Tallapoosa Art

Matriarchal Lineage (Grandmother and the Owl)

This painting references an experience from my childhood at the Wallace House. An owl had become trapped in an upstairs room. My grandmother picked up the owl and released it through an open window while I hovered afraid by the door. She told me that she was thinking of her own grandmother, a Muscogee Creek, who was very attuned to the natural world and would have been trusted by the owl.

The small cast boxes have an owl, a deer and a walnut as knobs, elements of our Creek heritage.

Matriarchal Lineage (Daughter’s First Deer)

My daughter began to hunt in middle age. The skull and hide are from her first deer. As I pondered this, I wondered if she was somehow accessing her ancestors.

The bowl on the shelf is made of ceramic antlers. There are cast glass, cast resin and actual deer vertebrae in it.

Shattered Time (Lake Martin)

As I was doing research for this body of work, I learned that Lake Martin covered the town of Okfuskee and the free Black town of Kowliga, among many other things. This led me to think of the layering of time and space. The geologic rock base represents deep time,. The effects of impoundment includes extinction of some fish and mussel species. In fact, the Coosa River is the 5th most endangered river in the country. I began to think about climate change and pictured this as the covering of Russell Shores, a community at Lake Martin, by rising water and an apocalypytic shift in the land and sky.