Of Victims and Violence
“Laura Got Lynched From the Bridge”
“Laura Nelson and her son, L.D., were arrested after an incident involving a stolen cow, an incident that escalated. After their arrest, an enraged mob of over forty white men broke them out of jail and lynched them from a bridge over the North Carolina River near Okemah, Oklahoma, on May 25, 1911. Both were repeatedly raped prior to the lynching. The son was photographed lynched from the bridge with his pants hanging around his feet. Laura’s son was 12 years old.
Laura’s and her son’s photographs are the only ones we have today of a lynched woman and child although nearly all lynchings of the estimated 4,000 black men and over 200 women and children were photographed and printed as postcards. These postcards were sent around our fair country… to friends and relatives of the rapists and murderers and from the townspeople …as was customary after a lynching.
In the one remaining black and white photo of this travesty of a woman and her child being lynched I could make out the difference in hues of the polka dots on the fabric she used to make her dress. As I am a textile artist, I recreated them individually in her honor. She also, as I could discern from the photo, made slippers or shoe tops to match her dress.
I think that was the final spear piercing my already broken heart.”
SAQA’s ‘Words Fail’ one of 28 finalists in SAQA’s international virtual gallery curated by Ellen November and Andi Perejda 2021
National Association of Women Artists NAWA NYC Juried Member’s 131st Annual Exhibit 2020
Alliance for the Arts, Ft Myers, FL Exhibit “Pain, Process, and Promise” 2020
Reece Museum, TN international juried “FL3TCH3R” exhibit 2019
Award of Excellence from English Juror Sue Coe
52” H x 28” W
Noose hangs from ceiling 12” in front of piece to create shadow
Silk rusted with discarded brake discs, stitched with anonymous lynched women. The Laura 3D figure is hand and machine stitched using rayon thread, her face is done with both prism colored pencils and stitching. The independently hung noose hangs from the ceiling approximately 12 inches in front of the piece.
“The Georgia Gazette Revisited” documents these horrors of human cargo and enslavement but also relates them to the turbulent times in which we live.
After 400 years…through the 13th Amendment (freedom from slavery), Jim Crow, the 15h Amendment (Black vote for men), the horros and lynchings of the KKK, the Civil Rights Movement, the Voting Rights Act, white supremacists, police brutality and murder…to the Black Lives Matter movement, throughout all these historical events Black Americans continue to be redlined, murdered by gun violence, and doomed to poor education and poverty as a result of our country’s history of white domination.
Monetary reparations cannot erase this inhumanity but we, as Americans in all of our glorious colors, can begin a course correction at the ballot box. Let us step up and vote for those who both acknowledge our history and allow our children to learn that history…
because we are only scarred by the past if we ignore it.
24 x 24 x 2.5, mixed media on cradle board
NAWA’s 133nd Annual Exhibit
23 Warren Street , Street Level, Tribeca, NYC October, 2022
“The Georgia Gazette Revisited”
“Two million Africans perished on the gruesome sail to the United States after capture in West Africa.
Overall, for every 100 Africans captured, 40% are estimated to have died either during capture or during their horrific journey. The arrival of survivors in Savannah was documented by The Georgia Gazette in advertisements for the sale of these men, women, and children on the auction block.
Video made by Foosaner Museum
click here for VIDEO
Featured in The Nation magazine’s Dec 13 - 17 Issue of OppArt, co-curated by @andreaarroyoart
The Nation is the longest published running news magazine in the United States, it was first published in 1865 by abolitionists.
“Wounds the Size of Oranges”
“Their exit wounds were the size of oranges”.
‘The size of oranges. Emergency room doctors describe their horror and helplessness when addressing the immense damage done to our children by the bullets from an AR-15 semi-automatic weapon, damage that is impossible to treat successfully. First responders are unable to stem the rivers of blood, physicians are unable to repair the massive tissue and organ disintegration. The shooter does not even have to make the effort to aim, once his target is hit it is a virtual death sentence. As one ER doctor said “They had no fighting chance at life”.
How does an artist convey her visceral reaction to this horrific imagery? And how does she plead with responsible gun owners to end this nightmare of private ownership of weapons that are designed for war? And how do we end the death grip of the NRA?”
I wish I knew. #NEVERAGAIN
“On The Edge”, National Association of Women Artists Juried Exhibit Art Vendue Hotel Gallery, Charleton, SC 2022
Featured in OppArt, co-curated by Andrea Arroyo and published in
The Nation Magazine Deember, 2021
Reece Museum International “Fletcher Exhibit” Johnson City 2018 Healthcare and the Arts Award Art Center Sarasota, Sarasota, FL Juror Nathan Beard First Place Award Foosaner Museum, Melbourne, FL Florida Artists Group (FLAG) 70th Annual Juried Member Exhibit 2019 Museum Video link here
Diptych 36” x 42” x 15” mounted on toy guns. Silk soaked in tea, figures rusted with automotive brake pads, assault rifles artist dyed and commercial fabrics, heavily beaded, border crocheted yarns
“Forgiving-ness”
“A young white supremacist man, after being welcomed with open arms to a Bible study at Mother Emanuel AME church in Charleston, SC, used an assault rifle to terrorize the congregation, killing 9 innocents. The relatives of the people slain inside the historic African American church spoke directly to the accused gunman at his first court appearance. One by one, they did not turn to anger. Instead they offered him forgiveness and said they were praying for his soul. I am not a religious person and I do not pray. But if I ever thought there was a” prayer” made on earth that was worthy of wonder it would be their collective spirit of Forgiving-ness.”
