It has been over one week since voters took to the polls to be heard in the 2018 Mid-Term Elections. Today, there are still states counting and recounting ballots in highly contested races. There is so much I could write about concerning this historic election, but today I’m choosing to focus on some “Big Mama Wisdom” to remind us of our next steps.
Andrew Gillum is an African-American man who is still attempting to be the first African-American Governor of the state of Florida. Florida is currently under a legally sanctioned automatic recount of votes triggered by the fact that the difference between the candidate's received ballots is .5% or less. On election night Gillum’s team projected that he would not win the election, consequently, Gillum made a very provocative concession speech. As he had throughout the campaign, he quoted his grandmother. To many his reliance on his grandmother’s wisdom seemed strange, but for many of us raised in working-class families with little economic privilege this felt very familiar. We spent so many hours sitting at the feet or around the table with grandmothers who cared for us while our parents worked at other people’s jobs that grandmothers’ words were deeply ingrained in us. Gillum told the story of how every school day his grandmother anointed his head with consecrated oil and admonished him with these words, “Go to school, mind your teachers, get your lessons, and one day bring that education home. Bring it home for your little brother and sister who don’t know what it is yet.” This midterm election placed in local, state, and federal government numerous leaders who will be the first to sit at the table of power. New Yorkers elected the youngest ever member to the U.S. House of Representatives. The first Latinx woman is headed to Congress to represent Texas. Colorado elected the first openly gay person to serve as Governor of any state in our Union. Harris County, Texas, the 4th largest county in the country, elected 17 African-American women to judgeships. These are just a sprinkling of the many firsts that happened on November 6, 2018. I hope each of these new decision makers will take to heart the words of Andrew Gillum’s grandmother when she sent him off to school. Each of them has been anointed by the votes of their constituents to consistently show-up to speak truth to power, to understand established systems, to learn how to use or disrupt systems, and share those lessons with those not sitting at the table. These new leaders have marked a path and are integral to preparing others to follow it. Their accomplishments of diversifying government cannot be a one time fluke but a new standard. Growing up as an African-American Catholic female, I was often the only person of color in my classroom, church, and extra-curricular activities. My grandmothers consistently reminded me that I was more than worthy to be in the places where I was the only, but they added to Gillum grandmother’s admonishment. They said, “Be better than the rest, work harder, study longer, and listen more. They expect you to be less, so you must prove that you are so much more.” As these new leaders take their rightfully earned seats at the table, I pray that they remember that the world is watching. Their character, words, and behavior must exude excellence and integrity. Many will be seeking flaws in order to destroy their status, influence, and power. Some will even make-up flaws. It is acutely critical to the future success of our democracy that the lives of these firsts withstand scrutiny and fabrications.
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Allowing yourself to enter into intimate relationships with others forever impacts your life. Intimacy comes with the honest, raw sharing of hopes, ideas, emotions, and experiences. These types of relationships are at times both rewarding and painful, but they are integral to shaping our entire being. I have allowed myself to have this type of friendship with many women throughout my lifetime, be it for a moment or a season. My second piece, Conqueror, in the Crowns: Royalty and Resilience Series, visually and symbolically represents what happens when you enter into intimate relationships with other women - their strength becomes your strength.
