Artist | Life Coach | Educator | Dancer | Creative Businessowner | Community Event Planner | Spiritual Practitioner
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Background
Painter, Sculptress, Arts Intergration Educator, Program Director, Self-Taught Digital Designer, Dancer & Instructor, Creativity & Instructional Coach, Reiki & Ancestral Practitioner, Nature Photographer, Community Healing Artist (Interactive Installations), Nature-Herbalist, Material Assemblages.
Janae' "Jaee/Honey" Sumter (they/them) is a nonbinary indigo child and student of life from New Orleans, LA, and a descendant of deep Gullah Geechee, Cherokee, and Creole roots. Jaee has a rich nine-year background and practice in Creative Cultural Arts, Arts Integration Education, and Community Organizing. In addition, Jaee holds six years of experience in ancestral, energy, and herbal work through a multi-lens framework.
Jaee obtained their Bachelor of Arts from Spelman College in Studio Art in Atlanta, GA, and a Master of Fine Arts in Integrated Practices focusing on Community Art and Social Justice from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. Honey is a Certified Creativity and Instructional Coach working with youth, adults, and creative educators to bring and build arts integration tools, community arts, social-emotional learning, cultural arts, and social justice to curriculums and institutions.
Jaee is a Certified Level 2 Attunement Reiki and Herbal Thai Compass Pracitioner who received their Reiki certification from Silver Holistic Therapies in New Jersey, NJ, and Herbal Thai Compass Ball Massage credential in Chang Mai, Thailand.
As a person who deeply cares for liberation, Honey is a community member, activist, space holder, and cultural bearer who uses many creative modalities as a collective altar that embodies community empowerment and care, global sovereignty, folk practice, legacy building, arts integration, cultural and ancestral awareness, education, and healing justice to support communities of color.
Jaee's approach to their life's calling merges research, experience, awareness, and action that addresses and builds upon solutions toward liberation and brings light to systems formed through the enslavement of people.
These frames happen through unpacking the roots of generational trauma, personal-collective oppression, and community separation and using creative practice to develop solutions that rebirth understanding, empowerment, resilience, and liberation for everyone.
As a New Orleans native growing up in underserved communities, Jaee's childhood integrated the powerful spirit of community, ancestry, and spiritual practice that honored cultural celebration, creativity as survival, and tradition, even in hardship. As they experienced the highs of community and culture, they also experienced elevated levels of oppression as a child and adult from abuse, colorism, poverty mindset, homelessness, homophobia, gender bias, neurodivergence, and more.
Jaee learned the importance of understanding minimal resources and creativity for abundant solution-building, storytelling, healing, identity expression, and giving back. Through those experiences, creative practice supported them as a foundational language for what they were processing.
As they gratefully traveled over the years, they learned of the similar injustices and traditions around the world that fostered connections between them. This awareness guided them deeper toward their mission of fighting for global sovereignty, legacy sustainment, and intergenerational bridging. With them living in cities in the South, East, West, and Asia and traveling to Sumter SC, Thailand, Myanmar, Puerto Rico, and Laos, they learned new ways of exchanging liberation, integration, self-discovery, and community power.
Jaee is the founder and director of Sweet Herbal Honey Apothecary LLC, where these principles and frameworks are built honestly and with/for the community.
