ARTIST STATEMENT

My work, which tends to be mixed media, lends itself to a continual/continuation of common African object making practices.  I share this mixed media experience with many other artists, and find it in abundance among African American artists. While not sacred, I try to find spiritual connections in this object making.  African sensibilities are use in the presentation of contemporary social/political concerns much like objects in use in African societies where traditional practices exist today.

This work reflects the appropriation of textural surfaces one encounters with sacred objects that been consecrated with sacrificial offerings.   My process, which shares with historical customs, includes the addition of significant objects to increase the overall value.  All of these efforts are rituals in a much more removed way.  Four Hundred Years.  Experiences, new and old at once but disconnected through time. The traditional system of beliefs has been suspended. I long to engage and often do engage the other real experience. Homeland. I do this through both Intellectual and physical experiences.

Like many African Americans who struggle with spiritual needs, we often make no connections to organized religious practices. We are neither in the old or new world. As a practicing artist I know experientially, that a spirit world is there and survives in my work and in the work of my contemporaries.