Okorie Johnson and Chaunesti Webb-Johnson got married in 2022. (photo by Adinah Morgan)
If you talk with them long enough, you’ll discover that Okorie Johnson and Chaunesti Webb-Johnson have a shared artistic vision that was destined to bring them together.
The couple wants to expand what Americans — especially Black Americans — think of as Black art and the spaces in which African American artists play and contribute.
It’s a concept they call “Big Tent Blackness,” where what is considered authentically Black artistry goes beyond traditional categories such as hip-hop and R&B for music; Jacob Lawrence for visual arts; or James Baldwin for literature. It celebrates country music as Black, experimental theater as Black and any other art form created by a Black artist as Black.
“We have so many conversations about ‘Big Tent Blackness,’” said Okorie, 50. “The idea is to question who gets invited to the party of Blackness, what do you get to do as a Black artist and what do you have to have to participate to be considered Black.”
It’s an issue that is close to the couple’s heart. Okorie is a celebrated cellist who has recorded three albums, performed on national TV shows such as the Tamron Hall Show, opened for singer Maxwell and contributed music to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution documentary that won a local Emmy.
Chaunesti, 47, performs avant-garde theater, dance and improvisation that explore strategies Black women use to contest power, claim agency over their bodies and imagine a more breathable, liberated world.
But sometimes they run into people who are complimentary of their talents but are not sure their work is their cup of tea.
“Every once in a while, I get people who are like ‘Oh, wow, you pay your bills doing this,’” says Okorie, who performs under the name Okorie “OkCello” Johnson. “I’m glad you can do it. I might not come to your show, but you keep doing that.”
Chaunesti, who is curator of collections at the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, has also run into this in some of her work, such as Waiting for the Cactus to Bloom, an experimental solo performance from 2024 that used soundscapes, poetry and deliberate pauses to dramatize tension in living up to the world’s expectations
“It’s not August Wilson; it’s not Lorraine Hansberry,” said Chaunesti, adding that Okorie did the music for the show. “It’s something that sort of falls between categories, not quite visual art but not squarely dance either.”
That kindred desire to bring outsiders into the big tent is how they bonded after meeting through social media in 2021. Chaunesti, a native of Durham, North Carolina, was living in Chicago, working on her Ph.D. at Northwestern University at the time, and was contemplating moving to Atlanta because of its vibrant Black arts scene. She was a fan of Okorie, who lived in Atlanta, and the pair found each other online.
They were simultaneously going through breakups with separate partners during those initial conversations and found comfort in each other’s company at a difficult time.
“There began this really beautiful gift of an epistolary romance that’s almost a year-and-a-half long,” said Okorie, a native of Washington, D.C. “We wrote each other a lot.”
In one exchange, Okorie penned a poem that Chaunesti cherishes to this day. It reads in part, “I’m staring at my phone, wanting to type something to you uplifting, flirty, insightful. Wanted to distract you — myself even — from the heavy work before you, me, us. I don’t have that magic sentence — that combination of words that makes it all easy. But I then marvel at how soundly I am standing, how peacefully I am typing this, how optimistically I am musing on the future — even though it’s so heavy. Something in me is buoyant against its anchor.”
Despite their chemistry, the couple did not rush into the romance. Chaunesti moved home to North Carolina to care for her grandmother, who was ailing, but continued to write to Okorie, who was in the middle of a divorce from his wife of 20 years.
But it didn’t take long for them to realize they belonged together.
“Our discussions were romantic and sweet and, you know, flirtatious,” Chaunesti said. “But then they were also like us, sort of unpacking our lives and talking about our aspirations and our ambitions and finding points of connection and alignment. And it just became really clear pretty quickly that we found our person.”
The couple married in November 2022.
Okorie is working on his fourth album, which is expected to be released on October 31. He bristles at being called just a classical artist, saying the description doesn’t do justice to the breadth of his artistry.
“I play contemporary music that’s at the intersection of classical and jazz,” he said. “That intersection for me invites an exploration of funk, blues, hip-hop, reggae, dance hall — of all of this music that comes out of the African diaspora.”
In addition to her work at Spelman, Chaunesti has become a death doula. She became interested in the field about seven years ago but decided to pursue it after the recent death of a cousin.
“That was probably the beginning of me pursuing deathcare as my sort of life work,” she said. “So I have completed a certification program and am beginning to work with hospice now.”
She also has worked with fresh and dried flowers as a medium, sharing some of her work with friends. Next month, Chaunesti will host a community gathering that blends open conversation about death with intuitive flower arranging during November Nights at The Anchor, a performance space in Grant Park.
While Chaunesti and Okorie share a desire to expand the concepts around Black art, they are opposites in one way: Chaunesti is an introvert, while Okorie is an extrovert.
But the couple says that plays in their favor. Okorie has found that on the days when he is not on the road for a gig, he is happiest when Chaunesti works from home. It’s not unusual for him to work upstairs in his home office and call for her to come join him to listen to a new piece.
And if he doesn’t call, she may make a request herself, she said. She finds his music and the cello soothing.
“I think we do well together,” she said. “I don’t know that all couples would say they love working from home together. But on the days that I am here and he’s in the office, it is a treat to be able to have those occasional check-ins and just moments to see one another.
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Leon Stafford is an award-winning journalist with more than 30 years experience at various newspapers, including The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Lexington Herald-Leader and the Knoxville News-Sentinel. He has covered municipal government, business, education, hospitality and the arts during his career.
