Board Member; Chair, DEI Committee
Tavarus Blackmon, also known by the Anglo-Saxon, Blackmonster, is a devoted, Black, Father and Partner with three children in the City of Trees, Sacramento, California. He earned his MFA as Provost Fellow at the University of California Davis and his MA in Studio Art at CSU, Sacramento. He has been under Fellowship at the Headlands Center for the Arts and is the recent Parent Artist Fellow at the Kala Art Institute. His is the recipient of the 2020-2021 Kala Art Institute Fellowship and the Curatorial Fellowship at Root Division. He is the winter, 2021, AiR at Caldera Arts in Sisters, OR. His practice is interdisciplinary and intermedium. His work has appeared in The Racket, Susurrus, Calaveras Station, The Suisun Valley Review, Sacramento City Exchange, Instagram; he has contributed to The Sacramento News and Review: Arts and Culture, Reverb, Voices against mass incarceration, CURA, Literary Magazine of Art and Action, Fordham University, IO Literary Journal and Brushfire Journal, Edition 72, vol. 2, University of Nevada, Reno. He has exhibited in San Francisco; at American Steel Studios, Oakland; Los Angeles at The Center for Digital Arts; Chicago (Arc Gallery); New York (Limner Gallery); Mexico City and Berlin (Blue Banana Video Art Festival). Tavarus Blackmon has curated panel discussions, presentations and exhibitions, at Beatnik Gallery, The Golden One Center’s digital media displays, Axis Gallery, the Master of Art in Studio Art Thesis Exhibition, Critical Response at CSU, Sacramento and is founder and webmaster of Art Music Lit Space, an online gallery presenting virtual exhibitions. He is an artist member and Vice President at Axis Gallery, Sacramento. He also serves on the Marketing and eCommerce committees and is webmaster of the eCommerce website, Axis Editions. He has developed and published work for the web including the sites Tavarus Blackmon Art, Awedio Codex and Black Monster Night Light. His site, BlackmonsteReview hosts his thesis, The Politics of the Cartoon and Contemporary Art. Additional and substantive video and audio can be found under the profiles Tavarus Blackmon and Black Audio Monster on Vimeo and Soundcloud, respectively. His current body of sound art, Lock Down, is released through Spinnup, a Universal Music Group platform