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When I was a little girl you could have spotted me from a mile away. I would have been the pale face amongst a sea of black wrinkles. My expression would have been one of rapture while I listened to legend and lore of the very land I felt I was a part of by birth.
The greatest influences of my life have been the women that have raised me. Some have been white, some black but always southern and always family. These women held me tight with their wrinkly fingers interlaced around my belly whispering stories in my ear about the Grey Man, my grandfather, and the bastard from Tangier. Stories became like maps to me. They were there to guide me, to show me right from wrong. They told me of joy. They reassured me of disappointment, and that love and pain are never far from one another.
It took me a great while to learn that these stories were told for the sake of extracting a lesson and while unique only to a small part of the world, they spoke of experienced lessons. I am always captivated by these tales because of the idea of a surreal experience within the bounds of reality. It is not a question of faith that is important, but encouragement that a person, a place, and a time have an element of magic and mysticism that is revealed on an individual level. Using the stories and experiences of people and places, I am able to mold the world into a reflection of comfort by combining what is absolute and what is wished for, I look for ways to make this union tangible.
In my work, I use pieces from stories I grew up believing, memories, moods and feelings. They have become a type of collective experience that allows me to navigate through reality. I let this awareness guide me intuitively toward a greater sense of identity. In doing that, I always end up in a rich, dramatic, and superstitious dream world where who I remember, who I want to be and who I am harmoniously exist together. I use feelings and emotions from my life to create functional and non-functional wooden sculptures that construct a fantastical reverie.
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