When you look at a woman the first thing you see is what she wants you to see. A woman carefully curates your experience as you enter into her presence. Her adornments send a message of how you should approach her. Conqueror clearly says, “I’m royalty; respect my status.” When you take the time to look beyond the adornments, you understand that she is deeply complex. Her wholeness is a multi-layered composite of many parts. Her skin is never monotone. It is a tapestry of varied she-stories woven together to serve as armor against attack. Her eyes reflect the skepticism of age and the hopefulness of youth. Her smile is warm, inviting, and approachable, but it masks a deep, lingering pain. The pain is rooted in a longstanding history of oppression. Her back stands firmly immovable against struggles while her gaze contemplates a better future. America’s Southern red clay soil induced both trauma and joy from the moment her ancestors stepped off of their abductors’ ships onto the land. This is the same soil that sprouted the seeds of back-breaking cotton blooms. Her ancestors’ wombs fertilized this soil as they took a break from laboring in the fields and squatted to give birth to a new generation. The strength, culture, and tenacity of this new generation came through the handed down stories, food, art and memories of the Motherland. The longer these descendants of abducted people thrived on American soil, the more this land became their birthright. Conqueror is the composite of all the women warriors who are preparing my daughter, and all African-American youth, for the sustained battle against multiple forms of oppression. Feminine memory wills them to never forget their royalty, to transcend through the pain, and to press forward into victory. The blossoms are for generations who thrived in spite of overt, legalized racism, sexism, and classism. The transition in colors recognizes our collective efforts to resist oppression. With each generation, the war against oppression continues, but there is a little less bloodshed in each battle. The bright green blossom symbolizes the yet unseen moment where future generations will have space to blossom with no hint of oppression or bloodshed. But until that day, feminine memory will propel us into battle where we will emerge as conquerors. I started this series of blog posts with the question, “What do you do when your loves are under attack?” The urgency to find an answer came with my daughter’s proclamation that the two things she loves most - black people and the truth - are under attack. If you’ve been following my posts for the past week, then you know this attack is not new for people of color, particularly African-Americans. Something has attempted at every point in history to destroy our spirits, minds, and bodies and at every point in history, our response has been to thrive.
So my response to the question is, "We will thrive!" Today, I present art that symbolically shows us how to be conquering rulers of our destiny. The Summit is the first piece in the Crowns: Royalty and Resilience series. In ancient kingdoms royalty often fought in battle. They established their authority on the battlefield. Before every battle, the commanders, leaders, and warriors gathered together to strategize. They found a location removed from the conflict. It was a space above the danger and provided an unobstructed view to see who’s coming and going. It’s a space that allowed them to get comfortable with each other. The summit’s environment was just as important as the strategy being discussed. The women are the royalty in The Summit and they have gathered in such a space. The garden surrounds them with God’s creation. It is a place of living, growing, and blooming vegetation. Imagine the richness and strength of the fertile soil fiercely grabbing the roots of every plant. Can you feel the comfort of the sun’s embrace on every leaf? Do you taste the relief of cooling rain showers that replace an undeniable thirst? Every member of the garden has access to all of this. In the garden are visual reminders that everything needed to survive is provided. This is the space where these women have chosen to gather. They’ve gathered to draw on the spirits of their ancestors. The feminine memory of the ancients reigns down on their gathering. It helps them to recall struggles, mourn losses, and celebrate victories. The feminine memory leads to restoration, rejuvenation, and resurrection. It empowers a dead spirit to bloom. What do you see in the eyes of these women? What do you hear in their voices? What do you feel in their presence? What message flows to your spirit? The 2000’s brought even more athletic, entertainment, corporate and political success for African-Americans. Forty-two years after Althea Gibson won the Women’s Singles in Wimbledon, Venus Williams won the same title which marked the beginning of a string of women’s major professional tennis titles for Williams. In 2002, Halle Berry became the first African-American woman to win an Oscar for Best Actress. Oprah Winfrey built on the entrepreneurial teachings of Madam C. J. Walker to become a billionaire