Heaven Jones is a Miami-born artist, researcher, and cultural practitioner. Her practice centers on preserving everyday Black stories through installation, sculpture, and immersive environments. She draws from funeral traditions, family rituals, and vernacular archives to explore grief, lineage, and celebration. Her work pulls from both personal memory and community history to protect what gentrification, time, and loss try to take away.
In 2024, Jones debuted Born Bred N’ Sheddin the Souf, her first major curatorial and artistic project. She transformed her family’s beauty salon into an exhibition space that honored the textures of Southern Black life. The project has since evolved into a traveling exhibition, carrying its stories into new spaces while remaining rooted in Miami’s cultural memory.
Jones is also the founder of Femme Continuum, an artist residency dedicated to supporting artists of color and fostering creative practices outside the traditional gallery system.
Meet Me At The Source
Meet Me At The Source was created by three artists whose practices intersect memory, place, and storytelling.
Heaven Jones, a Miami-born artist and cultural practitioner, centers her practice on preserving everyday Black archives through immersive installations. Drawing on funeral traditions, family rituals, and vernacular archives, Jones explores grief, lineage, and celebration. Her debut, Born, Bred, & Sheddin’ the Souf’, transformed her family’s beauty salon into an exhibition honoring Southern Black life through the language of textiles. The project has since been shown at the African Heritage Cultural Arts Center and now continues at Green Space Miami.
Shayla Marshall is a multidisciplinary artist known for immersive installations, flamboyant hair sculptures, and tintype photography, which reimagine cultural histories through a Black Surrealistic lens. Raised in Miami’s predominantly Black neighborhoods, Marshall draws inspiration from Southern aesthetics to create layered works exploring storytelling, beauty, and resilience. Her practice reframes everyday materials as portals into alternate, liberating worlds.
Philovian is a grillz artist who continues the generational legacy of Miami’s gold-tooth culture through his work at Lando Golds, a family-run custom dental adornments business serving the community for decades. His craft elevates grillz into sculptural works of status, pride, and identity, preserving traditions of Southern adornment and cultural memory.
Together, these three artists re-imagine Miami’s disappearing third spaces through a shared language of installation, textiles, and archiving. Meet Me At The Source extends the foundation of Born, Bred, & Sheddin’ the Souf’, becoming an evolving monument and living archive that preserves Black Miami stories for the next generation.
Shayla Marshall, Meet Me At The Source, 2025. Modular Wooden Structure. 10 x 20 feet.
Shayla Marshall, The First Lady, 2024. Synthetic braiding hair, 1970’s hair-drying chair.
Heaven Jones, Da Pearly Gate, 2024. Metal fencing & resin textile. 3.5 feet width x 4 feet.
Philovian, Mouf Full of Golds, 2024. Solid gold grillz.
Heaven Jones, Press On, Pressure, Press-her, 2025. Resin sculpture & acrylic, 3 mm thick board. 8.6 inches length x 12 inches height (Nails commissioned by Niyah Hernandez).
Heaven Jones, Grandmas Hands, 2025. Multimedia collage on wood, 120 x 60 cm. Text: The Holy Bible, Psalms Magic by Anna Riva, Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot by Mikki Kendall, First Sunday with the Joneses Poem by Heaven Jones.
Shayla Marshall, Chess Not Checkers: The Queen Moves Freely (Vol M), 2024. Painting on wood & resin. 60 x 60 cm.
Shayla Marshall, Chess Not Checkers (Vol ∞), 2024. Painting on wood & resin. 120 x 60 cm.
Shayla Marshall, Chess Not Checkers (Vol 1), 2024. Painting on wood & resin.
Shayla Marshall, Promotion, 2024. Interpretive performance on video.
Shayla Marshall, Portraits of a Noblewoman, 2024. Tintype photography. 4×5 metal plate.
Shayla Marshall, Nu Black Archive, 2024. Tintype photography. 4×5 metal plates.
