Lemon juice, bleach, and oil on black canvas. 16x20in. 2024
What makes a matriarch so strong? Is it in the strength of her hands? Is it in the strength of her loins that have birthed generations? Is it in her resounding voice which has sang many a lullaby, a praise,and a hymn? Is it within her warm loving voice that broke in screams and in tears through the struggle of a lifetime? Is it through the struggle of her people? Is it within the struggle to be alive? She knows struggle. She continues to provide. She will not be moved. She is still here today.
Lemon juice and oil on raw canvas, 16x20in. 2024
I will never forget the story of how my grandmother died. She was always so beautiful in every picture that was ever taken of her. Sometimes when I look into the burning glow of her stare, her eyes that twinkled as if they emitted their own light, I see my mother, my sisters, myself. It’s hard to think that at this point we are all older than she lived to be. But without her existence none of us would be here. My mother said that when she was five years old, my grandfather came to her one morning slowly and calmly. He said “Your mother is dead”. He said this knowing that She had passed in her sleep. My young mother looked up at my papa and smiled…then she started to laugh. “Stop playing, daddy, no she’s not… Where is she?” He just stood there for a while, and then he started to cry. That’s when she knew. She was gone. Celebrating her memory that continues to live…
Lemon juice and oil on canvas, 14x18in. 2024
It is a memory that my mother says she recalls as if it was yesterday…a memory passed down to me through this story that I’m telling you now. Everyone was there at my Aunt Rose’s house that day: my grandfather, my step grandmother, some neighbors and other family friends. My mom says that Aunt Rose would always play the piano for her students within her class and when family would gather. She says that she would always play the same lively tune but she can’t remember the name of the song…she could still picture her hands scattered across the keys, her flowing dress printed with hot pink flowers and giant bright green leaves. Many years later she would pass due to dementia, but that night, my uncle Darald, my mother and uncle ray got to pose for a lovely family photo on Rose’s decorative piano bench.
lemon juice, ink and white texture paste on paper, 16x20in. 2022
Inspired by the sculpture of Pandora releasing chaos in the world, this work makes contact with black history after being isolated in a white hegemony. The growth that I have experienced moving from Atlanta to Detroit, vibrates and echoes around me, exposing the zones of color that have been historically mapped and sustained through redlining and discrimination. Through decolonizing my mind and walking through these spaces, I am able to grow and make contact with my true self, even exposing the very roots of my hair and parts of my being that were forcefully hidden from me for a certain period of time.
lemon juice and archival ink on paper, 11x14in. 2022
Yvonne et Yaoundé, lemon juice, joint compound, acrylic medium, and homemade charcoal on canvas, 40x56 in.
This work was created during an international residency in Orquevaux, France. A large focus of the project was to connect with African communities in France and create artworks focusing their beauty and the location of their birth nations. This work focuses the narrative of Yvonne, one of my hair stylists who is based in Strasbourg, and her birth place of Yaoundé, Cameroun.
lemon juice, ink, and white colored pencil on paper, 18x24in. 2023
A trip into my personal subconscious, activating the space of Detroit and the remembered environments from my youth. My grandparents house on 7mile/ Shrewsbury Lane, the endless grid of the city, and the fleeting differences between East and Westside. This work engages with the geography of Detroit that has always been my home and also sensory information from my childhood experience in navigating the community.
Oil and lemon juice collage on canvas, 18x24in.
This painting speaks on the in/visibility of Black womxn and their strength as a community.
lemon juice, oil, and texture paste on paper. 30x40in.
Being often unable to afford things in Bronze, Savage would cover her plaster works with a layer of shoe polish mixed with brown paint as it revealed a very similar luster to Bronze. As an artist, I have always admired the intuitive connections that we make with materials, especially those that we create ourselves…this becoming a conversation of alchemy. Despite the financial and social struggles within Savage’s career, her prolific studio cultivated much life, seeking to find equal rights for African Americans in the arts.
(cropped) lemon juice, oil, and acrylic on paper. 30x40in.
oil, lemon juice, and ink on paper, 16x20in. 2022
This work is inspired by the photography of Benedict J Fernandez and the funeral procession for Martin Luther King Jr. imagining the intensity of seeing his wake in a civil awakening of confronting racism. This bring up a multitude of emotions and the symbol of the white rose acts as a mean to pacify but also allow the audience to dream of their past, present, and future as Dr. King always shared.
Dreaming of Home, lemon juice, and ink on paper, 11x14in. 2023
This artwork focuses the legacy of Dr. King and his birth home in Atlanta, Ga.
lemon juice, recycled text, oil paint, and eyeshadow on canvas…24x30in.
oil, lemon juice, texture paste on cut paper, about 9x12 in.
Oil and lemon juice on canvas paper, 9x12in, 2022.
Color in White, oil and lemon juice on canvas, 30x40in. 2022
Growing within a landscape plagued by white supremacy, how can the black body be visible and free of its residue ? Seeing the color in white, and seeking to trace the diaspora through the earth and the freedom of movement to connect these communities together. One body is lemon juice and the other oil paint. In the conversation of the museum, how have we dealt with engaging with hidden histories of the Bipoc community and how have we sought to memorialize them as well. What have we learned from the black community through its face as viewed within the museum? Are we making contact with this face at all?
Oil and lemon juice on canvas paper. 9x12in. 2022
lemon juice on cut paper mounted to wood, 5x7 in 2022
lemon juice on cut paper mounted to wood, 5x7 in 2022
lemon juice on paper, 28x22in., 2021
lemon juice on paper , 16x20in, 2022
lemon juice and charcoal on cut paper collaged on canvas. 36x48in. 2021
lemon juice, handmade paper, charcoal, thread, texture paste and recycled print. 40x30in.
An autobiographical narrative inspired by the work of black female artmakers, this contemporary quilt desires to see through the past, present, and prospective future of black femme artists as activists and their stories.
lime juice on paper and encaustic on wood panel. 8x10in. 2022
acrylic and lemon juice on panel, torched 8x10in. 2022
lemon juice, woodburning, and texture paste on cut paper, mounted to wood, 2022
lemon juice, woodburning, prismacolor pencil and texture paste on wood, 2022
Lemon juice on cut paper on wood. 8x10in.
oil, lemon juice collage, and acrylic on acrylic medium. 24x18in. 2022
lemon juice on paper, 9x12in., 2021
lemon juice on paper, 8x10in, 2021
lemon juice on paper, 9x12in, 2021
lemon juice on paper, 11x14 in., 2022
woodburning and prismacolor pencil. 18x24in. 2021