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.


Postcard on its way!

Arrrgh -- I should've checked the picture of the postcard more closely before I sealed it up in the envelope. Made the mistake of using the old camera, which I haven't used in months. But I did sharpen it a bit in Photoshop. I'll have to ask Tally to take a better picture once she receives it.
Hey, say it with me: "Tally, can you take a better picture of the front, so we can see what it really looks like? Lisa's picture looks like crap."

The other side is covered with a crinkly dark green paper and pieces of sheet music-patterned paper. I then sealed the paper with slightly thinned matte medium and dried it with the heat tool. Next, the Golden Acrylics colors... I toned down some Cobalt Teal (a freebie I'd usually consider too garish) with Paynes Gray and a little bit of Phthalo Green (Blue Shade) to get a seawater color; dried that too. The last color was a wash of Iridescent Pearl (Fine). I used a Sharpie for the text. I knew the back would be impossible to shoot properly, what with the final wash. I was going for the same iridescence you see on a water bubble just before it pops. (Love that word, "iridescence." So much more evocative than "shimmer.") The text reads:

At night we swam together, him tossing me up with the waves and down into the current. I had not tamed him, he insisted. But he found my human oddities intriguing enough that the merman would not let me drown.

But one night, I chose to swim back to shore on my own. Let the waves overwhelm me, or let me drown, or maybe carry me home.

He was astonished, though he tried to hide it. The merman accused me of abandoning him like the sea spray flees the waves.

I reminded the merman that he was not tamed, and then swam the last few feet to the shore.

And now the postcard is off to the wilds of the Valley. You'd think it would take a day or two to travel a thousand miles, but I predict it'll reach Tally on Friday.

Relatively speaking

Somewhere, beyond the sea...