Dail Chambers began organizing, and advocating for the inception of Yeyo Arts Collective at her studio in March 2010.  

Entrepreneurship is a key component to considering oneself as a professional artist or creative. Although she attended a fine art school, the artist longed for a community of support that reflected her political, cultural and artistic identity.

 She believes, to serve a group or community is to develop oneself and support the leadership in others. Through art, one steps into a leadership role merely by creating the object, image or experience for the public. In 2010, she approached a small group of women to take their chances on a small business endeavor. Through developing a short term business goal and plan, and reaching out to a small network of like-minded women, she began the journey of cooperative economics and alternative approaches to business.

The question to our community is:

 “How can we redesign our lives to uplift our natural and built environment in the midst of vacancy, underdevelopment, federally mandated Promise Zone, Opportunity zone and “supposed” blight.” How can we honor the people and plants that make North Saint Louis the unique cultural and ecological hub that it is? In my art practice, I look for ways to express my connection to land and people. The corn plant variations, and the husk has been an inspiration for my collages and mixed media work, too.”

Chambers is a visual artist, creative consultant and grower. She is a community-focused farmer whose Coahoma Orchards is an urban orchard “direct action” dedicated to the cross cultural heritage of Native and African people. Located in the Jeff Vander Lou area, this orchard grows chokeberry, plums, black cherries with perennial herbs and flowers. The expansion sites are in the Cote Brilliante, the Greater Ville Neighborhood and Baden neighborhoods of Saint Louis, Missouri. Coahoma Orchards works to create food forests to combat the effects of climate change that impacts our health, our urban environments, and our access to food and nutrition. Her visual art practice is a multimedia exploration in genealogy, women’s narratives and social environmental art. She has received numerous awards and fellowships throughout the United States. As a homeschooling, teaching artist she has traveled internationally, creating curriculum lesson plans to enhance and motivate inter-generational learning environments. 

Learn more about Dail’s work at dailchambers.life and @dailchambers

Fannie Lou Hamer House, The Community Archive and Coahoma Orchards have come together to honor ancestors and elders who migrated from Mississippi to the Saint Louis and East Saint Louis region. With the shared migration story of the American Black Migration and the Trail of Tears, many people from the south continued their agricultural practice in our Midwest or Upper South area.  This memorial style approach to uplifting our ancestors supports the cultural and political awareness of the general public.  It builds positive cultural self awareness for the entire collective and connects our contemporary struggles to a lineage of resilience.