LaDonna  first came to the East Village of Birmingham to procure an art studio for her large ceramic works at our location which at time wascalled Art Town. She chose the first on the left, naming it "the Mausoleum" and created her first installation "Cultural Fragmentation" an assemblage featuring a large wooden Indian Chief which represented a statement on American cultural degradation. A resident artist in 2018, she organized the Fresh Dirt Surrealist Sympatica, a full-house exhibition which included collaborating artists from Raudelunas Pataphysical & Glass Veal groups, some of the most obscure Alabama artists and attended & participated in live events.

LaDonna is an internationally known American violinist & educator pioneering the art of free improvisation.  As a performer, she has toured the USA, Canada, Europe, including Russia and Siberia, China, Japan, India & Korea. She is co-founder of TransMuseq Records and the improvisor magazine which began as an extension of the Improvisor’s Network, a grass-roots organization to connect improvising musicians across the USA, founded(1980) in New York City. With Davey Williams, they published the improvisor (the international journal of free improvisation). She produced numerous concerts & festivals in Alabama and the Southeast, including the Birmingham Improv and the improvisor Festival. She became founder & director in 2019, rebranding the former ArtTown as East Village Arts. LaDonna's visual art:  drawing, collage, assemblage & ceramic sculpture stem from the intuitive processes of free improvisation and surrealist influence by automatism.  In 2022 as violinist, she opened for The International Surrealist Exhibition in Cairo. Two years later, the exhibitions, Echoes of Contemporary Surrealism, were co-organized in Luxor, Egypt, Budapest, Hungary, & Saint Cirq La Popie, France at the home of Andre Breton; and culminating at East Village Arts of Birmingham, Alabama. Founder & President of East Village Arts, her concept is to foster the creation of an “East Village” in Birmingham, like NYC, to forge a vital space to gather artists, musicians, poets, writers & thinkers serving as a catalyst for creativity, to elevate both emerging and established artists whose work is important, to serve the wider community as a multi-cultural & multi-generational center for creative dialog and meaningful connection, which in turn will inspire, revitalize and anchor the regeneration of our neighborhood, the “East Village” of Birmingham.