We were lucky to catch up with Anastacia C.C. Davis Gilmore recently and have shared our conversation below.

Anastacia C.C. Davis, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Do you think your parents have had a meaningful impact on you and your journey?

My grandfather, Hilrie Kemp Jr. (my mother’s father) was an artist. He was an avid drawer. One day, his mother told him, “A Black man can’t make no money off of drawing, you need to get a real job.” My nana wasn’t trying to break my grandfather’s spirit, or even change who he was. She just wanted him to survive. My grandfather heeded her not-so-subtle advice and led a stable, “professional” life. He joined the military and managed to care for his young wife and their three children. One of those kids was my mother. I’ve been told my grandfather was only able to scratch his artistic itch by drawing illustrations on my grandmother’s bulletin boards during her tenure as an educator. Grandfather Hilrie was a pillar in the Tampa, Florida community and I would argue he lived a full life before passing away in 2021. My mother, father, sister, and I are artists in our respective fields. My sister, however, draws like my grandfather. Grandaddy told my mother not to repress me or my sister’s artistry. He recounted the dreary day our nana told him he couldn’t make a living with his craft. With one conversation, Grandaddy planted a seed in my mother that changed the entire trajectory of our lives.

My parents fostered a world where limits didn’t exist and cultivated a community where art could occur. They worked “traditional jobs”. My Father was a unionized construction worker in Chicago and my mother was a parole officer for the State of Illinois. Despite their demanding schedules, our parents carved out time, took out loans, and put us through multiple programs and experiences. We went through John Robert Powers Chicago (a performing arts academy), joined and performed with Books Brushes and Bands, sang in the church choir at New Hope Missionary Baptist Church, and acted in plays at Family Christian Center. My parents raised money so I could see the world. The summer before 8th grade, I traveled to Italy, France, and Greece with People to People Student Ambassadors through the Eisenhower Foundation. When I finally reached 8th grade, my dad sold candy apples to ensure I performed with my school choir at Disney World that Fall. The first indie film I acted in was alongside my mother, Rejected Seed. My father brought me with him to set for other indie projects. I was able to attend my first movie premiere in High School. One of my dad’s friends wrote and directed an LGBTQ film and Chicago showed up and showed out to support this independent filmmaker.

I was drenched in a sea of creativity guided and supported by my parents. They preached passion and purpose. They showed me and my sister the art of security and stability through the lives they led. I knew the arts were going to be an integral part of my life, but I had no idea how I would make a living pursuing them. Although there was no blueprint as to how I could make a living off my creativity, I’ve always had two parents willing and ready to venture into the great unknown with me and my sister. That support system, mentally, emotionally, and many times financially has been one of my greatest blessings in this life thus far. Our methods and moves may look crazy to those on the outside looking in, but I had a family in both the audience and wings and clapping, and screaming, bravaaaaaa.

Anastacia C.C. Davis, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am most proud of the opportunities I’ve had to amplify the voices of people of color. In 2020 during the year of pandemic and protest, I hosted a virtual Zoom event with Hilary Swank, Erin Gruwell, Richard LaGravenese, and the cast of the critically acclaimed 2007 film Freedom Writers. Politicians, student leaders, and over 200 viewers were online as we spoke about the Black Lives Matter movement and ways to be anti-racist. We discussed how life imitates art and how films can act as a form of bibliotherapy during the darkest of times.

On July 25, 2020, I joined hundreds of thousands of people who were prompted to film their lives in a day. In 2021 my footage premiered at Sundance as one of 325,000 entries hand-selected from 192 countries featured in Youtube & Ridley Scott’s time-encapsulating documentary, Life in A Day (2021). Millions of people from around the world saw me perform a Black cultural ritual – use a toothbrush to “lay my edges” (style my baby hair).

In 2021 I had the honor of representing my beloved alma mater, Alabama State University as the winner of the inaugural TBS #HBCUCashOutChallenge. I wrote and directed the piece, “Ode to Mother Dear – An Open Love Letter To My HBCU”. My one-minute short film won the grand prize of $25,000.

Afterward, I co-wrote and directed a short film trailer entitled Best For Last with my friends from undergrad and grad school. We represented our communities, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., Alabama State University, and Full Sail University as first-place winners in the Netflix & Adobe The Great Untold competition.

