Cameo brooches, historically depicted aristocratic portraits carved out of gemstones and gifted as jewelry to an admired subject. Although one sided, cameo brooches and I have had a long love/hate relationship. I love cameo brooches and I admire all things fashionable during the Victorian period; yet, I have searched for vintage cameo brooches depicting Blacks and these particular brooches are so rare that they are basically none existent. Employing the Sankofa principle "it is not wrong for one to go back and take that which they have forgotten" or "simply go back and take," I journeyed back in time—took the historic cameo brooch—and authored hybrid chics into the space by creating a series of life size replicas of cameo brooches.
I Imagined cameo brooches that captured hybrid chics of the African Diaspora, wearing 80’s adornments, clothed in Victorian Period dress that included contemporary textile designed patterns—all incased in oval ornate frames created in the 1800s—coupled with Afrofuturistic hairstyles that grew more and more elaborate like the “big hair” of the Victorian era.
Geometrics in the work symbolized transcendence in the space-time continuum of the Victorian era and the continuum in African American culture and subcultures—traditional quilting during U.S. chattel slavery, 80s urban Black American fashion, present day contemporary quilting and future notions of Afrofuturism. In this continuum an ode to quilting is expressed, as the embroidery is reminiscent to traditional hand stitch quilting and the cut paper that is fused to the larger paper containing the image and then embroidered is a play on a contemporary quilting technique known as “piecing.” I was inspired by the traditional African American quilting culture and community crafters in the Anacostia neighborhood of Washington, D.C.: a mother and daughter who have quilted for years both using traditional and contemporary techniques.
Layers are the second dominant portion of all of my work, the first being the image of woman, in“Pretty Dope-a-licious” the works on paper were filled with mixed media applications: gouache, colored pencils, watercolor, paper, latex paint, pastels, embroidery thread, acrylic paint and acrylic ink.
