I made some art for On The Mountain 4, a local Hudson Valley indie rock music festival, produced and hosted by The Wild Honey Pie.
I grew up snowboarding, and as one would imagine, I was often the only Black-ish girl at the lodge. Honestly, I don’t know if I ever noticed a contrasting observation, but I was so enveloped in the predominantly white environment that I might not have recognized it either way.
Photo by Emilio Herce
When The Wild Honey Pie commissioned me as an artist, I was particularly excited to ensure that Black people were not overlooked in this specific environment. Simply googling "Photos of Black people skiing" validated my concerns regarding the lack of representation (no surprises there!) in the winter sports community. I gathered any images I could find, hoping to create a collage featuring solely Black individuals skiing or snowboarding. A subtle form of activism present in all my work is the artistic integration of Blackness into spaces historically dominated by whitewashed culture.
Of course, my initial googling led to a positive spiral into an internet hole, and I happened upon information about the National Brotherhood of Skiers, founded by Ben Finley in 1974 to address the lack of diversity in skiing. They held the first Black Summit in 1973, bringing together 13 Black ski clubs to discuss challenges and eventually aiming to get a Black skier on the U.S. Ski Team.
The collage I created highlighted both the contributions of Black culture to winter sports and the incorporation of Fat Tony lyrics, the only solo Black performer of the weekend, who performed a set and DJed. His participation in the festival made history in typically solely white environments. Contrary to the usual darker-themed lyrics or poetry I incorporate into my pieces, I wanted to celebrate Black joy and the incorporation of our existence in this moment in time.
The other pieces I created for the festival were a continued merge of The Wild Honey Pie and the raw collage style mixed media I create for The Lovebugs, and infuse into most of my artwork.
Bringing in the music portion, I wanted a piece to engage with sound. When I made "The Poem Piece" I wanted to highlight music (duh!) by incorporating fluorescence that could play off sound, and featured lines from different songs from each band or performer at On The Mountain 4.
The collage poem in the piece reads as:
Dark Days in the Summer,
I repress the iridescence of a fire.
Just the way the stars align,
Oh what a feeling.
So unassumingly Free,
I could let myself go.
Carried away on the wind that’s blowing,
I miss when I smelled like you.
All the pieces will be available to purchase June 1, 2024.
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xx A