Rhea
Beckett
Artist | Founder
Rhea Beckett is an interdisciplinary artist, curator, and founder of Black Artist Research Space (BARS). BARS began as her 2014 thesis project at MICA, when she stepped away from music performance to study the role of the curator and how curatorial practice can intersect with artistic production, collaboration, and community engagement. Since then, BARS has evolved into a platform that functions as an extension of her creative practice.
As an artist, Beckett works across sound, design, performance, painting, and photography, while BARS acts as organizer, researcher, and collaborator. Through this platform, she develops projects that create space for experimentation, dialogue, and collective inquiry among artists and communities.
Beckett received a bachelors of Art from Fisk University (Nashville, TN) and an MFA in Curatorial Practice from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2016.
Rhea is a classically trained singer and was a soprano in the Grammy Award winning Fisk Jubilee Singers from 2009-2013 (National Medal of Arts recipient, 2008). She sings in four languages and has over twenty years of on-stage performance experience.
Rhea currently creates from Baltimore, MD where she has been a professor of art for eight years.
Plant Data Experiments: Sonic Cartographies
location: Tilly’s Escape [Baltimore, MD]
[Untitled] is a developing performance and installation project that reimagines the story of Tilly, an enslaved woman who escaped by water in 1853, as a sonic meditation on freedom, ecology, and memory. Through this research, Beckett begins translating plant data, field recordings, and video from the landscape into a musical score, creating the foundation for a visual soundscape that renders environment as narrative.
Image 1: Untitled,Rhea Beckett, digital photography 2025
Image 2: Untitled,Rhea Beckett, digital photography 2025
Image 3: Untitled,Rhea Beckett, digital photography 2025
[Untitled] for Tilly
This piece is composed from recordings generated through a willow tree’s signals translated across eight digital instruments. Using this material, Rhea Beckett builds an original score reflecting on movement, water, and the story of Tilly’s 1853 escape, shaping these sounds into a meditation on freedom and survival.
“The hills fill my heart with the sound of music. My heart wants to sing every song it hears”
Julie Andrews (The Sound of Music)
Pier IV & V: Recording plant data at the Baltimore Harbor.
Data from ginger root: Designating instruments and sequencing notes.
Reimagining “I Must Become a Menace to My Enemies” by June Jordan
Sampling through an MPC Key 61
Creating contrast and tension through notation.
Home test: Experimenting on a struggling vine plant running through Moog-32 Eurorack synth
Rehearsals at Peabody: My voice training began at 3 years old and has remained a part of my daily routine whether it is with a coach, breath work while walking down the street, or arpeggiating in random moments.
Creating the movement within the song. This first layer is important because it sets the tone and feeling.
Percussive accents.
