This image is one of a vitreograph (printed from glass) diptych (one of two components) printed during an assistanceship at Penland Crafts in North Carolina. As a professional creative I’ve always been fascinated with adornment (I collected jewelry vintage and on trend) since I was a kid. At this time I was also focused on the use of natural elements as adornment. This is one of two images inspired by a book on natural adornment I was reading at the time. This as is most of my print work is a monoprint.

Two things you should know about me: I use what ever camera apparatus I have to capture images (I am not a camera connoisseur or aficionado) I am fascinated with cemeteries. I believe the first art gallery was really the cemetery. Think about it; for centuries people have commissioned artists to create artworks to adorn their loved ones graves. Over the years I’ve found that Civil War folks were willing to commission some of the most beautiful sculptures ironically. You walk through some of the worlds oldest cemeteries and see amazing sculpture and I being who I am can’t help but take a picture. I took these pictures at Laurel Hill when I lived in the Philadelphia area. They are still some of my most favorite cemetery pictures.

Artist collaborators #speaktruthtopower concerning politics, voting, + civil rights.

As a printmaker I’ve explored so many different ways not only my artwork and imagery can continue to live on. Printing is about multiples right?! When I first came back from Peace Corps service I had all of these awesome images that I loved in a long flat box under my bed in my childhood home. I of course didn’t believe that was where they belonged. I began to think of ways the images could be repurposed and used. I began putting the prints on vintage men’s shirts, journals, wrap skirts I made. I worked at a t shirt place and asked them to make my first line of t shirts. This Buddha halter was my favorite. I also hand painted the stripes and other design details on other shirts along with adding swarovski crystals.

Among the many jobs I had over the years, one of my favorite jobs was working onsite for a construction company. At that at the time the company was working on a children’s hospital project and I happened to volunteer at the same hospital. During my lunch hour I’d go volunteer at the hospital. I ended up working for the organization that I volunteered for…(that’s a whole other story for another day). The construction trailer was located under a bridge/I-95 connection. These images are under the overpass. There was also a great view of the river where sometimes I’d see birds diving for fish and dolphins jumping. Such amazing nature underneath this overpass.

I adore kids and love how they see the world. They simplify it in a way that helped me to realize that adults just sometimes over analyze things. Don’t get me wrong analyzation does sometimes make sense and it relevant but sometimes not. While traveling in Mali, I met these two industrious young men that offered tours of the Djenne Mosque (which if you’ve never visited put it on your list. it is amazing). This kid was absolutely effervescent and thoughtful all at once.

I love lithography. The graphic, high contrast, velvety nature that it can sometimes be the catalyst for is what I fell in love with. The Hand is a stone lithograph based on a combination of dream and photographic imagery. I’d been encouraged by another artist to keep a dream journal. From that time forward I realized some of the most fantastical images when manifest in the real world can come from our dreams.

I’ve been silkscreening since I was in 8th grade. For years I’ve been blessed with the perspective to think of images in layers of color. We can all do it honestly. I’ve just been doing it for a while. My very first image that I printed was from an X-Men comic (I and my brothers have read comics from the time we were kids) on an old t shirt. Pretty sure it had Wolverine or Nightcrawler in it.

As I evolved as an artist who uses printmaking as a medium and I began to realize the impactfulness of it, I began to think more of images that have power and what I wanted to reproduce and I what I wanted to communicate. The amazingness of printmaking is its versatility and that you can photographically recreate detailed imagery. I’d found this picture of a slave who to me did not communicate the energy and being of ‘slave’. To me she looked proud, self-possessed, self-aware. Dynamic. She did not appear to be owned by anyone despite what any label on the photograph said. That being said, it did also remind me of the oft used historical fine art painting subject matter of odalisque. It was very rare if ever a woman of darker skin tone was depicted in any of those classical paintings at all and if so as erotic or desired. I wanted to highlight all that I felt this woman exuded, even if labeled a ‘slave’.

It has always been interesting to me that given the nature of printmaking I’ve never had a desire to reprint the same image multiple times. I’ve always seen it as an opportunity to print the same foundational image with changes that reflect the multifaceted nature of the subject matter. That is the nature of a mother’s love right? Definitely multicolored and multifaceted. This image is based on a photograph that I took in a fetish market in Togo. Amongst all of the crazy over stimulation of that place was a mother holding her child. I was mesmerized. One of the best photos I’ve taken. I printed the image several times on different papers. This is a plate lithograph. So instead of being printed on a heavy stone the image was printed on a very thin plate which means that I get to keep the plate. Which is an interesting perspective to have now. Any of the stone lithograph prints I created are long gone. Children I won’t see again so to speak I guess.

