How is your Thursday going? 

We have our fashion show tomorrow, so I’m in fashion show mode.

How do you approach fashion shows, as opposed to showing your other work ?

I think of it as being part of my broader body of work. 

I think of fashion through a fiber lens. I think about the silhouette. It’s a symbolic practice: “What stories can I tell on the garment?” I think fashion can be political. I use it as a free-er space to say whatever I want to say, whereas I feel my quilts are more centered. 

And you might have more movement to play around with.

Yeah. With my quilts, people always pull in fashion as well. So, it’s been interesting to explore my own approach to fashion. 

I love Yinka Shonibare and their work, and how three-dimensional it is. So, I’m also thinking about what I can do in conjunction, so that art and fashion don’t have to live separately. 

You are participating in Art Fair. 

I have an installation called Filling in the Gap there.  

How has that process been? 

Even installing my work at Art Fair, I was getting excited. I took the longest time, because I wanted to see everyone else’s work and to see how it was curated. It was really cool to see how everyone’s work flowed together, and it really felt like a community of artists. People were talking during install, explaining the processes. I was excited to see how it all fit together within one building.

Can you think of some early aesthetic experiences that have affected you, both as a person and as an artist?
I grew up with my grandmother, so I think I’m pulling from my own practice of her aesthetics. She was very maximalist. She grew up at the tail end of the Great Depression, so she saved everything. A lot of my storytelling comes from growing up in a home curated by her. 

I use symbolism in my work. The sun theme is something my family is surrounded by, you can’t get rid of it. Throughout the photos I’ve looked through, sun themed mirrors are a key object. I use them as symbols to tie into that period of time, and to class as well. 

How do you draw on time in your pieces?

Most of my quilts are taken from my family’s archives. So, I also think of myself as a researcher. I’m constantly digging through family photos or looking through handwritten notes. 

I’m pulling from these archives and retelling stories through my lens. Oftentimes, I’m not in the photo, it’s stories I’ve heard, that map of translation. 

Do you have conversations with your family members to gain further perspective, or do you lean on your own perception of the photos? 

Whenever we gather to look over photos, it’s like medicine for us - even if they pertain to more traumatic times. I’ve been recording my grandmother talking about her experiences, because she has Alzheimer’s. The stories are going away, and she’s the record keeper. 

The albums I have now are hers, and they’re her sister’s. Both of them have Alzheimers. So, I’m really trying to keep and to preserve these stories. I’m thinking about lost archives, and about stories that remain untold once people start to die off. 

A large part of my practice concerns my family’s bar in the North End called the Apex bar. No one is alive to tell those stories, really at all, besides my grandmother and a cousin of hers. So, I think I’m taking it on as a place that keeps and tells stories that would have been otherwise lost. 

It’s bittersweet. Up until now, the work hasn’t been so hard to do. It was more celebratory. Now, it’s like, oh. There’s sensitivity within it. 

How would you describe Detroit as an artistic environment?

I grew up in Detroit. There was a high school inside the CCS building for artists that weren’t societally represented. Most of my teachers were artists. So, I grew up with this lens of loving art, and seeing the possibility in it, seeing what art can do in terms of community. 

Recently, I’ve been thinking about my practice outside of just the frame of the quilt. I started with a square quilt. Now, with the installations and the community events, I’m thinking of how I can reach other people and create community within my art. 

In an interview with Stateside Podcast, you mentioned that a lot of people think of you as a symbolic artist, but you also see yourself creating another language in your work through texture and layering.

Within my work, I think there are two languages. A lot of times when people see portraiture, they think, okay, that’s just straight to the point. But as a fiber artist, I see and use material as a way to tell stories. 

I place family household items in conversation with the existing work. I have things from our homes, old wallpaper and such, that I’m starting to integrate into my work. In Filling in the Gap, it’s an old curtain from my grandmother. 

Then: I’m burning pieces, I’m layering things, I’m doing Tripunto - a method where you’re stuffing and stitching on top. I really try to apply a vulnerability and an emotionality through material. I’m also very, very, very selective on what materials I use and how they add to the dialogue.