EP 156: Healing and Feeling with Director/Writer/Producer Learenna A. Reynolds

Learenna A. Reynolds walks into a room carrying history, spirit, and heat. An interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker from the South Side, she has been described as the walking embodiment of God’s consciousness, and the work earns that description. Her practice pulls from culture, folklore, and lived experience, shaping images that feel remembered rather than invented. On Visual Intonation Podcast, Reynolds speaks with the clarity of someone who knows where she comes from and why it matters.

Reynolds is deeply connected to The New Art School Modality, a learning space where currency is not degrees or credits but exchange, discipline, and devotion to practice. She is the owner of fleshxbone.works and a director at rawhead.anbloodybone, building worlds that move between film, ritual, and education. Her path includes work at j3llyfr1uts production, study through alternative art pedagogies, and hands on experience across production, communications, and teaching. This is not a résumé. It is a map.

Her short film Raw Head an’ Bloody Bone stands at the center of this conversation. Originally created to honor D’Angelo’s album Voodoo, the film draws its title from African American folklore once told to children during enslavement. Reynolds describes the film as an experience, one rooted in hoodoo, spirit, and sound. If you love film. If you love music. If you love work that listens as much as it speaks. This film calls you in.

In this episode, Visual Intonation Podcast traces Reynolds’s journey from camera operation and arts education to producing and directing work that feels ceremonial and precise. We talk about diet mississippi, about teaching K through 8 students, about Sun Ra, and about building creative teams that honor vision without dilution. The conversation moves slowly when it needs to. Then it strikes. This is an episode about practice, presence, and making work that knows its ancestors.

Learenna A. Reynolds‘s Socials & Website: https://paa.ge/learennaareynolds/