24" x 18"
This piece focuses on where the intersection between race and class has informed our collective childhoods. As African-Americans coming from a lower class, I’m looking at the place where these intersections have led to deficits and examining how we've had to “make do” as children. The threads holding together the notion of the endless bliss associated with childhood wonder come undone when one has to “make do”. In this piece I aim to reinfuse this sense of wonder while acknowledging the “making do” of the past. In these childhoods we can't remain blissfully unaware of the impact of our adversities. In this piece “Shelton Johnson calls” children from government regulated neighborhoods into the natural world. People of disadvantaged groups need to be invited into the space of imagining a just world so we can begin to craft it. The world, from the perspective of 21st Century artists, would look like the transitions and shifts I depict in "Shelton Johnson Calls". As catalysts for change we have to look towards ways to include disadvantaged groups in the conversation for planetary change and to foster positive relations between all groups of people (rather than mistreatment of some).