In the summer of 2017, Mayor Catherine Pugh ordered that Baltimore’s statues commemorating the Confederacy be removed by dark of night. Controversy followed; what remains today are the granite plinths upon which 3 statues once stood. These plinths form the basis of an ongoing series of my work, titled “Absent Presences”, and function as examples of the forgetting and remembering that characterizes the city’s history of race relations. Baltimore’s racialized histories are written onto its landscapes, but are often occluded or obscured; they are the ‘back of the house’ upon which the city was built, even if they are often concealed. The works in the series, based upon the forms of the plinths, include references such as dates and shapes that highlight the absent presences the plinths now embody. The pieces memorialize not the Civil War, nor the Jim Crow era that saw their erection, but the moment of their removal; they invite further conversation about the presence of the past in our everyday lives.
Faience. Jewelers know it as that bright turquoise clay-like material used by ancient Egyptians to make jewelry, but they also often used it to make amulets to protect against various harms. In these three pieces I use faience to explore what a modern amulet might be. Some, such as condoms, appear to be almost self-explanatory. Similarly, keys protect our homes from intruders — but who among us can explain just how the tumblers spin to open or close a lock? And very few of us can describe how the anti-oxidants which supposedly abound in blueberries truly protect our health.
Alphabet boxes are an exploration of what letters mean beyond the purely phonetic or linguistic. Three done, 23 to go!
Lunchbox is my reliquary; child of the 60s.
Bugs! I’ve made bugs for coursework to learn techniques such as riveting, hinges, and use of alternative materials.
In 2017, the Baltimore Jewelry Center’s community project was based upon CrossPASS, a project by Demitra Thomloudis and Motoko Furuhashi. Kate Ellis and I were assigned Druid Hill Park as our site, and it has been generative for me ever since.
In the Middle Ages, pilgrims got badges for traveling long distances. In 2020, I’m making badges for staying at home. Each of these reference something I’ve collected on my daily socially-distant walk.
