love to everyone that came through the @boscenterforarts for open studios. 🤗
shoutout to all the artists and staff that played a role in making the evening what it was. 🙏🏾
join us next saturday for the opening reception of #attaché at the mills gallery. a beautiful show featuring bca artists curated by @meclinaart . 💫
peace, peace! ancestors, vol. 1 is installed and will be on view at the @boscenterforarts in an upcoming group show featuring fellow bca artists and curated by @meclinaart . first time these have gotten the light of day in some years — excited to share them with y’all and to see them in conversation with so many other incredible offerings.
see yall at open studios or toward the later part of the opening reception!
boston/worcester homies, slide through the @boscenterforarts this month to connect with art and the spirits who have served as conduits from the other sides.
gratitude to be present — in the mix. i’ll be sharing some drawings and words that emerged between 2018-2020, the years before and after my mother’s transition. may they offer y’all some of the grounding and healing they gave me as i processed and proceeded.
ancestors, vol. 1, 2018-2020, marker, ink, typewriter, 6” x 9” ea.
on view in a few weeks! pull up! 🙏🏾
some portraits from a few of @thenolanobles martin luther king jr day shoots over the years. big love to my brotha @southernstyleinternational for always making space for us to see each other and create alternative narratives.
i be thinking bout these shots @cavwins and i created all the time… they stand out in the archive. joints feel like a full production, but it was just the two of us and a camera taking strolling through city park in new orleans — talking life, music, architecture, and of course @poloralphlauren …
if you a creative in boston — or you tapped in with one i should link with — holla! 2025 was a dormant year for me on the cam as i settled into this transition from new orleans back to mass… this year we getting back to documenting culture, creating archives of the creators, and celebrating the legacy and spirit of our ancestors.
a millennia from now, they gonna know who we were and be inspired. ✨🙏🏾✨
a little process on this most recent piece. feels like it’s 98% there… hopped into @procreate to flush out some ideas on the color scheme halfway through — been enjoying that workflow lately.
“Crepe Myrtle High School, later renamed J.S. Slocum High, was opened for black students in Pineville communities including Wardville, Smithville, and Ruby. It opened despite the 1955 Supreme Court decision, made more than a decade earlier, that school systems should desegregate.”
(africanamericanhighschoolsinlouisianabefore1970.com/john-s-slocum-high-school-pineville-la/)
yesterday, as part of the @nextcityorg vanguard program, we visited the @stentonmuseum in germantown. as soon as i walked onto the grounds, i walked past our group and made my way towards a tree — sometimes they just speak to you, listen. after hearing from the lovely ms. alvina, i asked to take a portrait. “where do you want me to go?” i asked if we could walk over to the tree that spoke to me upon arrival and she replied “you know this is my favorite tree on the property?” and proceeded to tell me about a vision she’s long had of sitting under this tree and reading to young children. i invited her to close her eyes and meditate on that vision — to feel the chair she was sitting in, see the book she was reading, and the faces of the souls she would impact. the result of that process was this portrait. later on, ms alvina shared that dinah, the woman who had been enslaved on this property and saved it from being burned by the british, was buried on the grounds — they don’t know where, but they know it was under a tree. perhaps THAT tree. the one that pulled me in. the one that pulled ms. alvina in. the one where one day, young children will listen to elders read stories that feed the fires in their hearts to cultivate the worlds they dream of.
