ARTIST STATEMENT:

 

In August of 1995, my nephew, Jake, was shot in a playground in Philadelphia. His younger brother, Jason, began self-medicating with hero and was incarcerated – again and again. This imprisoned all of us and sent our family spiraling, trying to figure out how we got there and what we were going to do about it.  This was - and is - the foundational impulse for my work; I am determined to burn down destructive systems laden with victimization and moral injury.

 

My work is about holding the pulse. I travel the inner roads, finding beauty in the raw and surreal moments that inhabit the space where time has stopped; the space where breath and presence are the closest we come to silence. I am a collagist working in the medium of live performance.  I experiment with text, sound, and media, incorporating scientific research and theory to create a vibrational, psychological, and emotional landscape where a new language is communicated by way of the heart. I am interested in this alchemy;  the  transformation of what is buried in our personal and collective graveyards. 

 

I grew up in a Philadelphia housing project. I was so sensitive to sound that I spent most of my time isolated, singing. It was excruciating sitting at the dinner table. I often was sent to my room to eat. This sensitivity is the gift that has fed my artistic practice. Because of it, I learned to live on intuition. It was my way of surviving the often violent sounds of my world.

 

In the late 70’s, I experienced David Lynch's Eraserhead. My mind was blown. I  knew, viscerally, that the sound was recorded in Philadelphia. Lynch moved  in a space grounded in Surrealism, which became an important movement in my work.

 

In 1994 Nan Goldin advised me to take my camera everywhere. Little did I know, I was capturing images leading up to the shooting of my nephew, Lil’ Jake, in 1995. I continued documenting the neighborhood and its collapse. A few years later my twin sister sent me a photograph of her remaining son, Jason, on heroin in her home. She was terrified, not knowing what to do. I advised her to keep documenting so she could see where she was. I used these photographs as writing prompts for Jason while he was incarcerated, as we began collaborating on The Good Mother. 

 

I am developing my own artistic language, a synthesis of decades of experience, research, writing, and experimentation. With this project, I am taking my creative practices back to the street, commiting to full-time work in the real spaces where victimization is happening, breaking the victimization in my own lineage. It is crucial that we no longer be victims of our stories. We can use creative practices to get out of them – heal them. Beyond a vicious cycle, victimization is a deadly cycle, one that can be disrupted by this work.