Tallapoosa Work

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.

Acrylic on stretched canvas, slip cast ceramics, 2025.

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 artist made thceramic bowl in the shape of antlers a decade ago. There are cast glass, cast resin and actual deer vertebrae in it.

Family objects, ceramic, glass, resin, 2025.

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 when the Tallapoosa River was dammed in 1926. 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. The neighboring Coosa River is the fifth 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.

Acrylic and Tallapoosa River silt on stretched canvas, 2025.