Professor Francis is the author of Fictions of Feminine Citizenship: Sexuality and the Nation in Contemporary Caribbean Literature and has edited several special journal issues: “Looking for Black Miami: Black Intellectual and Artistic Formations,” Anthurium, (Spring 2020) “Interim Time: Recasting the Revolutionary Jamaican 1970s.” Small Axe (March 2019); “Radical Skepticisms: The Long Jamaican 1960s.” Small Axe (July 2017). She is currently working on two book projects: Illegibilities: Caribbean Cosmopolitanisms and the Problem of Form, an intellectual history of the Anglophone Caribbean’s transnational literary culture, 1940-1970; and Creole Miami: Black Arts in the Magic City, a sociocultural history of black art practice in Miami from the 1980s to present. Professor Francis is a Research Associate with The Centre for the Study of Race, Gender, and Class at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa.