Baltimore native Lenett Partlow-Myrick aka Mama Nef is a visual artist, poet-writer, educator, spirARTtual activist, grandmother, and principal artist for Partlow Art. She makes artifacts of her living experiences as an African-descendant female residing in the United States. Each literary, visual, and performance piece she creates is a chapter in that experience. She loves her family, ancestors, laughing hard, creative collaborations, oceans, spiritual rituals, magic, YouTube, pinochle, 60s and 70s music, and cooking for friends. She is an original member of the Trail of Dreams World Peace Walkers, an Elder for Beyond the Global Divide International Youth Summit, and a Licensed Conscious Life Design Systems practitioner.
Her visual art has been featured at the Ecomedia Blagden ArtScience Warehouse, Joan Hisaoka Healing Arts Gallery, in Leakin Park (Baltimore), on the covers of Passager literary journal, in her 33Bookz solo show, the Dos-à-Dos 2 book art exhibit with Jenny O'Grady, The Earth Project, and group exhibitions at the Hamilton Gallery. She has curated exhibits and arts events at Function Coworking Community, the Creative Alliance, Beyond the Global Divide International Young Leaders’ Summit, and most recently with the Jewish Community Center.
​Her writings appear in several anthologies, including A Community of . . . VOICES, When Divas Laugh, Little Patuxent Review, Dancing Shadow Review, ​Bum Rush the Page, The Muse, Poetry Baltimore, and Awakening the Heart of the Beloved Community.​ She has held writing residencies and commissions with the Ripken Reading Center, Baltimore Homeless Union, Maryland Food Committee, The Way Space, and Miami Light Project.
She has appeared as a featured poet at the American Visionary Art Museum, Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore Book Festival, Artscape, Theater Project, Wilde Reading Series, Blackbird Poetry Festival, Miami Center for Performing Arts, and Baltimore ’68 Riots: Loss and Legacy. Her original stage works include the 2-act dramedy The Conjure Woman Episode, The Dance We Do When We Be Sistas! one-act play, the Peace Projections multimedia show with Imani Muleyyar, and jazzoetry performances with international musicians. She is the subject of the award-winning documentary Mbele Ache, the CSN-TV special “Voices of Our Past,” and was honored in 2022 for her activism by the AFRO American News. In 2022, she produced her first short video documentary, “Making Our Spaces Sacred,” about outdoor sacred spaces created and sustained by African Americans in Baltimore City.
Mama Nef holds a B.A. in English, studied Publications Design, and attended the University of Baltimore’s Creative Writing and Publishing Arts MFA program. She has taught writing and literature courses at Goucher College, Osher Institute at Johns Hopkins University, and Howard Community College. She also co-facilitates a creative studio for the Ecological Literacy Immersion Program (ELIP) at Omega Institute for Holistic Studies and “human bonding” studios with artist-poet Jenny O’Grady. She earned a master’s degree in Leadership for Sustainability at the University of Vermont where she is currently completing her Ph.D. in Transdisciplinary Leadership, Creativity, and Sustainability.
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Artist Resume and Curriculum Vitae provided upon request