Background

Painter, Sculptress, Arts Intergration Educator, Program Director, Self-Taught Digital Designer, Dancer & Instructor, Creative Writer, Ancestral Food Grower, Archivist, Creativity & Instructional Coach, Reiki & Hoodoo Practitioner, Nature Photographer, Community Healing Artist (Interactive Installations), Nature-Herbalist, Material Assemblages

Artivist

Janae' "Jaee Honey" Sumter

Artist site

About Our Founder

Janae' "Jaee/Honey" Sumter (they/them) is a migrating indigo child and student of life from New Orleans, LA, and a descendant of deep Gullah Geechee, Native, and Creole roots. Jaee has a rich nine-year background and practice in Creative Cultural Arts, Arts Integration Education, and Community Organizing.

Jaee has a richly diverse multidisciplinary artistry that centers on intergenerational bridging, global sovereignty, environmental justice, cultural/historic preservation, community and legacy building, and whole-person learning that provides pathways towards liberation and social-emotional understanding around systemic and equitable gaps.

Through their artistic approaches to liberation, Jaee is an Arts Integration Educator, Community Organizer, Archivist, Event Planner, Curator, Goal Setting Coach, Herbalist, Sacred Energy Healer, Hoodoo practitioner, Creative Entrepreneur, and Crop Grower who uses education and the creative cultural arts to uproot racial and health systemic injustice and disparities. Jaee builds directly with underserved Black, Indigenous, and creators and organizations of color and inclusive partners in the U.S. and Internationally to replant seeds of empowerment that nurture solutions towards interdependence. Jaee obtained their Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art from Spelman College in Atlanta, GA, and their Master of Fine Arts in Integrated Practices from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY, focusing on Community Arts & Social Justice.

Their healing arts and justice work activates ancestral demystification, sustainability through sacred practice, and ecological learning that fights for food security and works to end global poverty. Their work actualizes in real-time through developing creative learning projects and programs that integrate art and culture through the lens of land preservation that builds practical solutions. Their philosophy is that building solutions together uplifts community collaboration and ancestral connection that acts as a guiding light toward initiating socio-political awareness around decolonizing colonized philosophies that create interpersonal inequities.

Jaee has an expanding diverse six-year teaching background working with K-12 and adults in traditional and nontraditional educational environments within and beyond the U.S. Their teaching includes Visual and Community Arts, Cultural Arts, English, and Arts Integration. That includes public, charter, boarding, international, and community schools as well as shelters, service centers, and freedom forest schools, within and beyond through their community arts and wellness education program, Asé O. They believe education, skill and personal development, mindset reprogramming and cultural storytelling are significant pathways toward liberation, equitability, sustainability, and legacy sustainment. Their framework unpacks the roots of generational trauma, personal-collective oppression, and community separation and using creative practice to develop solutions that rebirth understanding, empowerment, resilience, and liberation for everyone.

As a New Orleans native growing up in underserved communities, Jaee's childhood integrated the powerful spirit of community, ancestry, and spiritual practice that honored cultural celebration, creativity as survival, and tradition, even in hardship. As they experienced the highs of community and culture, they also experienced elevated levels of oppression as a child and adult from abuse, colorism, poverty mindset, homelessness, homophobia, gender bias, neurodivergence, and more.

Jaee learned the importance of understanding minimal resources and creativity for abundant solution-building, storytelling, healing, identity expression, and giving back. Through those experiences, creative practice supported them as a foundational language for what they were processing.

As they gratefully traveled over the years, they learned of the similar injustices and traditions around the world that fostered connections between them. This awareness guided them deeper toward their mission of fighting for global sovereignty, legacy sustainment, and intergenerational bridging. With them living in cities in the South, East, West, and Asia and traveling to Sumter SC, Thailand, Myanmar, Puerto Rico, Laos, and Mexico, they learned new ways of exchanging liberation, integration, self-discovery, and community power. Jaee is the founder and director of Sweet Herbal Honey Apothecary LLC, where these principles and frameworks are built honestly and with/for the community.