Mama Nef's profile
Baltimore native Lenett Nef'fahtiti Partlow-Myrick aka Mama Nef is a visual artist, poet-writer, curator, educator, spirARTual activist, and principal artist for Partlow Art. She creates art out of her lived experience as an African-descendant female residing on occupied Native territory in the United States. Her father taught her to draw at age four. She first performed on stage at age six and started writing “on purpose” at age 9. She maintains a full, disciplined artistic practice influenced by spiritual forces, natural environments, travel, mentors, and master teachers around the world. She has a 30+ year curatorial practice of bringing artists and communities together for transformative experiences anchored in love and respect.
Mama Nef has a B.A. in English, studied Publications Design, and attended the Creative Writing and Publishing Arts MFA program at the University of Baltimore. She has taught writing and literature courses at Goucher College, Osher Institute at Johns Hopkins University, Howard Community College, and co-facilitated a creative studio for the Ecological Literacy Immersion Program (ELIP) at Omega Institute for Holistic Studies. She earned an M.P.S. degree in Leadership for Sustainability at the University of Vermont where she is currently completing a Ph.D. in Transdisciplinary Leadership, Creativity, and Sustainability.
Mama Nef’s visual art has been featured at the Ecomedia Blagden ArtScience Warehouse, Joan Hisaoka Healing Arts Gallery, on the covers of Passager literary journal, in her 33Bookz solo show, the Dos-à-Dos book art exhibit with Jenny O'Grady, The Earth Project, and group exhibitions at the Hamilton Gallery. She has curated exhibits and art events at Function Coworking Community, the Creative Alliance, Beyond the Global Divide International Young Leaders’ Summit, and two weeks following the Israeli-Hamas war at 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 also 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 her son 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.” 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.
In 2022 Mama Nef was honored for her activism by the AFRO American News. She is an original member of the Trail of Dreams World Peace Walkers and an Elder for the We Will Dance With Mountains global community. She currently serves as an Artists U Baltimore co-leader with Slangston Hughes. She loves her family, friends, ancestors, laughing hard, creative collaborations, oceans, spiritual rituals, magic, YouTube, pinochle, music, and undomesticated animals that show up in her backyard.
