One of the pieces that I’ve been given an opportunity to exhibit with the Womens Caucus for Art as a member is a small book titled Shakju. This piece was exhibited at the MemberExhibition, an Invitational Salon at Waverly Street Gallery in Bethesda Maryland featuring the DC Chapter artists. Shakju means “Every day”, and it is created utilizing remnants paired with a long piece of folded, handmade watercolor paper that I utilized to share a story of what I experienced on a typical day during the time that I lived in Port au Prince, Haiti.
InterArts is a practice that has always given me the flexibility to move fluidly through multiple studio arts. Mixed media, sculpture, painting, photography, music, dance, poetry, and story are all mediums I’m continually working within. I sew and write a screenplay that I’ve been hashing out in the background of life in an ongoing but steady rhythm for quite some time. Books are a way of creating an element of keepsake and sculpture, combining illustrative and poetic qualities through painting by capturing a photographic storyline filled with memory and song that I may only hear in my own mind, but through which I hope to transfer to the paper allowing a viewer to write and play their own score when viewed.
After many years of adventure and heartbreak on an island home away from home, I captured what I see as the essence of a portion of time from 2011 – 2019 in Port au Prince, Haiti, and through the provinces. The winding roads, traversed with magnificent strength by women who have strong and kicking children in their wombs, walking at their feet, and sometimes on their hips simultaneously as they balance the unimaginable weight of the market items they carry. They walk up and down dusty, stone-filled and often washed out mountain roads in flip flops. As this work is done, they sing. The singing begins at sunrise and continues all throughout the day, dulling only as the wind muffles it slightly, when heads turn to feel the soft breeze rolling in off of the ocean, and sometimes thundering when a crowd feels the spirit and all join in.
Trucks billow, and vehicles move in a bustling harmony, brightly decorated with praise-filled, magical, and curiously planned style. Mastering the transit system and inner workings to navigate life is complicated but when accomplished leaves one feeling prideful and with a special joy. Seated shoulder to shoulder during a day of labor, acknowledged and conversing in the “language of the people’s heart” is confirmation that living there I am among more than friends. I am at home.
Creating “Shakju”, an accordion book dedicated to documentation of daily life in Haiti is an important statement about what life in Haiti is like. Beyond the media, when the cameras are turned off, and the realness of the balance of life is revealed, the beauty of the island and her people doesn’t have to emerge. It has been right in front of us all along. We need to stop talking and start listening. The voices are singing, and they are saying that they don’t need anything other than what they have been given by God. The world can learn much from Haiti and her people.
Date: November, 2022
Media: Accordion Book, Watercolor on Watercolor Paper
Dimensions: 9” tall x 13.5” Wide (Bound) 36”
6” wide x 9” tall panels on each side
8” Deep (includes bow tie closure on front)
Materials Include: remnant velvet fabric, handmade other of peal buttons from Haiti, handmade, hand-stamped charms from the Apparent Project in Haiti, coconut shell beads from Haiti, remnant linen ribbon, remnant hemp rope, and fabric adhesive
The creation of Shakju was done without machinery, and binding was done with hand-clamping and large clips and fabric prevent indentation of the paper.
