Carrying Home is a multisensory ever-evolving archive of my memory, and the lessons and wisdom located within my social and material relationships. Memoryscapes, wonderscapes, and homing devices emerge from an intuitive gathering of material and adorning of space. These works are an exploration of re-earthing and memory that navigate through both temporal and physical distances. Drawing on matrilineal and patrilineal wisdom, I envision each piece as a seed—an act of wisdom sharing across past, present, and future—a homing device that traces back my roots and carries forward the legacy of my ancestors. The installation takes me home to Georgia, despite knowing that it can't. What I make asks that the visitors of my work and I take seriously and hold closely all that our relationalities teach us (kinship: the intention to accompany (our earth, our mothers, our communities, and on and on) (Sarah Biscarra-Dilley). Black and Indigenous southern ecologies are central to my work, providing lessons for complex histories of land relationships. Offering insights into freedom dreams and possibilities that echo through maroon societies and black southern coastal communities.

I make things to connect with my Mema and see her hands in mine, to listen to her words and her gestures, to preserve them, and to honor her gifts of matrilineal wisdom. Like her, I want my hands and mind to be beaming with gentle consideration. I want to restore things as she restored them, as she restored clothing and furniture and relationships and love. I restore things in honor of her and the ways each of her movements felt so swift, the way they whisked me up into a dream of artful tinkering. I want to know her magic and preserve the gifts that she graciously pressed into my little palms. Her persistent care and curiosity nourished my understanding of possibility and the limitlessness of potential, demonstrated in her constant reimagination of all she touched. My Mema taught me the power of presence, of sitting with materials, people, and emotions, and taking the time to tend to things by wondering about and nurturing them. This installation creates a welcoming space for wonder and tenderness through the sensory exploration of a southern porch—a gentle yet powerful whisper of Black Southern landscapes. I do not seek to simply recreate the Georgia flora and fauna; rather, I evoke the profound memory of the land’s impact. This installation is a reflective space where we can consider the possibility of re-earthing the land and ourselves, embracing our eartheness through the recognition of black southern land relations echoed in southern porches. 

Together ador(e)nment, stewardship, and care are imagined as forms of armor. Each piece is an invitation to dream—a place to encounter the past within the present. These works together, become a living archive of memory, calling on the viewer to become its protector. As matrilineal wisdom, craft, and oral traditions teach us: to protect a memory, you may place it in another’s hands. My creations are offerings of shared spaces for reflection, asking viewers to engage, hold, and honor the memories they encounter.