Featured Artists

Jean Yves Hector

Joel Maxime JR

Cindy L. Lys

Fritz Millevoix

Evelyn Sainte Poma

Frantz Balthazar

Sylvia Halbert

Alex Smith

Jean Yves Hector

Jean Yves was born in Port-au-Prince. He started showing interest in drawing at the age of 6 and painting at 14. He attended College Mazenod Seminary. His paintings reflect different styles: Ecole de la beaute, cubism, scenery of the country side.

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He is a Great admirer of Van Gogh, Michelangelo, and Haitian international artist Tiga. He has a profound interest in the period of Renaissance and Classicism Art. His favorite reading interests are Haitian and French literature. In addition to being an artist, Jean is also an aspiring poet and some day wants to be an architect. His dream one day is to visit the USA and the Louvres Museum of Paris, France.

Freddiemichelerenee

She is our current artist for the spotlight program. See all of her amazing works below.

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Sabrina Gustin

She is our current artist for the Rasin program. See all of her amazing works below.

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Joel Maxime Jr

I consider myself multi cultured, classically trained, outsider artist working with Multiple mediums and styles in the genre of post modern and Afro contemporary.

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I feature various styles from art direction and curation, illustration, to sculpting, and industrial design to fashion design learned from taking classes at Columbia College and UIC.

Series range in between commercial work and passion projects about the environment, economic disparity, gender equality, and questioning traditions such as religion and ignorance.

CRĀVE also employs a foray of significant   body of work in street art, and poignant underlying message of community, ecology and progress with an appreciation for past aesthetic has developed in every aspect of the work.

Cindy L. Lys

Cindy L. Lys is a Haitian-American visual artist and a clinical social worker on the south side of Chicago. 

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Cindy’s work explores textile designs, indigo vat dyeing and Japanese Shibori techniques inspired by Haitian sacred art, African and Afro-Caribbean spirituality;the mythology of a people as moral and spiritual foundation of self-knowledge, self-empowerment and ethical life. Delving into the complementarity of Haitian religiosity through its syncretism with Roman Catholicism, Cindy destabilizes the stigma commonly attached to Haitian Vodou and the black sacred cosmos.

Fritz Millevoix

Fritz Millevoix was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in 1957 and began painting at the age of 14. Despite his four years of formal training, he prefers to work in the so-called naïve or primitive style.

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Mr. Millevoix has had exhibitions in Italy, Germany, Haiti, and Puerto Rico. In the United States he has shown in New York, Philadelphia, Florida, Atlanta, Chicago and now Cleveland. He has received numerous awards as well as illustrated several children’s books.

His paintings are alive with a brilliance of color, pattern and meticulous detail. His color spectrum is broad and rich with jungle themes full of colorful animals, mountain village scenes, underwater  mermaid villages, Caribbean beach scenes and landscapes of depth and mystique.  Every scene depicted in a Millevoix’s paintings is lush with nature,joy and fantasy.”  

Fritz moved to the United States in 1988 and currently resides in Chicago.

Frantz Balthazar

Frantz M.T. Balthazar was born in Les Cayes and grew up in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Herbert Balthazar, his father and mentor, was an intellectual with a PHD in Caribbean Literature.

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Although his father introduced him to a world made of words, lines and colors he did not get the opportunity to see his young son of eight develop into a young adult. Mr. Balthazar Sr. died at the young age of forty-nine but left his legacy to his young apprentice. Amongst the various teachings, his father instilled in him the ideology “Haiti is the soul of the Caribbean”.  

Frantz as a young adult inherited his father’s library which exposed him to many old magazines and books.  From the many books containing Asian, European and Haitian art, he found a great source of inspiration. The National Geographic, Jeune Afrique, Encyclopedia Britannica where amongst his favorites, they allowed him to travel to new places and visit many other nationalities through their images. Frantz developed a sense of how different, but alike people are all over the world.  Hence became the Artist Frantz. Young Frantz began drawing from the inspiration of those images then developed his skills on canvas.  Frantz Balthazar credits his mother for the compassion in him. Through his mother’s pain and happiness, his strokes on canvas have matured. He has learned to place movement on canvas with his heart and colors with passion. Frantz believes a painter is a citizen of the world and should be able to convey emotions that are part of human feelings; hence he prefers not to have his art labeled solely as Haitian art. As of today, Frantz Balthazar has participated in many exhibits in New York and Florida. Frantz has also exhibited his art in a “one man’s show” at various colleges.   He co-authored a book of essays 1492: The Rape of the New World with Dr. Frantz-Antoine Leconte, and was Editor-in-Chief of the weekly newspaper Haïti Lumière published in the US. He was a presenter of a daily radio show in Radio Tropical in New York titled “Causerie”.

Evelyn Sainte Poma

Originally from Haiti, Evelyne traces her family lineage back to colonial Santo Domingo. Her ancestors came from Africa, Spain and France.

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Evelyne is one of ten children of Joseph Ovide Raphael Sainté.  She was born and raised in Port-au-Prince. At the age of seventeen, while sketching passers-by in front of her father’s restaurant on the Boulevard Jean-Jacques Dessalines, René Exumé, Director of the Foyer des Arts Plastiques noticed her and asked to see her sketchbook.  Mr. Exumé returned to the restaurant the next day to talk to Evelyne’s father in order to offer her a scholarship of study at his school.  

The Foyer des Arts Plastiques was founded by a group of painters with innovative ideas and styles. They had been working with the Centre D’Art, which promoted traditional primitive, “naive” style paintings.  René Exumé and his faculty of young painters taught their students by copying French classical art, before advancing into the development of their own personal style.  The Foyer attracted guest painters from Paris, Berlin and Montreal to instruct the students.  Evelyne won the Foyer’s Grand Prix for her charcoal drawing, “La Vendeuse en Peine” in her first year of study.  

Evelyne married an American teacher and immigrated to the U.S. in 1977 where she continues to paint and has shown in various Midwest galleries.  She was awarded a Wisconsin Arts Board grant for her series of folkloric paintings, “Los Cuentos Haitianos” exhibited at the Centro de la Communidad Unida and “Contes Haitiens” at the Common Room Gallery of the First Unitarian Church in Milwaukee. A retrospective show of her works is currently showing at the Haitian American Museum of Chicago. 

sylvia halbert

Sylvia Halbert is an artist, chef and event planner. Her art work reflects her gentle and loving spirit and flair for the abstract.

alex smith

Artist Alex Smith is self-taught, and finds inspiration in American tattoo aesthetic, street art, and printmaking.

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Her artwork often relfects her appreciation for the dead, and the supernatural. Death is not something to be feared, but even more of a reason to reflect on our ancestors that have come before us. The time we have here is limited, so we must make our lives count. The artist hopes for more discourse about the contributions of Haitian-Americans and African diaspora religions to American culture.