Madame Dolores

Madame Dolores is a multi-platform, multi-disciplinary artist employing sound, vision, text, and performance as storytelling tools creating radical, controversial cultural engagements. The questions emerge from political, cultural, natural, and sensual experiences acting as her muse, dictating the medium and discipline of her work. Her practice is driven by pursuing questions about our shared humanity as well as her personal histories as a first generation mixed-race American.  

The Pantry of Salt and Sugar asks that you put your mask on first.

Her work seeks to carve out new “freedom space”, a space for artistic practice which is not defined by inherited categories of race, gender and culture. Her bold, radical voice is an intentional act on the confines of stereotypes and misconceptions, pushing the art is an act of self affirmation, self definition and preservation. How might she live a life, her life without the constant and destructive interruptions from hatred and discrimination. Her response to these inane intrusions is her musical project,  The Pantry of Salt and Sugar, a micro-song project where she improvises compositions, lyrics, vocals and production in the moment; the emotional moment. It is emotion that drives the structure and form for these seemingly disparate, dissonant, polyrhythmic electronic sonic scapes. From the personal to the political, these songs resonate her context in the unchanging times we live. The songs are mischievous koans, scathing portraits, oblique observations and heart-wrenched confessions of a shaky vulnerability that wonders, if I save myself, will I be saving you too, because I can’t live her unless I am saving myself, daily. For life is a pantry full of ups and downs, salt and sugar and the recipe boils down to how you respond to either.





Christiane Dolores

I am convinced that there is an eighth wonder of the world embodied in the self and spirit of Christiane Leach--interdisciplinary visual artist, vocalist, storyteller, and writer. Christiane is a rare talent. She is like a multi-colored feather or the flash of red when we see a cardinal for the first time since last year. She uses all her artistic gifts to empower other artists and humans in her presence. She is powerful. She finds the place that is most afraid in another artist and dares the artist to be bold in that place. Yet she does not abandon you to the space of fear but leads you to it and through it in a manner that says, "I've been there." You trust her within moments because she is either unafraid or, what is likely the case, has found, maintained and nurtured her voice and artistic power in spite of fear and setbacks. She transforms the space in a room by her decision to be herself and to invite her audience into the magic she makes. - Dr. Tameka Cage-Conley