Constellations As Yet Unnamed

Transformer Station | Cleveland Museum of Art

Transformer Station | Cleveland Museum of Art
Cleveland, OH
June 2021

“Constellations As Yet Unnamed” is centered on eight formerly enslaved women and girls who escaped from the Dobbins (Dobyns) farm in Mason County, Kentucky in 1853. When they arrived in Oberlin, Lee Howard, the four-year-old boy they had adopted and were shepherding northward to freedom, fell ill, and was left in the care of an Oberlin family, where he passed 9 days later. The women continued on to Canada, and it has been my project to trace their stories and recover their identities. Their stories have been lost to history, and my extended work has been an ongoing effort to retrieve the history surrounding the entire group of nine individuals who stole themselves away on that occasion back in 1853.

As visitors move throughout this immersive installation, the voices of eight contemporary Black women who live in Oberlin can be heard, speaking across time and space to the eight women who attempted to shepherd the young Dobbins to freedom. I have not scripted these narratives, but asked the participants the following: If given the opportunity to speak directly to these courageous women, what would you say to them?

The ambient sounds, smells, and sights in the installation recall the landscape that the group navigated through on their journey, across the Ohio river, with much of their travel under the cover of night. The voices of the eight women rise and fall alongside the woven ambience of wetlands adjacent to Lake Erie. The song of a lone black bird enters the space signifying the child alongside the continuous murmur of prayer.

Photo Credit: Cleveland Museum of Art, and John Seyfried

 
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And The Presence of Light

Weston Art Gallery

Weston Gallery
Cincinnati, OH
January 2021

"And The Presence of Light” ⁠— In 1853, a group of eight enslaved women left one of the nine Dobyn’s family farms that held enslaved persons in Mason County. At great risk to themselves, the women brought an adopted 4 year-old child with them, in their pursuit of the possibility of a future. This child, Lee Howard Dobyns, accompanied by his adopted mother and siblings fled Kentucky, crossed the Ohio River, and traveled north intent on reaching Lake Erie, and Canada. However, the boy was too sick to continue the journey, and it was necessary to leave him in the care of a family in Oberlin, Ohio with the intention of rejoining his people in Canada upon recovery. Lee Howard Dobyns died among strangers at four years of age in Oberlin 9 days later and is interred there. He experienced his first moments as a free person upon touching ground on the Ohio side of the river, however, this child never saw Lake Erie, or reached soil beyond the grasp of bounty hunters. We know the boy’s name. We know where he is interred. However, the women who carried this young child with them, have been lost to history.

Presence is the first intentional Gesture composed in homage for these women, and was installed a few blocks from the Ohio River in Cincinnati at the Weston Art Gallery.

Photo Credit: Sly K. Yeo

 
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Blackbird (For A Brown Baby Boy)

Law Building

Curated Storefront, Law Building Lobby
Akron, OH
August 2019

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“Blackbird: For A Brown Baby Boy” was composed onsite of the Lobby on the first floor of the historic Law Building in Akron, OH.  It is composed as a quietly immersive challenge to the idea of a legal institution within which human beings were routinely enslaved and brutalized for profit.  Blackbird is a meditation upon an imagined space where Lee Howard Dobbins, an enslaved child who ran north through the Ohio landscape might have been free. 

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Crossing The Water: Requiem for Lee Howard Dobbins

SPACES Gallery

SPACES Gallery
Cleveland, OH
January 2019

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"Crossing The Water" is composed as the second in a series of gestures invoking the memory of an enslaved child, Lee Howard Dobbins acknowledging him as more than a forgotten symbol of local opposition to the institution of slavery. In 1853, this child, accompanied by his adopted mother and siblings fled Kentucky, crossed the Ohio River, and traveled north intent on reaching Lake Erie, and Canada. However, the boy was too sick to continue the journey, and it was necessary to leave him in the care of a family in Oberlin, Ohio with the intention of rejoining his people in Canada upon recovery.  Lee Howard Dobbins died among strangers at four years of age in Oberlin two weeks later, and is interred there. He experienced his first moments as a free person upon touching ground on the Ohio side of the river, however, this child never saw Lake Erie, or reached soil beyond the grasp of bounty hunters.  

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Requiem is a meditation upon a liminal moment of transition between the trauma experienced in his brief life, and a space beyond boundaries:  an imagined place in which he might have been free.

 
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Reflections From Here (Elders of Glenville)

St. Mark’s Episcopal Church

St. Mark’s Episcopal Church
Glenville, OH
July 2018

Here, a stone’s throw from the crossroads of 105 and Superior, we move along time worn paths within a community once known as the Gold Coast.  This gesture is one of looking back while looking forward. 

Materials include the following: Hand constructed seats inspired by the Grandfather Chairs of the Dan people (Cameroon, West Africa) built from reclaimed oak. These seats were placed on either side of a pulpit set before recovered oak pews. St. Mark’s stands as a majestic witness.

