Roadwork, pinewood, plaster, water from the Lumbee River, natural pigments. 2025
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(Written prior to full federal recognition)
The Roadwork is a teacher whose lessons cannot be learned elsewhere: patience, perseverance, and humility. There are no shortcuts or applause for doing the Roadwork. There is purity in its simplicity as you learn to stay composed under its pressure. The Roadwork always asks, “How bad do you want it?” Roadwork teaches one to love the process and not the outcome. The Roadwork doesn’t lie and has no favor for talent or fame, it only returns what you put in.
The material elements that make Roadwork are the summation of my travels and experience visiting my family in Robeson County as well as the concepts that drive my work and who I am as a person. The dark water of the Lumbee River winds through my tribal homeland. This same water, chemically changes the plaster within my work, giving permanence to the form and creating the water troweled polish upon the black plaster. The Lumbee tribe finds itself in a situation where the federal government grants recognition of our people but denies any federal aid and funding. It’s in this space that our people are doing the Roadwork by creating programs, outreach and stability within Robeson County and through this work I aim to bring attention and represent their actions and efforts.
“Lumbee Act 1956” plaster, soil, graphite. 2025….. The Lumbee Act of 1956 was a bill passed by congress that partially recognizes the tribe. This means the federal government recognizes the Lumbee as an Indigenous tribe, but denies them sovereignty or governance over their own land, or any federal aid that other tribes receive. We are the only tribe to be placed in a partial acknowledgment.
The backside of the runners, that the pickets are connected to, has the official hearing written and cast in plaster. Currently there is a bill that has passed the house that would give the Lumbee full recognition.
@lumbeetribencgov
Dried Ground(1-4), prints with various dry pigments, 2024. A mold, from the surface of the earth that was dried and cracked and then cast into aluminum. The aluminum sculpture was then inked and printed from. I like to think of these as an evidence of absence, the only way the ground becomes dried and cracked is from the lack of water.
Just wanted to share that I will be attending Washington University this fall to pursue my master in fine arts at the Sam Fox School of Design. I’ve had an incredible summer visiting friends from Chicago, New York, all the way to Japan. Everyone’s support has been monumental in perusing this new chapter, I have nothing but thanks. (I’ll try sharing a bit more as well 😛)
