The Creative Cousin

Chante Monet Waddy is a D.C. born visual artist, creative director, and cultural curator who turns emotion, knowledge, and community into bold, joyful visual storytelling. Known as “The Creative Cousin,” she is the cousin who always shows up with strategy, sauce, and solutions, bridging neighborhood nostalgia with cosmic clarity to make art that moves people and movements forward. As a brand partner and creative director, Chante helps authors, small businesses, and nonprofits translate big ideas into polished, purpose-driven visuals: logos, campaigns, digital products, murals, and immersive experiences that actually resonate. Her process is simple and human: listen deeply, shape a clear visual strategy, and build work that blooms on walls, screens, and pages. Chante’s legacy project, Take What You Need (TWYN), is a community-powered creative ecosystem for adult Black women creatives, a “Community Garden” where we network across rather than only up. Through bartering, pop-ups, mentorship, a live grants hub, micro-funding, and practical workshops on pricing, contracts, and taxes, TWYN flips the “starving artist” myth into sustainable, shared success. Recently awarded the Artist-to-Artist Glow-Up Grant, she continues to prove that artists can live abundantly and lead boldly. Spiritually grounded and future-focused, Chante builds with Human Design and soul-contract awareness while staying rooted in everyday service. She is also a pageant delegate in the Ms. Full-Figured USA National Capital Region division, earning 2nd Runner-Up and Ms. Social Media, showing up not just beautifully but powerfully. Her personal motto, “No matter where you go, there you are,” threads through everything she makes: radical self-acceptance as the foundation for radical imagination. From murals to merch, classrooms to councils, Chante Waddy is reimagining the block, the brain, and the brand, one silhouette, one story, and one community garden at a time. Welcome to the Cookout.