Broken Record
JAINNA MCCANTS (@jvinylart)
I’ve been working with vinyl records as a canvas since the beginning of 2020. As an escape from reality, I love to play my vinyls and create art that highlights my favorite music artists. As I was listening to music on my record player one day I came across a donated vinyl that was given to me back in April entitled “Selma | from an inspiring musical.” When I found this record it was during the height of the Black Lives Matters protests, the week George Floyd died. I saw this as a sign, and then I decided to use this vinyl as a canvas to speak about the movement. I work closely with collage so as I researched imagery from the Selma March, I started to notice the signs they were protesting with during the march looked very similar to the signs in the photographs I’d been seeing from our country’s recent protest. I learned that the Selma march was also a platform to stand up against police brutality. So I wanted to highlight the fact that much hasn’t changed since the 60s -- we are still fighting the same war with police and being mistreated as a race. I challenge the viewer to stare hard at the piece and try to figure out which photos were taken in the 60s vs. now.
Next, I challenge the viewer and ask, could you imagine trying to play a record like this, with cracks, and breaks? I titled the piece “Broken record on Repeat” to bring attention to the fact that history is repeating itself, like a spinning record on repeat, except this record is broken, just like our policing system. There is a crack signifying the flaws in our policing, and just like this record, these ongoing issues can no longer be ignored. I placed the images of the people on the vinyl in a way that they are covering up the majority of it, demanding we see them, hear them, as they demand for change.
About the Artist
Jaianna McCants is a visual artist located in Charlotte, NC. Born in New York City, but raised in the south with parents who had a love for art and music. Her father studied visual art in High School focusing on comic and graffiti design. At a young age, he made the hard decision to become a provider for his family and put the arts to the side. Little did he know in 1993, he’d raise a child with the same art interests as himself, so he started investing and molding her skills at a young age. With that being said Jaianna has been a lover of art and a visual artist for as long as she can remember but has been a professional artist for over 5 years now. Her primary mediums of art consist of paint, collage, photography.
She is a graduate from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, with a degree in Design studies, and for the past three years, she’s spent her days educating and passing down her talents to the youth just as her father did with her by teaching art within the Charlotte Mecklenburg School System. While educating she is also currently seeking a Master's Degree in Creative Business Leadership from Savannah College of Art & Design (SCAD). With this degree, she hopes to continue to educate and pass her knowledge to aspiring artists.