as a media mogul. Around the same time four black men, Kenneth Chenault, Richard Parsons, Franklin Raines, and E. Stanley O’Neal became CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. The ultimate achievement for African-Americans came when then U. S. Senator Barack Hussein Obama was elected U. S. President in 2008 and again in 2012. As these achievements were happening, discord and hate were brewing in suburban and rural America. It manifested itself in the form of mass shootings. The first was Columbine High School in 1999, a 2007 gunman killed 32 people on the campus of Virginia Tech, 26 elementary school students were gunned down in 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Connecticut, and most recently in 2018, 17 were killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Discontent was also brewing in urban neighborhoods. Thousands of people in the city of New Orleans died after Hurricane Katrina blew through the city in 2005. The massive death toll was a direct result of city officials’ neglect of needed infrastructure improvements in historically under-invested neighborhoods. Unarmed black and brown men and women were being gunned down routinely by police officers across the nations. An NFL player quietly knelt in protest during the ceremonial playing of the National Anthem to remember the lives of Philando Castile, Freddie Gray, and Laquan McDonald, a few of the unarmed people of color killed by American police officers. These stories spread effortlessly into the lives of our nation’s youth through their SmartPhones, an invention of the 2000’s. The WIFI enabled, internet connected devices are designed to connect people to information from around the world. For our nation’s youth, these devices have become both blessings and curses. Youth can acquire knowledge with a few finger taps while at the same time being harassed by psychologically damaging sights and sounds. Just like Faith, her final two models are products of this era. Lauryn Johnson is a recent high school graduate. Lauryn and Faith met a year ago through their involvement in youth programs sponsored by the Muhammad Ali Center (MAC). Lauryn’s parents gave Faith a weekly ride to MAC where the girls learned to be social entrepreneurs and social justice advocates. Lauryn was in her fourth year of participating in MAC programs and Faith was just getting started. She encouraged Faith to be actively involved in their school’s Black Student Union and to seek out opportunities to grow as a leader and scholar. Lauryn finished high school with enough college credits to enroll as a college junior. After graduation, with support from her parents, Lauryn decided to delay college. She is currently an Americorp Vista employee with the Muhammad Ali Center. Like most teens, my daughter is easily distracted and forgetful. Lauryn became Faith’s counterbalance. Lauryn’s maturity, perseverance, and dedication to advocating for others guided Faith successfully through her freshman year of high school. Kendal Rayborn has been a part of the Lindsey Family for nearly 4 years. Faith met Kendal in middle school. They are both now in high school. We parents take turns chauffering the girls around the city. I often eavesdrop on their conversations. They know I’m listening, but they’re comfortable enough around me to talk about what really happened at their outings. I overhear them talking about behaviors that make them uncomfortable to be around. I’ll never forget the outing that started out as a plan to attend some boy’s party and suddenly switched to meeting friends at the ice rink. I learned on the ride to the rink that the girls snubbed the party because the boys only invited specific girls. Faith and Kendal were invited but they refused to attend a party where girls were considered objects of pleasure and entertainment. They invited a lot of their friends to join them at the skating rink. The Instagram feed from the party proved their protest worked because hardly any kids attended the party, especially girls. Kendal is an aspiring actress with a very busy schedule designed to hone her craft. I remember Faith telling me she could no longer Instagram Kendal. Kendal had turned off the account. She decided it was a distraction from her goals and therefore wasn’t needed. That’s what I love most about Kendal, she knows what is truly important and will remove obstacles that get in her way. Every young girl needs at least one friend she can trust as a confidant. Someone who will be an extra set of eyes, ears, and hands in every type of situation. She needs a friend who will tell her the truth and challenge her when she is wrong. Faith is blessed. She has not only one but many. Lauryn and Kendal are two of the closest. It’s reassuring to know that young ladies like these are our future. In the 1980’s African-Americans moved from the projects of Chicago’s Good Times to the Brooklyn brownstones of the Huxtables. The enterprising Russell Simmons turned the Hip-Hop music of the Bronx into a lucrative music phenomenon through Def Jam Recordings. Spike Lee introduced the world to the culture of historically black college institutions