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.


Tarot card #3

Here's where I relocated the focal image that used to be on The Unclean tarot card.
Funny how I can barely understand the lyrics to the song that inspired the card's title. Not the Kelly Clarkson song or the Jon McLaughlin song. The one by 311, from 1997. (I am so out of the loop I didn't know there were two other songs with the same title. I also didn't know the 311 version was a track in Guitar Hero World Tour.)

This card is also my entry in Michelle Ward's latest Street Team Crusade.With a lot of help from The Husband, I created this image in Photoshop. Then I used it on a calling card I brought to Artfest last year.
I would've liked to blend the image into this newer piece a bit more, but I'm just trying to get the ideas out first, before I lose momentum to make the others.
Again with the biohazard symbol! Here it's transferred to watercolor paper. The gray area is a gel medium transfer of a child's eyes.
This is also a "knock-off" of previous work. I used her image on a papier mache house sent to me as part of the Art & Soul Portland 2007 welcome packet.
There are other children in the original picture, presumably her brothers and sisters. But I like her expression -- or lack thereof -- best. She looks sullen, self-possessed, accusing and vulnerable all at once. I wonder what happened to her as an adult.

Tarot card #4

Tarot card #2