If These Walls Could Talk

The “treasure map” will help you discern the fake from the real. If that piques your curiosity, ask for more information about the technical process, and the ideas and sources behind the sculpture (there is a video of my studio practice, ongoing website updates, and a notebook on the art). All of the pieces are handmade of fine porcelain clay, and each has an unfinished story. Please join the conversation in the “Wall of Words Room,” and consider adding your voice to the StoryCorps® archives.

Porcelain is an ideal medium for exploring “white fragility”—the phenomenon of defensive moves that white people make when challenged racially. This antebellum home has provided the ideal context to explore the “niceties” and historic distortions that can keep us apart. You may be challenged by pieces such as my Monkey Mind Marriage, but please know the display is an intentional interrogation of the obliviousness that I, myself, am learning to overcome.

My hope with this project is to express the fullness of life—the messy mix of trivial and profound, joy and grief, time compressed into memory—and the insensitive and unintended consequences that follow many good intentions. Moreover, I hope the project reminds us all to honor one another’s humanity. We as a nation must confront the fact that for much of our history some of us have believed we were better than others for no other reason than the color of our skin, that some were less human than others (3/5!) or not at all. All of us carry the wound of America’s original sin, sometimes in ways we cannot imagine.