through his big screen production of School Daze. In politics, L. Douglas Wilder was elected the governor of Virginia making him the first elected African-American to lead a U. S. state. While African-Americans were being positively portrayed on screen and making firsts in politics, a new caste-system was being founded based on the mass incarceration of black and brown people in a so-called “War on Drugs”. The New Jim Crow developed massive prison industrial complexes that reaped significant economic gains for its developers. In the 1980’s, FBI anti drug spending to fight the influx of drugs in neighborhoods of black and brown families increased from $8 million to $95 million while spending on things like education decreased. The main tool for controlling the spread of drugs was to jail both users and dealers. It was in this era that Faith’s next two models were born. These young women were born around the time that I graduated from high school and headed to Florida A & M University. I have classmates with children their ages. These are the young women that are shaping the future of our community. Angelique Johnson earned a doctorate in electrical engineering before the age of 30. She is the founder and CEO of MEMStem, an early stage startup that produces “implantable electrode leads capable of providing targeted electrical stimulation to highly dense and small nerve fiber groups” (I took that straight from the website). Angelique’s research led to the microfabrication of these devices that can be used to restore hearing, control Parkison’s tremors, and reduce chronic pain. Her devise can be completely manufactured through an automated process making her technology 1/10th the cost of similar technology created by hand. Thanks to her development this technology which was once only available to the affluent can now reach the greater population. Angelique is extremely intelligent, but what really impresses me about her is her passion for empowering young people through entrepreneurship. She understands the importance of education is not simply to be obtained but harnessed as a tool to transform lives. She is not educated to simply generate income for someone else, but to create a lasting legacy for herself and community. Even though she is probably one of the smartest women I have ever met, she is one of the most humble, approachable, and down to earth women I have ever encountered. Minda Reeves is a freelance writer whose byline reads as Minda Honey. I first met Minda after a talk I gave at Creative Mornings. During the talk, I mentioned that KMAC Museum’s education department, where I served as Director of Education, was looking to partner with artists to use our space to build community. Minda approached me immediately afterwards to discuss a partnership where people used memoir to respond to our exhibits. Minda was confident, assertive, and self-assured. We met later at the museum. Before our meeting I found one of her articles from the LEO Weekly, where she is the relationship advice columnist. I followed that article with an excerpt from something she penned while studying and teaching writing in Southern California. I realized Minda is a transparent spirit who embraces her joys, sorrows, mistakes and triumphs. In her writing I saw a raw honesty. Her writing screamed, “This is me and I have something to say. I might make you uncomfortable, but that’s not my issue!” I see Minda’s non-conforming spirit in my own daughter. Minda and Angelique are both young women who I want to support with my time, energy, and resources. I truly believe there is strength in intergenerational relationships. Older generations have experiences and insights that are often not found in youth, while younger generations bring a fresh perspective. We need each other. It is my desire that these two young women keep me in their lives and bring some of their peers along for the ride. The 1950’s saw a series of victories that forever changed how African-Americans would live and be heard in the United States. Gwendolyn Brooks became the first African-American to receive the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Segregated schools were declared unconstitutional in the 1954 ruling of Brown v. Board of Education. Through the signing of The Civil Rights Act of 1957, millions of African-Americans received federal protections to ensure their Constitutional rights, including the right to vote. These victories led to the legal integration of public schools, neighborhoods, and workplaces. People living in this era used organized public protest, marches, and demonstrations that led to legalized policy changes confronting systematic oppression. The 1960s brought the appointment of Thurgood Marshall to The U. S. Supreme Court, the rise of the Black Panther Party, the election of Shirley Chisholm to the U. S. House of Representatives, and Arthur Ashe’s men’s singles victory at the U. S. Open. Even though war raged in Vietnam by the 1970s, African-Americans were making significant gains in America’s political, military, educational, entertainment, sports, and corporate systems. African-Americans were becoming