In October 2022, I was able to campaign online with TBS and More From US for the second year of their  #HBCUCashOutChallenge. I spent most of 2023 traveling the world, working for Live Nation Chicago, and photographing weddings & events. I also worked on commercials, documentaries, and indie projects during the writers & actors strike.

Fast forward a year later to October 2023, I was able to marry the love of my life in Lucca, Italy at the historic Villa Grababu. I worked with my planner Gina Rodriguez and her entire My Tuscan Wedding team. I believe it’s safe to say our wedding was a movie and it was my greatest directorial work to date!

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

The following question is answered by my mother, author Valrie Kemp-Davis.

I purchased a small canvas bag for my youngest daughter at a prestigious black-owned bookstore in Chicago on Juneteenth 2021. The makeup-sized bag read in black ink with probably an Arial font the following, Art Should Disturb the Comfortable and Comfort the Disturbed. I knew I would be gifting it to my baby daughter for her skillful eyes commanded her hands to paint thought-provoking mini-stories on white blank canvases that moved mountains, mocked minions, and called out to the miniature and the mighty to arise. I hoped she would stuff a few sketching pencils, small paint brushes, and as many small plastic bottles of various colored acrylic and oil paints in it. I envision she would whip it out of her purse if the spirit hit her and she just had to create and create now! It would be like a life-response emergency kit. I hoped that if my vision was ever fulfilled, she’d always smile and think of me. I’d promised my dad, a closeted artist that I’d always encourage her dream. His mother who birthed a manchild in 1938 could not see where his aspirations to create in this manner would lead him to the promiseland. “Always support her in her drawing and painting!” my daddy said to me when I was once a young mother. I have been vigilant to keep my promise. I have birthed two content creators of the female kind who excel with the verse, stories landscaped in broad strokes on life’s canvases, finely nuanced through interchangeable lenses, lyrics, and lights. They are content creators with extremely unique and different approaches to the arts. It’s in their lineage but these two WILL go the distance. They are bold risk-takers, persistent, have a penchant for obscure and obtuse angles, and are unbothered by other’s conventional roadmaps and techniques. They are firestarters who have integrity and great character. And so honor and success will continue to be their portion and it can not be any other way. Yes, everything was intentional that Juneteenth day from where I celebrated with my family to what section of town we parlayed in, where our black dollars were spent, how they were spent, and for whom! Black books empower our community. A bookstore filled with black art, black rich thoughts, and influencers emboldens it! It was Juneteenth and we were hanging out on the Southside of Chicago not too far from the International Headquarters of my great sorority; Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. near Stony Island Avenue. My oldest daughter, an amazing aspiring filmmaker, propelled our family into a legacy of three generations of AKAs. My mom kicked it off, pledging in December 1959 at Knoxville College, an HBCU. This was a big feat and it didn’t escape me that though I was only a few blocks from my Sorority’s headquarters in this black-owned bookstore. I was quite cognizant of sacrifices made for ME to be in the place of The Great Migration with my melanted family. I was grateful to be living a successful life, pursuing Afrocentric merchandise and fingering through pages of great novelists and thought artists. My momma had put a lot of distance between patterns of poverty, and cycles of pain by being disciplined, educated, and ruminating on her own personal family history to keep her focused in order to obtain the prize. Her day-to-day choices from becoming a serious student who earned an academic scholarship, choosing the right mate, excelling in her profession of 40 years as an English and Spanish teacher, Chairperson of her English Department, earning a Masters degree in Administration and Supervision, being a stellar Christian Educator, while advocating for others through Community service and servant leadership. She evolved into a fine society woman who honed her skills as one the greatest, most clever, and engaging storytellers I know. That is Art…The Art of War! Words through poetry, essays, fiction, and facts burrowed between leather-bound and paperback books saved her life. WORDS became flesh and dwelled within her. What poured out of her was pressed organic oil and the overflow would be a healing salve for any who dare to glean from her concoctions and apply it to their wounds for the salvation of themselves.

