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Featured Artist
Keyon Monté
Keyon Monté is a Kansas City native whose work has found homes in many parts of the world. His eclectic upbringing exposed him to the arts in an essential way that have become the foundation of all avenues to which he feeds his faith and creative thought. His grandfather, a painter and comic illustrator, possessed a wit and style of storytelling that permeated his childhood, allowing Keyon to develop imagination and craft at a very young age. Both grandmothers, one a poet, the other a world traveler, exposed him to theater which he found to be the most accessible way to combine his many skills.
He earned a BA in Costume Design from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, where he sharpened his eye for detail. Since then, he has aligned with productions in immersive, educational and devised theatre and film. He spent two summers abroad in Italy, igniting his desire to write with his first one-act play, QUEEN, followed by a reading at LaMaMa Experimental Theatre Co.
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He continues to find the through-lines in his separate but equal gifts, finding the sweet spot where two intersect. In 2020, he completed a portrait series using storytelling to uplift the black community in a continuous dialogue. The series remains his most popular, featured in galleries and editorials. Now as playwright, he funnels his imagination into several ambitious narratives, centered among the perspectives of the black and brown, combing history for constellations of experiences to explore in our current climate.
