MOTHERS' EYES
Through these eyes, we remember. Through remembering, we resist.
The Mothers’ Eyes
The Mothers’ Eyes is an ongoing project and living archive. My goal is to draw one hundred blue left eyes—each one a vessel of memory, protection, and resistance. The color blue intensifies the symbolism of the work, grounding it in spiritual depth while amplifying the act of seeing as a form of survival and care.
The project draws from the 17th-century tradition of the lover’s eye, an intimate practice in which a single eye of a beloved was painted and carried as a keepsake, often worn close to the body in a ring or brooch. I reclaim this form and expand its meaning, transforming an object of private devotion into a collective act of remembrance. These eyes are not tokens of possession; they are witnesses.
Each image depicts a left eye, referencing physiognomy—a pseudoscience rooted in the belief that a person’s lived experience could be read through their features, particularly the left eye. While the science itself is false, the impulse to look deeply remains. These eyes hold what has been endured, learned, carried, and passed on.
The project currently includes twenty-five left eyes of significant Black women artists, writers, and activists, alongside the eyes of my mother, grandmothers, great-grandmother, and sisters. These women are sources of insight, courage, and strength. I learned from them long before I had access to formal histories that acknowledged their brilliance—by watching them labor, love, and fight for their families and communities.
The Mothers’ Eyes is both a ceremony and a refusal. It is an act of remembering and a stand against erasure. Black women’s contributions to culture and humanity have always existed, yet they are continually threatened with disappearance. This work insists that we will not retreat into the shadows. We are too valuable to be forgotten. The world needs our compassion, our understanding, and our love to heal, grow, and flourish.
This project is an archive I will protect and share, echoing Alice Walker’s reminder in In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens—that we have a history, a vision, and a legacy that must be seen, honored, and carried forward.
The Mothers’ Eyes is an ongoing project and living archive. My goal is to draw one hundred blue left eyes—each one a vessel of memory, protection, and resistance. The color blue intensifies the symbolism of the work, grounding it in spiritual depth while amplifying the act of seeing as a form of survival and care.
The project draws from the 17th-century tradition of the lover’s eye, an intimate practice in which a single eye of a beloved was painted and carried as a keepsake, often worn close to the body in a ring or brooch. I reclaim this form and expand its meaning, transforming an object of private devotion into a collective act of remembrance. These eyes are not tokens of possession; they are witnesses.
Each image depicts a left eye, referencing physiognomy—a pseudoscience rooted in the belief that a person’s lived experience could be read through their features, particularly the left eye. While the science itself is false, the impulse to look deeply remains. These eyes hold what has been endured, learned, carried, and passed on.
The project currently includes twenty-five left eyes of significant Black women artists, writers, and activists, alongside the eyes of my mother, grandmothers, great-grandmother, and sisters. These women are sources of insight, courage, and strength. I learned from them long before I had access to formal histories that acknowledged their brilliance—by watching them labor, love, and fight for their families and communities.
The Mothers’ Eyes is both a ceremony and a refusal. It is an act of remembering and a stand against erasure. Black women’s contributions to culture and humanity have always existed, yet they are continually threatened with disappearance. This work insists that we will not retreat into the shadows. We are too valuable to be forgotten. The world needs our compassion, our understanding, and our love to heal, grow, and flourish.
This project is an archive I will protect and share, echoing Alice Walker’s reminder in In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens—that we have a history, a vision, and a legacy that must be seen, honored, and carried forward.
Blue Notes Installation, 2025, Mothers' Eyes, detail 25 Eyes
This project exists within the cosmology of the Seven Sisters—time-traveling beings who guide my practice and ask me to look closely, to gather what has been overlooked, and to protect what is sacred. The Mothers’ Eyes answers that call. Each eye becomes a star, a witness, a point of light—connecting ancestral memory to future possibility. Through the Sisters, seeing becomes an act of care, and remembrance becomes a form of resistance.
Mother's Eyes
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1. Nikki Giovanni
2. Angela Davis 3. Octavia Butler 4. Ntozake Shange 5. Fannie Lou Hamer 6. Adrian Piper 7. bell hooks 8. Harriet Tubman 9. Lt. Nyota Uhura of the Star Ship Enterprise (Nichelle Nichols) 10. Alice Coltrane 11. Francis Ellen Watkins- Harper 12. Bertha Carr- Silva 13. Dorothy M. Silva- Coleman 14. Elzena Spencer- Coleman |
15. Alice Walker
16. Dorothy Pitman-Hughes 17. Colleen L. Coleman 18. Assata Shakur 19. Sojourner Truth 20. Toni Morrison 21. Kathleen Cleaver 22. Lena Richards 23. Grace Jones 24. Sister Rosetta Tharpe 25. Betty Davis 26. Zora Neal Hurston 27. Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor |
Mothers' Garden
Periwinkle, Mourning Doves, and Pound Cakes: In Search of Our Mothers' Garden, 2025, Installation: 16 Mothers' Eyes drawings, 7 homemade pound cakes, indigo cloth, potted periwinkle plants, Ely Center of Contemporary Art (ECOCA)