Un Nouveau Chemin Chez Soi—Pensées du Underground Railroad et les Chemins Invisibles vers la Liberté. Un Algorithme…

Cet œuvre est inspiré par une amie, une flamme et une femme qui a vécu un tourbillon de vie et qui la transforma en or. Un rayon de lumière qui continue à briller tant que l’étoile vivante qu’elle est. Sur le chemin du Underground Railroad, il est inévitable de considérer l’évolution de culture par chaque voyageur avec chaque terre qu’ils ont traversé. La Première église baptiste de Sandwich est la première église établie par les esclaves libérées au Canada en 1851. Ce bâtiment se trouve juste au-dessus de la frontière entre Détroit et Windsor, deux villes qui représentent un dernier point de passage pour beaucoup de la communauté noire pendant cette époque. Cette face Rubix ne montre seulement qu’une dernière étape pour résoudre un cube tout entier… orienter les coins. Pour traverser deux coins de terre, un océan entre la France et les É-U, pour réussir à coudre le tissu et pour le transformer comme métaphore du tissu de l’humanité. Pour un être-humain aussi douée que Cathy, voilà cet œuvre qui célèbre ta force et l’histoire de vie qui coule dans les plis de tes beaux vêtements.

Part One: Moving Left (Westside)
lemon juice, highlighter, ball point pen, and wite out on railroad board. 22x28in. The new Michigan Central Train Station brings up many memories for me… for one thing, its ORIGINAL building was located much closer to Detroit’s city center and actually served as one of the second to last stops for enslaved people traveling for liberation on the Underground Railroad.

The original station property was located at 501 Third Avenue…From 1848 – 1865 this MCRR was a hub for fugitive enslaved Africans and their descendants. Detroit was code-named “Midnight” and the Third Street Depot was an UGRR gateway to Canada. The MCRR Third Street Station was a block from the southern curve of the Detroit River, an international border, which was the closest distance from riverbank to riverbank, between Detroit, Michigan and Canada. Detroit was well known by UGRR operatives as a city where freedom seekers could find safe refuge not only for its proximity to Canada but also its strong and active abolitionist community.

The new Michigan Central Railroad building is closer in latitude with that of my grandparents home on Shrewsbury, a pivotal place in my childhood memory of Detroit before I knew that it would become my home. The algorithm that is being performed to this rubix cube in motion is reminiscent of these two places and locations, both situated further on the left side of the city, moving the top center green block to the left front face, after the first bottom layer of the cube is solved. As I move forward on the foundations set in my life, I hope to continue to connect with the history of my ancestors and with the resilience of African Americans in this country. Playing an integral role in my learned map of the world and the history of how its shape came to be.

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.

Part Two: Moving Right (Eastside)
lemon juice, highlighter, ball point pen, and wite out on railroad board.

Founded in 1846, Elmwood Cemetery is the final resting place to both freedom seekers and abolitionists who supported their causes. This includes liberated captives that were previously enslaved, black abolitionists, and non bipoc freedom fighter advocates. This cemetery is located on the Eastside of Detroit not far from Downtown, the city center which housed the portal of freedom from Detroit to Windsor Canada just across the river.

Although I have lived in many different Detroit neighborhoods during these past 5 years, I only recently moved to the Eastside of the city in 2023. A community that is iconic and filled with beautiful black families who equally take care of their neighbors. I never considered the possibility of this ground to be my resting place, but it is the current place that I call home. The algorithm being performed to this rubix cube in motion is a reflected version of the previous drawing. One of the most interesting things for this particular code, which can only be performed after the first layer is solved, is that the first command given to the top face is turned in the opposite direction of where the top center cube will be moved. So to move left…your first step is to move right….and to move right…..your first step is to turn left. It’s complicated, but it’s the pattern…life sometime has a funny way of doing this and the orientation eventually works itself out

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