Artist Statement
When I was a child living on the cul de sac at Silver Maple Place, I wanted to see with my eyes shut. I knocked my front teeth out testing the transparency of my eyelids. When I started writing poetry, it was my journal. I think in poetry. At first I wrote to make sense of my perceptions, to survive American culture’s dismissal of my depth. I self published my first poetry book at 14, Sunshine @ Midnight, a series of religious meditations: my first effort at seeing in the dark.
“Poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action” (Audre Lorde).
I am a Black woman poet and artist whose ancestors were enslaved Blacks, Indigenous people, and white slave owners in North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama. To be a creator is a right that my ancestors have bought and paid for. It is my inheritance. Not far back, my maternal ancestors were farmers, millworkers, and domestics in the homes of white folks as housekeepers and nannies. Not far back, on my father’s side, folks were farmers and teachers and counselors. “They say, but sugar, it was our submission that made your world go round” (Maya Angelou). It is now my privilege to have the time, space, and support to bring into expression what we have carried over hundreds of years. As Nina Oteria, I bear the names of my great grandmothers on both sides.
I have often felt “most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background” (Zora Neale Hurston). My writing and art practice has transformed from survival to healing practice. To begin to heal, you have to acknowledge the wound without normalizing it. “I feel most colored” as I conjure the vividness of colors that pulse through my perception and poems. As I transform my words, I transform myself, I remain myself in color, in flowers, in abstraction.
“Guided by my heritage of a love of beauty and a respect for strength - in search of my mother’s garden, I found my own” (Alice Walker).
Now, my paintings and poems intersect at the crossroads. In the Black traditions of hoodoo, conjure, rootwork, and voodoo, the crossroads is where the spiritual and physical worlds meet. In Christianity, and in ancient Egypt, the cross, the ankh, is the symbol of eternal life. My paternal great grandfather was a Baptist preacher and my grandfather was called The Preaching Deacon. My spiritual practice and work with the Spirit that identified Itself to me as our ancestral Guide, is the foundation of my creative work. I asked my mother “How deep does it go?” She replied, “As deep as the ocean.” I think of what Alexis Pauline Gumbs calls “ancestral listening.” I align and all that I need flows to me effortlessly.
I was walking on the beach but my spirit was walking on the ocean floor. The colors of the waves reminded me of a framed stereogram my grandmother had, one of those 3D Magic Eye posters. Jesus on the cross would pop out 3D from cerulean, green, violet flecks if you only looked at it right. My father taught me how to see the image behind the image, the image behind the colors. The Magic Eye: a new way of looking at the world. It is year 5 of keeping my daily dream journal. Visual poems come through that portal too, already completed. As Tricia Hersey says, “Rest is a portal.” I write backwards and forwards until life and the dream touch each other in my mouth, my open tongue, my hand. It is this shift in perception that has saved my life from despair.
Through my creative work, through Black holistic healing (the spirit, mind, body connection) through herbs, salt baths, Spiritwork, meditation, Scripture card readings, rest, and transformative speech, I’m learning to see with my eyes shut. “The body is the rocket launcher…the soul looks out the window into the mysterious starry night and is dazzled” (Clarissa Pinkola Estés). I travel further than seeing in this dark. Beyond art, beyond worlds, beyond words. For just a moment, close your eyes. Can you sense it?
