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.


The Crab Claw, part 1

Siddown, kids. It's fairy tale time.

Remember how we were talking about telling yourself a fairy tale in which you decide what the ending should be? I wrote one for the Artfest book of ATCs I'm working on. I decided to spread the love over seven ATCs, so if you stick around you'll be able to read the whole story. It starts like this:
"... seemed to what?! Finish the sentence!"

No. Not gonna. Not 'til tomorrow, anyhow.

Because the claw had to be baby-sized for this ATC, I sanded down a bread bag clip to the bare essentials, painted an undercoat of black, then painted two or three colors over that. Tricky, but not impossible.
The paintover method I learned from Lisa Bebi is both fun and challenging, especially when painting skin tones on a person of color. If this were a white baby, I could probably get away with either or both of these:But, um, the paint companies don't make "African American flesh"-- good God, what a horrible thought. Makes me think of Strange Fruit -- so I use these colors:
From one or two colors, to eight to ten, depending. Can't just add soft white to burnt umber to get the color I want. Otherwise the skin looks flat, like I used wall paint or something. Remember my first attempts?
And if you're trying to paint a chocolate-skinned person, for example, the person comes out looking like they're wearing blackface. Whoops.
So this little pumpkin's skin is the result of experimenting on another, larger photo I used on the next ATC. Bwahahaha... now you have to come back to find out more.

The Crab Claw, part 2

Once, there was...