recognized leaders in America’s newly integrated society. Faith’s next two models bridged these two generations - the 1950’s Baby Boomers and the 1970’s Generation Xers. Marita Willis is a Baby Boomer born during the 1950s. I first met Marita while working at PNC Bank in 2012. She was a VP of Community Development Banking. I grew up in Louisville, KY, home of the Kentucky Derby. The Kentucky Derby Festival (KDF) is a major production consisting of weeks of events leading to the Kentucky Derby Horse Race. As a black girl from a working-class family, I never knew anyone who looked like me who worked with the KDF. KDF officials always wore a special, uniquely equestrian jacket. Marita was the first African-American person I had ever seen wear this jacket, because she was a member of the KDF Board of Directors. In June 2018, Marita was elected Chair of the 2019 Kentucky Derby Festival. But her commitment to community stretches beyond the KDF. You can find her supporting such causes as The American Red Cross, Norton Childrens Hospital, and Cabbage Patch Settlement House. I’ve gotten to know Marita better over the years and I have always been impressed with her confidence, poise, and style. Our family sees Marita and her husband most often at church. Faith is constantly impressed by Marita’s fashion sense. She consistently demonstrates a bold confidence and seizes life. I’m always drawn by her smile. Marita has experienced traumatic losses. Marita was blessed with two beautiful children, Ra’Tonya Willis Friedman and RaShaan Roland Willis. In 1997, during torrential Louisville rainstorms, Rashaan’s car was washed off the road and submerged in water. RaShaan died at 16 years old as a result of the accident. RaShaan and Faith share the same birthday. Nearly twenty years later, Ra’Tonya, lost her battle with sickle cell disease. Faith worked with Ra’Tonya to style a fashion photo shoot where they quickly bonded. Marita has shown me how to find joy through pain. One of the funniest stories, Marita shared with me was how she returned her AARP card because she wasn’t ready to be labeled a senior citizen at the age of 50. She’ll probably never accept that label! Marita grew up in Louisville’s Park Hill housing projects, attended Catholic schools, and achieved considerable influence in our community. I believe this is partly due to her refusal to accept other people’s labels. Instead, she defines her own destiny and surrounds herself with supports that encourage her desires. I am the Generation Xer who Faith chose as her model. I don’t want to assume why a teen chose me as one of her honored women, but I hope it has something to do with the fact that I’m the vessel that God used to give her life. (By the way, I never received one of those personal handwritten notes from Faith.) If you ever see Faith, you’ll have to ask her why she chose her mother and art collaborator as a model. In the 1930’s and well into the 1940’s, African-Americans who had begun to expand their intellect at Historically Black Colleges beginning after the Civil War and into the early 1900’s recognized the power in organizing collective thought and action. The 1930’s and 40’s saw the establishment of The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and Maids led by A. Phillip Randolph, Mary McLeod Bethune organized the National Council of Negro Women, and Katherine Dunham formed the Negro Dance Group. This was the same period of the arrest of the Scottsboro Boys in Alamaba, the Great Depression and the birth of the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment by the U.S. Public Health Service. Joyful triumphs also existed. Jessie Owens won 4 Olympic gold medals, Hattie McDaniel was the first African-American woman to win a supporting actress Oscar for Gone with the Wind and Nat King Cole became the first African-American to have a radio variety show, just to name a few. Faith’s first two models were born during the 1930’s and 1940’s at the height of the southern Jim Crow system. These women witnessed firsts for the African-American race and were themselves local firsts. They withstood overt racism to establish the path for future generations to follow. Elmer Lucille Allen is the first African-American professional hired by the Brown-Forman Company. She retired from the company after decades of working there as a chemist. Ms. Elmer Lucille did all of this while caring for her family and supporting the community. She wanted her boys to be able to play baseball in their Chickasaw neighborhood but there was not a formal, organized little league in her area. She worked with her husband to establish and manage the first youth baseball league in Louisville’s West End at Chickasaw Park, the blacks only park. Well beyond the age of 50 she became a ceramic artist. She originally began working with clay as a treatment for arthritis in her fingers. After retiring from Brown-Forman, she enrolled at the University of Louisville and earned an MA in Fine Art with a focus on ceramics and textiles. Ms. Elmer Lucille has supported generations of artists representing various ethnicities, backgrounds and races. She has collected a number