National Association of Women Arts NAWA NYC “Resilience of Grief” juried exhibit 2021
Alliance for the Arts “Gravity of Gratitude” juried exhibit Fort Myers, FL 2020
25” x 25” x 5” mounted on clear acrylic bar
silk rusted with automotive brake discs, heavily thread painted church, 9 origami birds represent 9 victims
“Empty Bowls of Yemen”
“Save The Children, an international organization established in 1919, estimates that 85,000 children under the age of 5 have died from starvation in Yemen due to the civil war. According to the United Nations, Yemen is now (April 2019) the worst humanitarian crisis in the world; 14 million mothers, fathers, and children are on the brink of starvation. On April 16, our President vetoed a bi-partisan bill to end US military support and the sale of arms to Saudi Arabians who ship them directly to Yemen, enabling this horrific war. The Trump administration supports Saudi Arabia in these efforts despite their horrific record of violating human rights, the latest of which was the brutal murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the public execution of 30 dissenters.”
Ringling Thomas Gallery ” 70th Annual Juried Members eExhibit Florida Artists Group, 2019
29 x 22 x 6” mounted on toy guns
Rusted silk fabric with discarded automotive braked discs, dozens of dyed small fibers and meshed them to create the border and the bowl, mounted them on painted toy guns.
“Vietnam to Very Fine People:
Aryan Nation
“
T”he Vietnam War was cruel, heartless, and...many would argue…pointless. We lost over 58,000 brave soldiers and the human toll to the Vietnamese people neared one and a half million. War crimes such as My Lai, where a handful of US soldiers massacred over 500 women, children, and elderly men, were aberrations that horrified our nation but revealed the war’s de-humanizaiotn of “the Other”.
A very small minority of Vietnam vets “brought the war home”. Whereas the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan practiced vigilante violence, these aberrant Vietnam war veterans promoted revolutionary violence to overthrow the Federal Government, establish a paramilitary state, and incite a civil war to establish white supremacy throughout our country. They codified their paramilitary actions at the 1983 Aryan Nations World Congress held in Haydn Lake, Idaho, one of dozens of military white power training camps, where they adopted two primary tactics:
1) use dark computer networks to coordinate action, and
2) establish cell style resistance groups who could operate without direct leader communication.
Fast forward to Ruby Ridge, WACO, and the Oklahoma City bombing which in 1995 killed 167 innocents. All events involved national terrorists representing white power anti-government ideology, now within well funded and well armed cell style militia groups.”
60 x 20 x 7” mounted on toy guns
Silk charmeuse rusted with automotive brake discs, Faces printed on silk organza and embellished with Derwentt pencils, thread painted, border is crocheted yarn 2020
“Gunned Down Grandsons”
“Grandmothers of young black men quake in fear when their grandsons are outside of the home.....will they return safely?
Or will they be stopped for a routine police check and have their actions misinterpreted?
Or worse, will they be shot in the back or choked to death for a minor offense?
Or shot in their own homes?
Or Lynched by Knee while crying out Mama “
All too often a grandmother’s worst fears come true. Today is Mother's Day; I think of and honor all grief stricken grandmothers.”
Art Center Sarasota 2020 “Onward and Upward” Sarasota, FL Judge Nathan Beard
Merit Award
National Association of Women Artists NAWA “Resilience of Grief “ 2021 2nd Place Award
60 x 20 x 7” mounted on toy guns
Silk charmeuse rusted with automotive brake discs, Faces printed on crinoline and embellished with crocheted hand dyed yarns and Derwent pencils, border is delicate meshed artist dyed yarns, threads and raffia
“Asylum Seekers”
“This past summer I lived for more than a month in the city of Cuenca which is a gorgeous UNESCO World Heritage site in southern Ecuador, a country roughly the same geographical and population size as Florida. Nearly a million and a half Venezuelan refugees have traveled through Ecuador since 2015; hundreds of thousands have remained, a third of them in Cuenca. They are housed in the many churches, they are fed by the government and by local NGO’s, and they are generally very well accepted by the Cuencanos. They were not there by choice; they were fleeing impossible circumstances that threatened themselves and their families. In exchange for their permission to photograph, I purchased their worthless Bolivars (currency), their candy and trinkets, and paid to listen to their wonderful street music. I cannot help but compare the open arms attitude of Ecuador to those asylum seekers from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador who wish to escape the horrors of their countries to come to our vastly resource-rich, geographically huge, and historically migrant United States of America.”
Webber Gallery, Ocala, FL Florida Artist Group FLAG 2019
3D diptych 40” x 48” x 5” mounted on painted plastic fencing
Please bear with me as I continue to add to this new website, thanks!
“Stop the Bleed:
Kit Recommended
”
“Emergency room doctors describe their horror and helplessness at the damage done to our children by the bullets from assault weapons meant for war. They are unable to stem the rivers of blood or to repair the massive tissue and organ disintegration. First Responders now recommend we carry Stop the Bleed kits to stem the blood flow from a mass murderer’s weapon, especially for our children to carry in their backpacks.
On December 14, 2012, a 20 year old with automatic weapons massacred Six adults….. Four 7 year old children …. and Seventeen 6 year old children at an elementary school.
Nearly ten years later, we should look at ourselves and ask: “What have I done to help prevent althe mass shootings since Sandy Hook…
…and all the mass shootings to come?”
22” x 22’ x 6” Sandy Hook victim’s photos and names stitched onto textile and felt, mounted on wood panel covered in Mylar, clear child’s backpack contains the recommended Stop the Bleed kit for assault weapon rifle wounds.