Woke, digital image. Carla Rae Johnson 2025

With a nod to Robert Indiana, Carla Rae Johnson has created an image that is the antithesis of what we have recently been associating with the color orange. Johnson’s artwork includes drawing, sculpture, conceptual performance, and installation art. She is equally comfortable working solo, in collaboration, or in art collectives. Her work is directly connected to ideas and often addresses social, political, and cultural issues.

Listen to our interview with Carla on B+S with Friends to hear her speak about her process.

Our first empowerment grant winner, Robert Hightower, confronts power, exhaustion, and survival head-on, using orange as a backdrop and a battleground. “Rather than stripping away its past associations, I forced it to hold space for the struggle it has witnessed. Orange isn't just reclaimed here—it's challenged.”

The figure lies somewhere between rest and defeat, swallowed by something larger than themselves. "9 to 5" on the shoe is a nod to the grind of working just to survive—where rest is never absolute, only a pause before the next shift. Above them, a red tie hangs like a noose--a quiet but undeniable threat. It's impossible to separate it from what the red tie represents: power, corporate dominance, a system built to drain and control. While it inevitably brings to mind Trump, this isn't just about one man; it's about the entire structure that keeps people too exhausted to resist.

Painting on wood was intentional. Unlike canvas, wood doesn't bend—it's rigid, heavy, and lasting. It mirrors the subject's rawness and the permanence of systemic oppression.

Reclaiming orange isn't about making it light or joyful; it's about making it honest. The figures don't just rest—they endure. The tie doesn't just hang; it suffocates. The orange doesn't just exist—it bears witness. “If I'm reclaiming it, I'm doing it on my terms—by forcing it to confront what it was once used to disguise.”

Marcus Manganni is a New York based sculptor and installation artist who is best known for his innovative, site-specific works that confront the crisis of mass incarceration. He has installed permanent sculptures in both public and private spaces worldwide.

Light became the primary medium and subject of Manganni's work during his federal time in solitary confinement. Utilizing a sliver of passing natural light from a distant window, he experimented with his few materials, creating reflective structures throughout his cell. This allowed him to explore and liberate his physical and social isolation.

I worked with resin in my first year after release. When thinking of sunsets and sky conversations, coral orange was always my way of reappropriating the color. We didn't see sunsets inside or the sky at all, so creating skyscapes using orange in gradient is an act of liberation.

Heather Jones is an interdisciplinary feminist artist whose practice centers around textiles and painting, with painting being a primary focus recently. The palettes in her work are deeply connected to nature and place and inspired by environments both locally and abroad. Using photographs as inspiration and a starting point, the paintings act as landscapes, reminders of places the artist has seen, inhabited, and visited.

The repetition of shapes, forms, and grids relate to Jones’s textile work. In both bodies of work, their roots are in American patchwork and quilting. They serve as directional maps and relate to the theme of migration, both personally as well as universally. They also serve as a connection to her ancestors, particularly those who came from Appalachia and her matrilineal lines. Each painting serves as a truthful recording of gestures and marks, built layer after layer, to create a universal visual language.

The photograph by Emily Hanako Momohara, part of a larger series titled Tending My Grandmother’s Garden, was inspired by her grandmother, born in the USA to Japanese immigrant parents. Her life contained a combination and collaboration of traditions from both cultures. Growing up, her home was frequently a playground for the artist, and Hanako Momohara constantly emulated her. In a way, her example shaped her view of the world and art-making. Today, Hanako Momohara’s work visually investigates our multicultural lives.

In Tending my Grandmother’s Garden, “I draw on bonsai and Japanese, which my grandmother practiced. This series of works symbolically manipulates, cares for, and protects memory through Japanese and American. The still lives are representative of the preciousness I hold for my mixed culture.”

Enjoy our accompanying Reclaiming Orange playlist to embrace the spirit of this magical hue.

This series, by Tamara White, repurposes blasphemous words from __________, erasing and burying them within landscapes where beauty and darkness coexist. Though tainted by these harmful words, the landscapes remain resilient, reminding us that the roots of our nature—our inherent goodness—will ultimately prevail.

Each piece is intentionally created on cardboard panels, symbolizing the disposability imposed upon certain communities. Strips of rug padding are adhered to the surface, evoking the feeling of having the ground pulled from beneath one’s feet. Yet, through this process, the work gains durability, character, and texture—elements that deepen its richness and reinforce its message of perseverance and transformation.

Special Housing Unit, 2018
permanent installation

Utilizing segments of prison architecture, Special Housing Unit (SHU), consists of two tiers. Continuing the sun mapping process from prison, SHU is an exploration of being out and having the ability to converse with the full extent of the sunlight.