This collection of cyanotypes on cotton cloth uses a hairstyling tool as its subject. By obscuring the object, I meditate on histories of struggle, alongside pride and creativity born from it. It is through digital manipulation, exposure, and layering that I produce color variation, shape, rhythm, and blur –– inviting viewers to see familiar objects anew.

“art is necessarily a terrain of defamiliarization: it may take what we see/know and make us look at it in a new way.”

bell hooks

“the slave and the ex-slave wanted what had been severed: kin.”

Saidiya Hartman

“we are after the absolute presence of blur. blueblackblur is our concern.”

Fred Moten

“The world of quilting by African Americans provides us a profound example of how from scraps barely enough for survival, we created beauty, and then engaged the knowledge and aesthetic we found around us, sharing what we knew and incorporating what we learned–– simultaneously becoming part of the mainstream, and yet continuing our distinct expressive culture.”

Roland L. Freeman