The Daughter had her Art Show, Kuumba, at Hampshire College this month with three other talented folks. It was an intensive time. She had to get the show set up on Monday and Tuesday, April 6 and 7. The process took her over 14 hours, not counting the help she received.
On April 8, an uncle, an aunt, and a cousin came from the Mid-Hudson region of New York State to see her show, which was greatly appreciated. Her art committee did their walkthrough on April 9, and all was well.
She wrote a great three-page description of how she developed the show. Briefly, the work focused on her “studies of both African (continental) and Black American culture. and how they overlap… Even though they are separated by the ocean, natural themes shine through from Africa and the diaspora. Bright colors are seen as a symbol of freedom in many Pan-African cultures, from the intricate textile patterns to Bo Kaap, the colorful neighborhood in post-apartheid South Africa, to beadwork.
“Across the works in my series, each piece includes a multicolored component. It was important to me to make every aspect of my gallery show, including the frames, bowl beads, and rack, because I feel the point is to show off what I can do, and it gave me the flexibility to create exactly what I wanted. This meant I was also learning new processes that complement what I already know.”
Western Cape
On Friday afternoon, Pastor Miriam came to see the show, and the Daughter provided her with great detail.
The pics below are the latter half of the Western Cape Series. Monotype, pochoir, painting, handcoloring. As was true in most of pieces, it featured handmade frames. “In addition to the series, I have created an outline of the cape that marks the locations.”
- Cape Point, 14 February, 13:30
- Seaforth Beach, 14 February, 15:33
- Bo-Kaap, 31 March, 18:53
- Muizenburg Beach, 10 June, 14:16
Shown are:
- Bloubergstrand Beach, 12 June, 14:16
- Signal Hill, 12 June, 17:30
- Signal Hill, 12 June, 17:47
- Seaforth Beach, 14 June, 17:38
The photo does not do them justice. What was interesting to me was when she showed Miriam the reference photos from her visit to Cape Town in 2025 in comparison with the monotypes. I’d seen the pictures and the artwork, but never before at the same time. Fascinating.
Msuko Series
Linocut, monotype, collage, pochoir, handcoloring
- Msuko V (yellow beads)
- Msuko III (Koroba braids)
- Msuko II (light and dark blue beads)
- Msuko IV (blue and purple beads)
- Msuko I (purple and red beads)
- Msuko VI (cowrie shells)
When she dressed up for the closing reception, she put on fingernails she had painted to match her artwork! (She’s not giving you “the finger”!)
MNANDI TEXTILES
“When I was abroad studying at the University of Cape Town, I took an African Dance class. Early in the semester, our professor, Maxwell Xolani Rani, had us go to a local fabric shop, Mnandi Textiles, to pick out fabric for our lapas. Lapas are traditionally West African, typically have brightly colored patterns, and in African Dance, we tied them around our waists to create a skirt. This installation includes six patterned fabric prints, cut to a similar length to my lapa from Mnandi Textiles. Each individual fabric and each pattern is named after someone I know personally, three of whom I grew up around, and the other three of whom I met in South Africa in 2025 and impacted my time there in some way.”
Vitambaa Series
Relief
- Saadiya
- Thandeka
- Xolani
- Lidia
- Roseline
- Prudence
Lidia.
CROWN
Lithograph, handmade glass beads
“The shape of this set of braids is reminiscent of a crown and thus was named after the CROWN Act (first passed in California in 2019). Lithography is a planographic printmaking technique in which one draws with grease markers or paints with tusche on limestone. This meant that the project involved drawing each mark in the braids rather than carving as I was used to. The two lithographs I created for the show are also the opposite colorways of the Msuko series in linocut, but I still used brown ink to print them. The beads at the ends of the braids in Crown are hand-colored to resemble the six colors surrounding Msuko Series.”
She has been working with the Hampshire Glass Collective for years, so the beads represented in the various works and in a freestanding bowl were made by her.
There were a couple of other pieces as well.
What sort of gushy, “we are so proud of her” rambling should I end with? I’ll think about it. I can say that about 120 people attended the reception, and many of them were impressed, even blown away, by her display. One guy who works in lithography exclaimed to anyone around him, “That took a lot of time!”
It was wonderful to watch her patiently answer the visitors’ questions, many of whom were as entranced as her mother and I were. The comments, some of them by strangers, in a notebook – each artist received one – were quite moving when the three of us read them back the following evening.
