Know your history through collage

Maybe you don’t know much about history. Let’s fix that — in a fun way — by making art that links you to your family history.

Previous family collage-makers

Tomorrow I’m leading the first of two Family-Focused Collage Workshops. Meet me at the Woodinville Library at 1pm, and we’ll make a palm-sized collage about one of your relatives. Can’t make it to this event? Join me next Friday at the Duvall Library instead. These workshops are part of the King County Library System’s dive into Black history and futures.

A workshop student adds to her collage about her mother

It’s said you can’t know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been. Why not borrow a book or three from the library that illuminates history through a Black lens? That way, you can connect your history to Black history, and see where it might lead you in the future.

New work: "Rare & Exquisite"

I'm not usually a huge fan of butterflies; maybe I've seen too many of them printed in pink and slapped on products for girls. Also, they're flying bugs. But I am fascinated by some of the associations and cultural baggage they carry.

Some time ago, I heard a local radio story about how a military base also provides a refuge for endangered animals, including butterflies.

Credit: Sentinel Landscape program (USDA, Dept. of Defense, Dept. of Interior)

Environmental protection -- yay! -- but the irony of the program was even better. I was intrigued by the idea that a native species was safer among soldiers and artillery.

Soldiers at Joint Base Lewis-McChord (photo credit: US Dept. of Defense)

Native, local and vulnerable... hmm. As an artist, I explored the vulnerability of black bodies in my recent solo museum exhibit. And I've heard so many conversations calling black people 'an endangered species' since the 1980s. So I fused the two ideas in these collages.

I combined images from my family photo archive with photos of endangered butterflies from four regions of the United States.

As a kid, I remembered being mildly curious about the Victorian hobby of "collecting" butterflies. Then I learned the brutal reality. So as I sketched out my collage idea, I drew on that violent history.

The result is four large, dimensional collages I've titled "Rare & Exquisite." When you see them hung in a grid, they'll measure roughly six feet high by eight feet wide at the "Locally Sourced" exhibit. Want to hear more? Please join us at the reception on May 19th, at the Columbia City Gallery.

Book of Bulmash, chapter 94

Chapter 94

1. The mother pressed her clasped hands to her mouth in uncertainty.
2. Was this The Day That Had Been Foretold, the one her youngest son's teachers had promised during his darkest days:
3. "Those qualities that maketh him impossible now, they shall transform him into a leader of men and women when he hath grown up."
4. Or, as was more likely, was this morn the Final Sign of the Apocalypse?
5. For the eight-year-old had made only minor demands on his mother's patience as he readied himself for school.
6. The child had broken fast with a reasonably nutritious meal, AS REQUESTED;
7. The child had NOT pushed his mother to the brink of murder by raising an unholy noise before the crack of dawn;
8. Verily, the child had been... quiet.
9. Lastly, the child had initiated an amusing conversation with his elder brother and mother, concerning the creepiness of the holiday ditty "Santa Claus is Coming to Town."
10. Were it not for the earliness of the hour, the mother would have poured herself a celebratory drink of unsurpassed alcoholic strength.
11. Instead, she reminded herself that this sterling behavior would probably fade away with the morning mist.
12. Yet when the child asked the mother to retrieve a book forgotten at home, she hastened to deliver the requested tome.