“Reflections From Here (Elders of Glenville)” was composed as a rumination upon an extended listening process.   Over several months, I was blessed to engage in dialogue with a number of Elders from within the Community of Glenville (Cleveland, OH.).  Our conversations were organic, candid, and for me, inspirational.  I asked two questions:  what are your memories of Glenville, and what are your aspirations for this community…?  

The voices of the Elders emerged from above the seats speaking directly to the richness, complexity, and challenges of this community.  Their spoken reflections exist as sentries beside the voice of Bonita Wagner Johnson singing the classic, “Move On Up A Little Higher”.

 
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Poem for Brother Yusef

N'Namdi Center for Contemporary Art

N'Namdi Center for Contemporary Art
Detroit, MI
January 2016

 
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Flight: Requiem For Lee Howard Dobbins

Fort Wayne Museum of Art

Fort Wayne Museum of Art
Fort Wayne, IN
October 2013

 
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Songs From My Mother's Sky

Fort Wayne Museum of Art

Fort Wayne Museum of Art
Fort Wayne, IN
January 2007

This piece emerged as a part of an ongoing series of gestures in memory of my mother, Florence McCoy. Following her passing in 2003, I began constructing physical spaces that sought to simultaneously reflect something of her spirit, and to function as a prayer. Within each of the ’prayers’, the presence of birds has been central.  "Song’s" consists of a small post and beam structure filled with immaculately crafted birdhouses that stand in for living birds.  Each birdhouse was hand made from recovered Maple and Oak:  each fitted together with the care given to fine furniture.  Sounds of birds recorded from the landscape in which my children were conceived and born, were mixed with the sounds of Mockingbirds from my mother’s home...   this ’mix’ emerges from within the birdhouses.

For my mother, and for myself, birds are evocative of a kind of freedom that is chosen and actively pursued. Birds are music.   Flight.

Materials include: cream colored translucent fabric, structure (5’ X 8’ X 7’ high) composed of poplar and basswood beams, sixty pounds of roasted coffee beans on the floor. Not pictured are the sounds of the Pacific Ocean woven into the murmur of morning traffic in Los Angeles, Ca., a train pulling into the station, and a distant helicopter serving as a backdrop to the night songs of a mockingbird among a chorus.

 
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A Promise in Blue and Green

Allen Memorial Museum

Allen Memorial Museum
in conjunction with the Trace Elements Exhibition
Oberlin, OH
October 2005

for my mother

This piece was composed as a gift/prayer of celebration in memory of my mother.  It is intended as a quiet space of rest, play, and moving forward.  The structure is modeled after the tree-house built for my children in our backyard.  "A Promise" is built upon recovered oak posts, and constructed from laminated poplar boards pinned with steel fixtures designed for the project.  The entire structure measures 11X14 feet and stands 16 feet high.  Additional materials include: gathered oak leaves, several constructed birdhouses, a small golden bird hanging from braided cord above a nest containing locks of my son's and my own hair standing before a blue wall, beeswax, lapise, incense, pillows set upon a floor of poplar boards. Not pictured is the scent of the wax, incense, and wood along with the sounds of the Pacific ocean, ice clinking in a glass, birds, frogs, and my children laughing softly…

 
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Station to Station

Cleveland Museum of Contemporary Art

Cleveland Museum of Contemporary Art
in conjunction with Material Witness Exhibition
Cleveland, OH
January 2004

In Memory and Celebration of Ms. Florence Wilma McCoy
"aint no quit in her"

This project was composed and built on location for Cleveland MOCA in conjunction with the Material Witness Exhibition. The histories embedded within the Northern Ohio landscape have been topics within my work consistently over the years that I've lived in this region. With this piece, as with others before, I am imagining that elements standing within the contemporary landscape contain the memory of past events. "Stations" is composed of an invented straw barn that stands witness to the unspoken interior experience of a spirit in flight upon the Underground Railroad.

Materials include: eighty bales of local straw stacked and pinned to construct walls framed by post and beam structure (old oak beams recovered from barns in the area surrounding Oberlin, Ohio) and capped with recovered rusted tin.  The interior of the structure is quite dim w/ the only source of light emitted through a stretched muslin ceiling-the floor is composed of wooden planks framing a closed trap door.  Additional materials include a birdhouse standing upon a post,  cradling my great uncle’s gold watch nested inside:  time set to one minute before midnight ("the first moment of the new day").

Not pictured: the smell of dry leaves and fresh straw, the sound of birds, water, an unseen human presence: a slow heartbeat, breath, footsteps in water-hounds on the chase, silence, an approaching helicopter…

"Stations" is composed as both an homage to, and prayer for my mother.  Throughout my life, she demonstrated a depth of spirit and vision and resilience and unimaginable strength.  She is a guiding light.

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A Landscape Convinced: For Nyima

Akron Art Museum

Akron Art Museum
Akron, OH
February 2001

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