Daily Inspiration: Meet Hope and Faith ♡

Today, we’d like to introduce you to Hope and Faith ♡, a collective formed by twin sisters Eleisha Faith and Tonisha Hope McCorkle

Hi Hope and Faith, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Our story truly begins during our childhood, as twins we’ve been sharing ideas, space, and time since we were born. We have been creating for over 12 years now. Our first form of collaboration began in the kitchen; we’ve been teaming up on dinners, special meals, and large catered spreads for events since we were eight years old! We lived in a single-parent household where our mother was disabled, however, she didn’t waste any time passing down her magical expertise when it came to culinary arts, we owe all our current skills to her! We eventually branched our creativity out into visual and performing arts, acting in theater in elementary school and joining visual art programs in middle and high school. At the age of 17, we lost our mother to the rare lung condition of Sarcoidosis. From then on, the two of us have been utilizing art as a space of healing, creating immersive experiences that engage with loss, grief, identity, hope and faith. Majoring in Studio Art at New York University, we continued to voice our passion for the arts and its importance for expression. It started individually, with Faith honing in on drawing, printmaking, and digital art and Hope creating primarily through painting and ceramics. We combined artistic qualities in our 2019 solo exhibition, “OUR SKIN, OUR LOGO.” Since then, we have decided to come together to form an interdisciplinary collaborative, existing as our middle and spiritual names, Hope and Faith.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It has not at all been a smooth road. From losing our mother, to moving residencies left and right, our journey has been challenging. We don’t come from a stable home and have adopted finding home in our practices and with each other wherever we go. With the pandemic, we left our study abroad sites at NYU, Faith was in Ghana and Hope was in Abu Dhabi and came here, to Baltimore. We had wandered apart just to be brought back together. This was challenging too; the difference in our perspectives and our individual opinions made us butt heads. People think being twins is cute and we always get along but nooooo you don’t know! We may have the same natal chart and sound the same and have similar interests, but we do not always think alike. These are some struggles that interrupt the flow of our craft sometimes.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
We are storytellers! An interdisciplinary visual arts collective, we create offerings of hope and faith to share with our community. We specialize in creative and community healing, understanding what it means to be hope and faith. This translates over into our intentional artmaking. We also provide contract services in most things art related: Creative consulting (portfolio, writing), canvas building and stretching, logo and graphic design, art commissions, gallery installation, youth teaching, curating. We do everything, being known for being a resilient, dynamic duo. Our mission is to spread love and heal, creating from the soul and putting a visual experience to ideas and visions of ourselves and the world. We create larger than life scrolls that tell stories of black life, rituals, magic, and rebuilding after breaking down. We are a force of nature. We are most proud of living. Never giving up and always trying our best in any and everything we do. Just grateful to be here. What sets us apart from others is that got that twinergy!!!! Just some tiny bright lights bringing you big concepts. Our practice is unlike any other, we give each other space to shine on our pieces and they form a puzzle of bigger pictures. We work individually and as a collective on the mission and get it done as one. Y’all know how the gems fuse on Steven Universe? Yea, that’s us.

So, before we go, how can our readers or others connect or collaborate with you? How can they support you?
We have some exciting projects coming up!! Support us by seeing our first solo exhibition as a collective! It will be at Publick Playhouse, November 22, 2022- February 3, 2023, in our hometown of Hyattsville, MD. Stay in touch with us by following our socials! In terms of collaboration, we would loveee to work with creatives and expand our practice. We love working with others and want to make dope, elevated art and also help out where we can. If anyone wants to collaborate on a project and see us helping with curating exhibitions, videos, music and performance, modeling, and photography, reach out to us!

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected]
• Website: www.hopeandfaith.art
• Instagram: instagram.com/hopeandfaith.art
• Facebook: facebook.com/hopeandfaith.art

 

 

Hope & Faith at ‘Black to the Future’ event by the Baltimore Scene.