of accolades over her lifetime. At the age of 84 and as a two-time cancer survivor, she continues to spend every day of her life interacting with people to improve her community. She once told me her secret to life, “Never stop moving and doing. When you stop, you die.” Faith overheard this secret and often reminds me that activity is what will keep me alive. Harriet Miller Dallum is Faith’s grandmother and my mother. Ironically, Ms. Elmer Lucille helped to induct my mother into the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. on Unversity of Louisville’s campus. I learned the importance of commitment and dedication from my mother. She was married to my father for over 40 years in which they encountered numerous joys and challenges. My mother was among the first African-American students to attend Louisville’s Presentation Academy, an all-girls Catholic high school. She and my father sacrificed to purchase their first home in Louisville’s Hallmark neighborhood, one of the first neighborhoods outside of Louisville’s historically black neighborhoods where blacks were allowed to build in the 1960’s. Their house was the first on the block. Circumstances prevented my mother from graduating from the University of Louisville, but at the urging of my father, she went back to college to graduate with an education degree from Spalding College in the 1970s . She taught at West End Catholic Elementary School in Louisville’s historically black Park DuValle neighborhood. Her school provided an outstanding education for young people living in the subsidized housing developments surrounding the school. She also served as the last principal of West End Catholic. Harriet always encouraged me to seek out opportunities, try new things, and follow my dreams. As a child, my mother shared how her parents wouldn’t allow her to march in the 1960’s Civil Rights protests. It wasn’t until she was helping to knit “Pussy Hats” for the 2017 Women’s March on Washington that she revealed that she defied her parents and participated in a Civil Rights March. Her participation was discovered when her father recognized her coat in a photo published the following day in Louisville’s Courier-Journal newspaper. I believe my intention to speak truth to power in my own way must come from my mother. She is my best friend and role model. I believe my relationship with Faith is a reflection of the relationship Faith witnesses between her grandmother and me. Both of these women are examples of the many living African-American women warriors who were closest to the overt oppression of Jim Crow. They demonstrated how to move through America with tenacity, courage, and confidence. Their perseverance was inspired by earlier generations who clawed their way to obtain knowledge and they instilled that desire in their children. Their experience taught them to be simultaneously aware, hopeful and skeptical. The Harlem Renaissance ignited an explosion of African-American creativity in the art world. This period from the 1910's until the mid-1930’s was the first time that the descendants of formerly enslaved persons were able to freely express their ideas, thoughts, and emotions. They did this through literature, music, dance, and visual art. Just remember that it has only been about 100 years since African-Americans have been featured as more than field hands and servants in American visual art. One of the first mainstream visual representations of black culture in America were through photography found in Ebony and Jet magazines, first published in 1945 and 1951 respectively. Romare Bearden, an artist who emerged during the Harlem Renaissance and who created art until his death in 1988, was inspired by the photography of Ebony and Jet. He created beautiful collages incorporating photos cut-out of these magazines to reinterpret his view of black culture. Today, we have artists like Ebony G. Patterson and Kehinde Wiley, contemporary artists, who put persons with cocoa skin at the center of their work. They are showcasing today’s youth in artworks reminiscent of the great masters like John Singer Sargent. My teenage daughter, Faith Lindsey, is an aspiring photojournalist. I began to wonder how does my daughter see the African-American women who are cultivating and nurturing her? How would her lens capture the spirit of women she selected? Could I reinterpret her photos to give them a new meaning, similar to Bearden’s collages? Could others find strength and purpose in our visual store? This became the inspiration for Crowns: Royalty and Resilience, my focus for The Art of Goodwill - Artist Residency Program. Faith selected 8 females representing four generations. The ladies ranged in age from 15 - 84 years. She invited them to be models for her first ever photo shoot. As far as I know, the ladies were only told to wear a white top and do whatever they wanted with the rest of their look. The ladies arrived at Goodwill’s Regional Operating Facility where a room was transformed into a temporary photography studio. Faith gave a handwritten note to each woman explaining her reason for inviting her to the photo shoot. She never shared