The New Slave Matrix: Inhumanity + Profit in the US Prison System is a project that focuses on the #prisonindustrialcomplex the profiteering that happens on the backs of #American citizens and it’s overall affect on family.

Everyone has a story to tell and so does the adornment they wear.

Once people know you’re a collage artist, an assemblage artist, or you reuse things people will give you gifts. Vintage jewelry, magazines, record collections. Not all good gifts are as good as the amazing ones I’ve received I’ll warn you. I’ve been very lucky! The cover of this book was a gift. The papers part of my ever growing paper collection. You have to be very careful when you’re a collage artist. If it isn’t organized (I don’t mean some type of organized madness, but if you had an assistant that could find their way through if necessary) then you are trash collecting. A shift in perspective makes it art.

A collage combining a vintage ad from a Better Homes and Gardens, pictures I took while traveling, and a little blue baggie that I found on a sidewalk (that may or may not have had a controlled substance inside).

After traveling to various places and seeing some people barely making ends meet it was always hard to come home to a place where people throw away food. This is about the juxtaposition of the two ideas in my brain.

I stumbled upon a stack of pictures of my father when he was young, in the military, and willing to pose for a picture. I immediately stole them. When I thought of doing this print I thought of doing something that would allow him to see himself in a different light. I wanted to give it to him as a gift. This turned out 100 times better than I could’ve imagined. I don’t know if he viewed it as a gift. This is a plate lithograph I did at the Fleisher Art Memorial in Philadelphia.

Based on a photograph I took in San Francisco. There was this area (in Japantown I believe) where these cute little men gathered to play (chess?), smoke, and socialize. I couldn't resist taking pictures.
"Love creates us" is a quote taken from a book I was reading at the time. Love or our what we believe is a lack of love is what shapes us as people.
The image (plate lithograph) is actually printed on Chinese festival paper and glued to traditional printmaking paper (chinecolle). There are three versions of this image.

‘Plastic Harlem’ is from a series of work entitled PlayPlay. When I was a child. I used to put a towel on my head and pretend I had long hair. As a woman I have been bombarded my entire life with images of what is feminine (as men are bombarded with imagery of what is masculine) chief among them is that long hair, specifically long thick straight hair is what is considered beautiful. I know of course that ‘Plastic Harlem’- an actual wig made from recycled plastic retail bags- wouldn’t be considered beautiful by most and could be considered a bit silly as well, I’d counter that so is the idea that this one particular aspect of physicality makes a person more alluring. See more of PlayPlay.

A self-promotional piece | book love piece.  The poem was composed in that limbo that exists between sleep and dreams and dreams and the waking world. There are two versions of this book. See it in motion.

I went to a retail fixtures store and was literally transfixed by the options.

I grew up wearing costume jewelry. Things on trend. Vintage and antique items. There was a time though that there was a shift. A shift from wearing a necklace to wearing something that speaks directly from my heart and spirit and tells anyone who sees it who I am. I am speaking specifically adornment. Adornment speaks to a different level of aesthetic choice for your person. Adornment tell people a little bit about who you are. I primarily use vintage, repurposed, and recycled items. I’ve used anything from belt buckles to napkin rings. It keeps things fun. Each jewelry collection I’ve ever done has a story, a history, a reason for being.

To say the year 2020 was crazy is an understatement. The United States as a country, culture, people has been schizophrenic; the pendulum swinging wildly from nightly New York City singalongs and thank you sidewalk chalk drawings dedicated to ‘essential workers’ to a malicious election and a government that doesn’t seem to care about listening to the constituents that voted them into office. Some might say it is the most un-American that America has felt, while others may say this is the most American that America is capable of being. No Evil Viaduct is a response to this tumultuous year.

This accordion book piece incorporates several obvious proverbial components-- the maxim of three ‘wise’ monkeys, flowers, depiction of a youth smelling flowers. I’ve also incorporated a couple of my favorite symbols (for origami and life in general). The ‘snowflake’; at once a facetious insult referencing those leaning left in American politics and also a reference to us humans as individuals. The butterfly; an allusion to rebirth and regeneration as well as the idea of a sense of freedom.

The use of the book as the mode of art concept transmission in and of itself reminds those of us familiar with the idiom ‘don’t judge a book by it’s cover’. This piece asks should we be judging each other in the first place? The cover or the inside? The responsibility rests with each of us to hold ourselves accountable...right?

This is one image from this book. It moves. See ‘No Evil Viaduct’ in motion.