Artist Statement

Contours of counties and continents; maps connecting my son to his Caribbean ancestors; a call and response between the past and present; intergenerational reciprocity. Everyday people become sacred. 

I invite people and their stories into my studio. In one recent project created for Milwaukee Area Technical College’s Community Arts project, for example, advisor Erik Riley shared with me stories about his childhood and how deeply unconditional his mother’s love was throughout his life. I then created a piece that reflects him today, raised by love, surrounded by it still: the warm wood paneling of his childhood home a background to his portrait, while a small image of his mother holding him as a toddler anchors the piece.

In another body of work, my colleague and her children illustrate intergenerational reciprocity in portraits created with patient applications of watercolor paint. The family is surrounded by the lines of topography near two small towns in Mississippi, the land of the mother’s birth, and the land that raised up her parents and grandparents. The rhythm of topography was not applied in cartographic exactness but instead suggests the fluidity of memory.

I use watercolor in much of my work because it is imbued with the healing properties of all that water can be: baptism, renewal, receptivity, grace. I hand cut paper because it connects me to the hands and craft of my grandmothers. Embroidery pulls everything together. Each stitch is thought, rhythmically placing the final stories into each piece.