References:
Audre Lorde’s 1977 essay “Poetry is Not a Luxury”
Maya Angelou’s 1987 poem “The Mask”
Zora Neale Hurston’s 1928 essay “How It Feels To Be Colored Me”
Alice Walker’s 1972 essay “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens”
Alexis Pauline Gumbs’ 2020 books Dub & Undrowned
Tricia Hersey’s organization, founded in 2016, The Nap Ministry
Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ 1989 book Women Who Run With the Wolves
Curriculum Vitae
Degrees
M.F.A., Writing, Pratt Institute, 2018
B.A., Magna Cum Laude, Wake Forest University, 2015
Major: Religion
Minors: Creative Writing and Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies
Exhibitions
Paintings + Poetry Carrboro, NC
Solo Exhibition at Carrboro Town Hall February - April 2022
Residencies
Attic 506 Chapel Hill, NC
Artist in Residence October 2021 - October 2023
Poetry Workshops
WalkMe
Sweetgum Workshop June 2022
I conducted a one-hour virtual speaking engagement on the topic of freedom with WalkMe+Me and BIPOC ERGs in commemoration of Juneteenth based on “Poetry Is Not a Luxury” by Audre Lorde. The session delved into how poetry has served as a freeing and healing methodology and how we can access this power for today’s challenges. The workshop included mindfulness and a brief creative writing prompt. WalkeMe is an American multinational software-as-a-service company, with headquarters in San Francisco, California.
Snapdragon Journal
Sweetgum Workshop July 2021
This virtual poetry writing workshop entitled “Water Work” centered the poetry of black women and femmes with an emphasis on drawing inspiration from the element of water. Mindfulness poetry and a tank drum sound bath were included.
Warren Wilson College Swannanoa, NC
Sweetgum Workshop February 2021
This workshop centered the writing of Alexis Gumbs, Audre Lorde, and Lucille Clifton, providing space for participants to work with water to create and shape whatever healing, loving, and delicious words were needed to support their ease. A tank drum sound bath was included.
Wake Forest University Winston Salem, NC
LIVE ART! Series Guest Speaker November 2020
Online guest lecture for Professor Lynn Book’s Performance Art class at Wake Forest University, exploring poetry, presence, absence, time-space alterity, rights, and wrongs.
The Octavia Project Brooklyn, NY
Poetry Workshop Facilitator Summer 2017
I developed poetry workshop curriculum and prepared instructional material for students’ creative development, initiating, facilitating and moderating workshop discussions. I evaluated students’ creative work and provided tailored feedback and constructive suggestions.
Spoonbill & Sugartown, Booksellers Brooklyn, NY
Workshop Facilitator December 2017
I taught Dreaming Double, a pay-what-you-can poetry workshop which bridged sleeping and waking dream lives through poetry, using it as a malleable dream space. My workshop was a part of a four workshop series at Spoonbill called “Speculative Imagination.”
Mott Haven Reformed Church Bronx, NY
Workshop Facilitator December 2016
B.R.E.A.T.H.E.: Circle for My Sistas Winter Retreat – I was a featured performer and workshop leader, teaching the poetry of Lucille Clifton. This event is a free intergenerational retreat for women of African descent to be free and in community with one another, encouraging Balance, Restoration, Empowerment, Affirmation, Transformation, Healing, and Embodiment.
Selected Publications
Southern Cultures, award-winning journal published by UNC Press and UNC Center for the Study of the American South exploring the history, politics, folklore, literature, and art of the South, poem “Portal,” May 2022
Black Oak Society Magazine Vol. 5, a community for Black writers, journalists, and storytellers in the greater Raleigh area, poem “the Black church,” December 2021
Snapdragon Issue 6.4, a journal of art and healing, poem “Eye Music,” December 2020
Scalawag magazine, a magazine that amplifies the voices of organizers, artists, and writers to reckon with Southern realities, poem “The Waiting Room,” December 2019
Apogee Issue 11, a journal of literature and art that engages with identity politics, including but not limited to: race, gender, sexuality, class, ability, and intersectional identities, poem “Woman with Death on Her Mind,” December 2018
Femmescapes Vol. 4, A magazine of queer and trans affinities with femmeness, poem “what of smoke?” Summer 2018
The Felt Issue 3, poem “Glamour,” Spring 2018
The Felt Issue 2, A journal of poetry and prose produced by Pratt Institute’s MFA in Writing to cultivate emancipatory poetics, poem “The Waiting Room,” Spring 2017
Fanzine, poem “Free Bresha, Free Us” published Fall 2016
Anj, poem “Sestina August 2015 – August 2016” published online in a project with original photography by mixed-media artist Ashley Johnson, Fall 2016