a new phase
free body
salt & honey
folds the bitterness into its crystals
tongue back in balance.
free body - an exhibition and a growing body of work
free body - a portrait photography project exploring comfort, love and revolution within our bodies.
show statement:
We are works of art at every stage in our lives.
Our physical bodies hold memories, ideas, feelings, thoughts, power, and everything we are as individuals.
Inspired by artists like Mickalene Thomas and Carrie Mae Weems who observe the body in a sculptural sense and explore topics of femininity and sensuality, I was desiring to start a new portrait project rooted in sensuality and body language. But I soon realized that the expression of sensuality looks different on everyone.
This work is viewing the human figure as sculptural in its natural form, as the vessel for one’s soul.
I wanted subjects to feel empowered in their image, to do whatever felt correct to them.
The result was an authentic expression of self.
A true honoring of one's body, and the light inside.
After the closing of this exhibition on January 21st, 2023, an art book will be made to expand on this series through writings and alternative process. The artist is taking a new residency to explore collaboration and varying conversations on the body, physically and spiritually.
bold fantasy 621 - featured in the CAN Triennial
bold fantasy 621 - a dive into the majestic nature of being. subject looking directly at the viewer, soft but secure gaze. Leaves dance around their face with a slight tilt in the neck. the comfort and ease within this body, shame does not live here.
Bold Fantasy
Afro futurism
as a place of solace,
to imagine boundlessness.
Utilizing that power to imagine, to create more than what you see
a movement, a power to cultivate, to pour into
Levaughn, 2021
A Cleveland Photographer with a speciality in Black Portraiture
we all have our individual stories, with plot lines, conflict & resolution, and preservation. When we lay down the blueprints of our complexities and look at all the moving parts, you can send love and healing to all those small, intricate places.
We can relate to each other through the different emotions we’ve felt, different levels of pain and happiness. These are the types of conversations I want to have with my art. Currently, my main community and healing source is made of black femmes, people who look like me. This is the group I ride the hardest for, because I know their pain and they know mine.
My first photo magazine was dedicated to the divine femme, a force that saved me. A force that I am still learning to fully and unapologetically embrace.
Mandy, 2022
Virgo, 2020
For me, I know I am focused on combating the internalized messages I was given in my youth that made me look at my blackness as anything other than beautiful and worthy. I want my work to celebrate and reflect pride, sophistication, and dignity like Mrs Florestine Perrault Collins said.
I want to take photos of beauty without standards or limitations. And by that I mean raw human beauty, as in acceptance and warm embrace of the person in the mirror.
Art has so much healing potential, and I’ll be in my lane making people fall in love with themselves.