350 Ancestral figures surround the plinth of white supremacist Francis Scott Key, the author of the American National Anthem. They represent the beginning of the business of slavery, when a ship docked in Virginia in 1619 with 21 people on board, but left W.Africa with 350 stolen human beings. They are standing together for justice more than 400 years after their arrival initiated the horrible mass enslavement of Africans.
350 Ancestral figures surround the plinth of white supremacist Francis Scott Key, the author of the American National Anthem. They represent the beginning of the business of slavery, when a ship docked in Virginia in 1619 with 21 people on board, but left W.Africa with 350 stolen human beings. They are standing together for justice more than 400 years after their arrival initiated the horrible mass enslavement of Africans.
Dr. Huey P. Newton was the co-founder of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense. His widow, Fredrika Newton commissioned me to create the first permanent sculpture of a Black Panther member in the city of Oakland, the place the international freedom fighters began their mission.
William Lanson succeeded at most everything in the 1800’s as a free Black man. He turned empty, mostly undesirable land into neighborhoods, employed free and enslaved Black people in the construction of New Haven’s early infrastructure. He spoke out for voting rights. Later in life, the white power structure determined that he had become too powerful for an African descendant. That’s when the system, ultimately gamed against him, felled him like the deeply rooted tree that he had become.
MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA 2018
This sculpture is one of three located on the grounds of The National Memorial for Peace and Justice. It represents the women of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
The Honorable William Byron Rumford was the first African American elected to the California State Legislature from northern California in 1948. He wrote the Fair Housing Act which was rolled into the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The Archangel of the Forest protects the forests from the tiniest seed to the tallest tree. Climate change is making that task very difficult. Forests are burning, being logged, sprayed with pesticides and generally abused by governments and corporations.
Mamiwata is the impact of climate change on the planet and our ability to fight it. Mamiwata is the African Goddess of Water. She is normally adorned with jewelry, her hair flowing, exhibiting a physical presence that defies conventional standards. My Mamiwata is stripped down to her barest essence in order to battle for earth's survival. That is when she is at her most focused and strong.
Trees on plantations where enslaved people were confined fed from the soil where the dead were buried. Those trees still stand, remembering the losses. They continue to bear witness while creating life, seed after seed are scattered by the wind. The babies born on those plantations, were snatched and sold from a tenderness they were never allowed to enjoy. They grew up not knowing their stories, cut off from their past, their history, their connections. The mothers who birthed them had to watch their babies as they were scattered by the wind. Trees never forget.
This sculpture investigates the point when we can we become who we are destined to be.
When this sculpture collapsed and I rebuilt it better than before, it helped me realize that in the rebuilding, working and creating with clay was my joy.
Working with incarcerated youth opened my eyes to the pain inflicted on some of the most creative, smart and funny young people I had ever met. I witnessed in them a fear of failure so pervasive, it made them not want to try anything outside of their comfort level. We must abolish the prison industrial complex.