Her way of dialoguing was compelling, amusing, and could be deep depending upon whatever atmosphere she was creating and the visual scene she was drawing you into. She was quite engaging. And yet she never wrote her story, not one chapter. She felt inept to do so requesting for me to write her story until her death at age 78. Between exercising her boombastic oral skills, keen analysis and interpretation of her life coupled with a personal library of books that still stands stellarly in my parent’s home though both of them have gone on into glory. How could I not appreciate the art of noise, these notes in the key of life called words that played in your face with life’s crescendos and poco retardos? Mom kept me close. She made it her business that I felt the gravity and weight of her past in order to be inspired to keep moving forward. I too would run life’s race with patience powering through because of her words. Lest I forget, she ensured I’d never forget. I am her Djeli and it is incumbent upon me that the Art of Victory through her and my dad’s choices, strategy, and tenacity be set before the fruit of my womb. They know through precept and example greater paths are expected to be pursued. They too are mandated to bring love and light to the universe for the purposes of healing the world. My mom came from humble beginnings, picked cotton on her grandfather’s farm, shucked peanuts, and planted gladiolus bulbs in the dirt next to my great-grandmother and the longstanding mistress of my great-grandmother’s husband..one of her closest friends. This same “other woman” would bear “7 heads” for my great-grandfather. My great-grandmother only birthed 3. Momma needed out of the madness so she was a serious student who “got her lesson”, and survived a house of violence towards her beloved mother by a father she greatly adored who died when she was 13 years old and he was in his early 30s. He was a faithful consumer of the very illegal moonshine he distilled and sold in “ the sticks of Marianna ” as momma would call her hometown. It was a rural, agricultural town in Florida where she got her roots. Her dad was a complex man, smart.. and academically astute despite the fact he did not get far in school. Children had to work the land, and no time for education. School was an unaffordable luxury. Momma said, “he knew big words”. I suspect he would have preferred an education if he had it his way. Mom learned early that there is a devil in the best of us. This same man who called her affectionately called his only daughter ”black gal” though she was paper sack brown, drew shotguns on my grandmother in a drunken rage and would “put peachtree limbs” across my uncle Elijah’s back stone cold sober to make him go to school. My momma said,” Daddy believed in education.”

When my grandad died my uncle Elijah dropped out of school at age 15, put on all his daddy’s pimped-out zoot suits, and ran in and out of married or committed women’s beds that were around the same age as his widowed mother. Uncle Elijah was called Junior. He was light bright, tall for his age, had hazel eyes, and curly hair, and freely partook in women, liquor, and spirits like his daddy. They say Junior looked like my granddaddy Elijah, a man I’d never met and who was long gone by the time I came into the world. And like my grandaddy, Elijah was a stone alcoholic. He too would die young. And at the age of 34 or perhaps 36, someone had it out for him. His drink was poisoned at one of those country bars he frequented. As he lay casket sharp his once fine frame sported a scar that he would positively take to his grave. He garnered this battle scar on his neck for stepping on his uncle’s girlfriend to holla. My enraged MARRIED great-uncle knocked out one of his sister’s son’s teeth and carved a permanent scar on his neck. When recounting this story My mother would shake her head and say with a sigh, “ It’s a wonder if someone didn’t get killed back then!” This particular story about my uncle and great uncle’s altercation always seemed to greatly disturb Mom and make her uncomfortable. Though not surprised by it, she remained disturbed by man’s inhumanity to man even though she created and garnered through the art of war the spoils of a comfortable lifestyle.

Both my parents were creatives in their own rights as influencers. They influenced the world around them in deeds and by their wisdom. They sought to have me stoked in culture and enmeshed me in the arts via piano, violin, and saxophone lessons, through marching bands, choirs, dramas, and plays they encouraged me to write and orate. I was a Debutante. My parents believed in me. But like them, I chose a path of certainty…my other passions being law, my people, my cross, and ministry. Poignant and profound stories were confessed to me while working as a counselor in the prison industrial complex. I collected these stories like orphans looking for new parents and a place to call home. I ran up and down the streets of Chicago as a senior parole agent going to and being exposed to live drama. I folded them all into the psyche of my collective unconsciousness. These were stories that were foreign to me but sometimes felt all too familiar, similar, sinister, sweet, and savory and held up 2 sided mirrors of those who survived or perished depending on the POV of the storyteller. Their nuances as human muse are the stuff that inspired the art and creativity of James Baldwin, James Brown, Jean Michele Basquiat, Jon Batiste, Matthew Henson and Zora Neal Hurston, Spike Lee, John Singleton, Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, Gordon Parks, Dr. Martin Luther King, Stevie Wonder, Ava Duevernay, James Weldon Johnson, Usain Bolt, Tupac, Viola Davis, Sidney Portier, Lorraine Hansberry, my mother, father, grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, siblings, our people to this world.

