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I am an artist who creates sculptures and works on paper and prints. I grew up in Detroit, Michigan, and currently reside in Dutchess County, New York. Guided by the unpredictability and surprise of improvisational music, my intuitive art process is its own form of musical notation. My hero Eric Dolphy once said "when you hear music, it’s gone in the air, you can never capture it again.” My art is an attempt to tangibly capture music’s escapability and offer what I hear as a visual experience for its viewers. Through a fluid creation practice, I reject singularity, interweaving my interests of non-Western mythologies and Afro-diasporic spiritual traditions to create a depth of imagery. My work is imbued with a graphic sensibility, inviting viewers to find their own entryways into the work be it through my sense of color, figurative abstraction, or through the unexpected recycled material choices in my sculptures. I view my work as memory-making assemblages, honoring Afro-diasporic histories and imagining new worlds through my Afro-futurist visuals.
My work exists on an unnameable timeline, traversing through the past, present, and future to capture the non-linearity and jazz of life. I acknowledge the influences of great teachers including my mentors Cledie Taylor, Robert Blackburn, and Betty Blayton. Their encouragement and emphasis on education and devoted community work have helped inform my development as an artist and as a human being. I am a lifelong learner, a long distance runner ever challenging myself to reach higher levels in my work. Through my mentors, I was able to meet a nurturing international community of artists and learned to share my enthusiasm for art with others. I continued this practice of communal creation as an arts educator in New York City for 36 years. I am full of pride with what I was able to accomplish with my students. Of my achievements as an artist, I am proud of the development of my work both in my studio and when challenging myself within the context of an artist residency. I am grateful for the residency opportunities whichincludes: The Studio Museum in Harlem (1986-1987), Materials for the Arts (2016-2017), and The Blue Mountain Center (2024) among others. I was awarded a Pollack/Krasner grant in 2018-2019.