her notes with me. Over the next several days, I will share what I believe to be true about each of these women because I consider all of them to be warrior queens holding the line of defense around my daughter. My final posts related to my journey as an Art of Goodwill artists will reveal the two works created for The Art of Goodwill. A few mornings ago, my 16-year-old daughter said, “Mama, everything I love is under attack.” “What do you mean?” I asked. Her response, “They’re killing journalists and black people?” She is an aspiring journalist blessed with cocoa brown skin and naturally wonderful, curly kinks. Weeks before her pronouncement, Saudi Arabia was accused of covering up the murder of a journalist, President Trump praised a person for attacking a reporter, and a hate-filled man mailed pipe bombs to a national news outlet. Days before, an innocent African-American man and woman were gunned down in cold blood by a white man while shopping at Kroger in Louisville, KY, our hometown. She is correct. Her greatest loves - her people and the truth - are under attack. How does a mother pour into her child the strength to resist and rise when something is coming at her daily to destroy her? A mother rooted in the wisdom of the ancients knows she can’t do it alone. She must surround her baby with an army of protectors. For my daughter, that line of defense is held by a multitude of warrior women. These are the same sisters who hold me up when I am weak. They encourage me to fight when I’m at the verge of limping away in defeat. They will me to stand and drag myself through the struggle. When my strength is not enough, they grab me and pull me through. I have sisters of all shades, races, ages, and beliefs. Each of them has a significant role in maintaining the battle, but I relate best to my African-American warrior queens. Ms. Mae Annette Turner, Director of Multicultural Ministry for the Archdiocese of Louisville, was one of my mentors in high school. She taught me the importance of surrounding myself with strong, dignified images of members of the African diaspora. Ms. Turner introduced me to art representing people who looked like me. She encouraged me for the rest of my life to surround myself and future children with art that reflected our unique experience. My personal artwork is rooted in her lesson. How does this help my daughter who knows the things she loves are under attack? My art is an outspoken banner proclaiming victory over generations of evil that have failed to destroy mahogany bodies and ebony spirits. The Art of Goodwill Artist in Residence is allowing me to create a new series, Crowns: Royalty and Resilience, as a tribute to the generations of African-American women who have confronted multiple forms of oppression. My daughter and I are working together to proclaim the truth of our inherent royalty and resilience with the power of our creativity. Pearlie Taylor doesn’t know it, but she bestowed on me some Big Mama wisdom. Ms. Pearlie is one of many artists I met while living in Chicago, IL. She is a self-taught abstract painter who began her career as a professional artist well after the age of 50 and becoming a widow. Ms. Pearlie was widowed after 22 years of marriage. While married, she and her husband ran a thriving business. After his death, she decided to transform her life on her terms as an artist. Many people believe that at a certain point in your life, it is too late to explore new options or change directions. Ms. Pearlie proved to me that your life doesn’t need to stop because of unexpected losses, challenges, or difficulties. Instead of obstacles, these things can serve as redirection. I watched Ms. Pearlie take the sell of her paintings into her own hands by turning her apartment into a temporary gallery space. She invited people into her home to view her latest works, explore her small studio, and share refreshments. She didn’t wait for gallery approval but provided an opportunity for her supporters to build a personal relationship with her art practice. Earlier this year, I decided it was time for a redirection in my life and I needed to return to art making. One of my goals was to follow Ms. Pearlie’s example and have a private showing of new works in my home. But I faced an obstacle, I needed financial assistance to provide for art materials. The Art of Goodwill Artist Residence became my answer. Goodwill Industries of Kentucky put out a call for artists interested in making new works of art using materials sourced from Goodwill retail stores. Goodwill would cover the cost of supply purchases and the artist would receive a stipend. I was chosen as one of the Artists of Goodwill. Thanks to Ms. Pearlie’s example and Goodwill’s call, on October 28, 2018, I hosted a private showing of my first new works in about 6 years. Over the next week, I will share more about my personal transformation which is taking place partly due to my art and The Art of Goodwill. |
AuthorRamona Dallum Lindsey is an artist, speaker and curious citizen who finds strength in the wisdom of her elders. Archives
February 2019
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