Quentin, a multidisciplinary artist, works primarily in the mediums of graphite, oil paints, and movement. He began as a sculptor and mixed media artist working with plastics, yarn, beads, and wire, later transitioning into formal dance practices as a young adult. The gift of mediumship has been with him since birth and he has used this wisdom for guidance.
QUENTIN WILLIAM SLEDGE
ABOUT
QUENTIN WILLIAM SLEDGE
ABOUT
Quentin, a multidisciplinary artist, works primarily in the mediums of graphite, oil paints, and movement. He began as a sculptor and mixed media artist working with plastics, yarn, beads, and wire, later transitioning into formal dance practices as a young adult. The gift of mediumship has been with him since birth and he has used this wisdom for guidance.
Q
W
S
DISCOVERING HERITAGE
To be black in America is to be born into a rich ancestral tradition whilst being ignorant to the truth of that inheritance almost entirely. Quentin has spent much time “Rebuilding the Library” by cultivating a connection to his African and African American ancestors. Their truths, history, folktales, herbal remedies, and spiritual practices form the basis of his praxis. His roots lie in Chicago, Alabama, Nigeria, Congo, Cameroon, Ghana and Mali via Bantu, Balanta, Brame, African and Indigenous American peoples.
PURSUING EDUCATION
Quentin attended Morehouse College from 2010-2014 and earned a BA in Business Management. He spent the next ten years as a performing artist with the Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, a 55 year old modern dance company rooted in the African American art of storytelling. In the summer of 2022 he was awarded an Archiving and Preservation fellowship with Dance USA, which sparked an interest in the preservation of Black life via Black dance. The Fellowship gave him a new perspective on how archival practices could be woven into dance works in such a way that honors the African American tradition of storytelling and oral history. He is currently pursuing a Masters in Library and Information Sciences to formally become an archivist and Griot, a keeper of culture.
FINDING PASSION
Quentin is passionate about creation and preservation. He is fascinated with the various methods one can take to distill thought and imagination into the physical. As a bridge between the seen and unseen realms he is curious about spiritual systems, herbal medicine, tools of divination, African and African American cosmologies, numerology, and metaphysics. He loves to manifest change through the body via dance and choreography because they are the elements of prayer and ritual, both of which have the power to affect masses of people. In his youth he experienced a dearth of knowledge about African American history and genealogy that has led him on a lifelong journey of discovery, preservation, and dissemination.
VAUGHN
THE
COLLECTIVE
SLEDGE
The Vaughn Sledge Collective is an 501(c)(3) arts organization aimed at collaborating with and artistically developing emerging artists. Through rigorous training, creative processes which build new work, education concerning financial literacy, and performance opportunities, we seek to empower artists by giving them the tools necessary for successful entrepreneurship. VSC, founded in 2024, is led by the direction of Quentin William ApolloVaughn Sledge.
VSC creative processes are those aimed at developing choreography, visual art, music, or costumes. These processes require collaboration between the lead artist/choreographer and the performing/visual artists. Together they build upon thoughts, movements, intellectual concepts, musical compositions, fabric patterns/draping, etc., until a final product (new work) is produced. We do this work for the enrichment of the lead artist, performers, and audience.
As members of the collective, performing artists will attend classes geared towards life skills such as those related to budgeting and investing, life insurance, taxes, entrepreneurship, etc. All work created in the collective be it artwork, music, choreography, clothing/costuming, intellectual property, etc is jointly owned by the collective, however; Individual artists will retain majority ownership of their work.