Woman Power: The Veil

Ongoing Series since 2020

Exhibition History:

Bring It! | 2025 Group Exhibition at the Office Space Gallery in Detroit
Chroma | 2025 Group Exhibition at Janice Cherish Gallery
Holy Art | 2024 Group Exhibition in Barcelona

The Veil references time and generational connection. Time passes, shadows lengthen, and I begin to understand the connection of past to present. Separated by a thin veil from the ancestors, I cast a shadow on my own lived experience. The exploration of this project started in 2017. The impetus of The Veil series is my own shadow. The work references the dual nature of all things. The images retain their essential elements but shape-shift to more mysterious and universal motifs, and reference the endless cycle of life and death. They recognize and honor the thin, ephemeral nature of The Veil that separates, joins us, and adds our story to all that came before.

My Tennessee parents, who survived poverty and a war, taught me to be proud of who we were and where we came from. Their struggles made me tough, resilient. We were Moonshiners, musicians, sharecroppers, cotton pickers, carnies, healers, homemakers. Hard workers who were loving parents, UAW proud, Pure Detroit. They walk beside me in the images.

With a 50 year career as a photographer, my camera has captured shadow images since I started shooting and developing film. The abstract transparency of a shadow falling upon the earth is organic and transcending. The shadows hold the spirit of all my relations. This exhibition goes back to my beginnings, exploring ways to deconstruct my formal training as an artist. It also allowed me to free the work, release it from the formality of institutional ideas of presentation. The photographic process to create the images is both primitive and liberating. My childhood experiences are a backdrop for the 2025 shadows to propagate and live.

As I continue to explored and deconstructed myself, my shadow, I face the deconstruction of my aging body. It does at times appear to me to be “monstrous” unwilling to do what my brain is requesting. They are all traveling through light rails, past and present.

Artwork available for purchase at M Contemporary Art.
Email mc@mcontemporaryart.com for inquiries.