Down Home, 2021

This piece was inspired by the music of Paris Westburn. A sound which acts as an umbilical cord which ties Black Americans to the Blues and by extension all Americans and those who have reverence for this beautiful music of ours.

The crown bears the phrase interpreted from Gullah Geechee dialect: “must take care of the root to heal the tree.” Basically means: “what’s hidden must be important.” The left eye depicts a snakes eye (think Adam and Eve and the devil in the form of a snake) and in the right eye crucifixes. This is the symbolic oscillation of Black American culture between the profane and the sacred or restriction and freedom. The blue on the bottom lip depicts the sacred sound of the blues being spoken, lived and sung beyond the idiom.