Artist Chrystal Seawood Is Pushing Us To Think Differently

It’s past time we remixed the entrepreneur archetype. The tried-and-true definition of an emerging or aspiring business owner feels tired. The modern entrepreneur is a mover, shaker and doer who’s not content with simply breaking all the rules. Our 52 trailblazers featured in the October issue are rewriting the rules, tearing them up and doing it all over again. It’s creation at its purest, because the fruits of one’s hustle are not actualized overnight or by following one jet-lagged recipe. It’s no longer adequate to measure entrepreneurs by the brick-and-mortar spaces they manifest or the jobs they create. Those are all important elements but fall short of what it truly means to build something — often with blood, sweat and tears. Whether you’re revamping the vintage clothing industry, introducing a fresh dining concept, cultivating an advocacy-focused creative agency or advancing the cause of equality for the LGBTQ+ community, the only thing that matters is freedom — the freedom to march to the beat of your own badass drum. Read our full rundown of trailblazers here.

Chrystal Seawood, a humanities teacher in the District, also works in visual arts into her everyday life. Her installation, “Feeling Our Way Through Navigating Emotion in Black Masculine Youth,” is a profound musing on Black masculinities and expectations of emotional expressions. 

Advice that keeps you hungry
“A work of art isn’t complete until people interact with it.”

Early bird, night owl or in-between
Something in-between.

Burning question for an iconic trailblazer
Yayoi Kusama: “What have you had to eliminate from your life to make work on a consistent basis?”

The current soundtrack to your life
A Tribe Called Quest’s “Midnight Marauders.”

@chryslovesu // chrystalseawood.art