Motherhood inspired and motivated me to write stories of affirmations for my two brown girl children…Later, my art of war was to create clarity for the Children of the Diaspora. I realized I too must evolve beyond safety and safety nets. I chose vulnerability to give voice to my parent’s hopes and dreams, the orphaned stories told to me by the boxed-in and the voiceless. I’m humbled and privileged to be actualized through the sacredness of Art. Art and creativity is the modality of being and not just doing. God gave me two creative daughters and I decided a precept and example must begin with me. How can I tell them to believe in what yearns in them to be birthed if I believe art will starve them and that they labor in vain? To date, I have published 5 children’s books, created platforms centered around my brand, and secured a literary agent with my eldest daughter’s aid. I now work on projects with my children whether it be co-creating, consulting, or executive producing. And though both my parents are ancestors now, their indomitable spirits, stories, and art have been bequeathed to their two gifted granddaughters. How sacred is the circle of life and may this circle never be unbroken! They have negotiated well with God, The Uncreated Creator on how they are to express themselves as creatives and be conduits to bring stories to life for His glory. They should showcase man’s humanity of lack thereof as they raise awareness and incite solutions. For Art Should Disturb the Comfortable and Comfort the Disturbed. I recently saw the same canvas bag I’d gifted my youngest daughter as a Juneteenth present a few years earlier. I familiarized myself again with the aforementioned quote written on the side of it. It lay casually on the kitchen table. It was zipped up and its contents had it bulging at the seams. It had makeup stains on its exterior. Nosy and curious about the contents, I inquired about what was inside. She said it was makeup. I mused, thinking…Aww man, she”s reduced it to the obvious and mundane. This was not the artist’s emergency kit I hoped she would use it for. I so wanted to incite a smile that reminded her of mommy’s love every time she whipped out a brush. I reveled in creating great and memorable moments for those I love. I thought the way she chose to use her bag was common, nondescript, and every day, nothing magical or special. Then boom, it dawned on me. The revelation caused ME to smile. You see, in addition to drawing in sketchbooks and painting on canvases, my daughter is a masterful makeup artist and she also has a creative flair to turn her face into a canvas. She has gone from fine lines to broad strokes and fashioned the universe, gardens, bubbles and elaborate masks on her face mesmerizing her social media audiences and or folks in the street. Her boldness to parade in public in this fashion is ARTISTRY. Her bag must be used as she sees fit for it is a vessel for her interpretation of how as a creative she will create. The tools she uses to express her creativity or the vessel she stores it in is an individual choice. She must decide how best to serve others based on her calling and preference. This third-generation crescendo is the buildup and swelling from poco retardo by way of my parents’ creative choices. Their methodology, level of exposure, or audience reach were as important as what my daughters and I are bringing to the universe. There is a certainty in the fact that the farther you go the farther you have gone. Art tethers or releases. It is the individuality of our humanness or barbarism of the collective whole that must be seen. A great artist can create and recreate with tools and techniques that make the blind see, motivate the villain to embrace the light, inveigle the angel to give grace to the reprobate and make the straddlers choose a definitive side of the fence. My motivation to create is to birth art. I literally did it twice (my daughters) and they say lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place. As a 3 cord rope, individually and collectively we disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed. And if done right, our expressive longevity will outlive us the creators who tell tall tales by any means necessary wielding our choice of weapon. And in kind, we bless the universe for centuries to come!

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm9985976/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsstacia/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/anastacia.davis.14
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anastaciadavis/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/its_stacia
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCg93DIUfKRCE5UU2bX9O6ig
• Other: Valrie Kemp Davis website: https://www.valriekempdavis.com/ Valrie Kemp Davis Instagram: @valriekempdavis Valrie Kemp Davis Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/valrie.davis.161 Tatiana Davis Instagram: @puckerup_doll Tatiana Davis Facebook: Tati Davis Tatiana Davis Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@puckerup_dolll

Image Credits
Anastacia C.C. Davis, Larone Gilmore Jr., Ulysses Turner, Shane Valentine, JD @theecreativejd, Jay Byers of Jay B Image Lab LLC @jaybimagelab, @muradmagsud @pari_mammadli @jsphotorome, Erica @through_her_lens, Terrance Veals