I am a visual artist working in collage, assemblage sculpture and altered books. My practice explores identity, memory and the history of the African diaspora. Vintage and contemporary images collide to convey how the past informs the present.


Work in progress: barnacles and clinginess

My great-grandmother had both of her children by the time she was 22 years old. I got to thinking about that, and which direction my assemblage about her should go, on a gray day at the beach...
... and then I noticed the barnacles. They'll cling to whales, to rocks...
and I imagine Mickey found her kids clinging to her about as appealing as barnacles are to a boat owner. (Remember: she was not a Mother of the Year candidate.) I created my own using a papier mache recipe, and scattered them along doll arms.
Everything I've heard about Mickey sounds like two children were too early, and too much, for her. Her relatives told me Mickey constantly stashed the kids with her siblings or her father, to go out drinking. I'm going to add a drinking glass to the assemblage as well, one that I gave a faux-mercury effect.
But as I mentioned in the last post, I don't have an image of Mickey as a young woman, sober or not. So I'll use a stand-in image I painted over. More on that in the next post...

Missing Artfest? Me too.

Work in progress: It came from the deep