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Artist Statement
As an artist, I use visual art to be alone with my thoughts at the end of my day and to document what is going on by painting and drawing in the small space where I live. Over the past three years I have not been able to engage fully in this process because of my need to heal from encounters with police, my role as a caretaker, and the pain associated with pausing and thinking about the world around me, my reality, and current conditions.
The summer of 2023 was one of many losses for me. Two of my students were pushed out of our community, our classroom, the high school where we met each day, the safe place I had invested seven years in co-creating with them and their peers. They were murdered. One of them was murdered by the police.
When this happened, the illusion of my classroom as a safe space within a crumbling institution was suddenly revealed. That same summer, eight co-workers were pushed out from the community. For some, contracts were not renewed. Others were fired. My friends and comrades with whom I had been organizing a union at our charter school had been punished, the rest of us were warned. I knew then that I could not return to an institution that had and would continue to aid in the displacement and disappearance of young people and people who believe in liberation. I left the school.
At the end of that summer, my grandmother passed away. She had been living with me, or I had been living with her, my entire life. In 2023 the government of Virginia dropped off a package of diapers, and I was left with the impossible task of trying to meet her basic needs. During this time my art practice was sidelined. When she passed away, I realized it was time to return and deal with my reality.
I dedicate these pieces to the struggle for true care and for the abolition of police, prisons, the institution of the family under capitalism, and all other institutions invested in our death.
