Women Warriors

ARTIST’S STATEMENT:

As an artist, it has been a deeply meaningful experience for me over the past twenty-five years to witness the Ndzundza Ndebele, an artistic society of women proceeding through the doorways of cultural evolution. They are stepping through to tomorrow, and reaching back into their past, with each present day displaying a bit of both worlds. I feel because I came to these women openly as just another woman artist of color, who expresses life abstractly, they took me in. These ladies have guided me into their way of seeing, their ways of creating. Many families have blessed my endeavors with their friendship, prayers and support. The force of this African-American coalition has enhanced my own creativity and inspired my life as a woman artist in the 21st century. I pray my photographs and my writings give viewers an insight into the strength and power of these phenomenal indigenous women and their artistic traditions.

My many exhibitions have been sponsored in part by grants from: UNISA (University of South Africa); UMSAEP (University of Missouri South African Education Partnership Program); the University of Missouri Research Board; Southern University of Louisiana Department of Visual and Performing Arts Faculty and Students; Louisiana Division of the Arts; the Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge; the Louisiana Black Artists Network; the University of California at Santa Cruz; Sanderson Industries of Atlanta Georgia; the Pretoria Art Museum of South Africa; and the Kansas City Missouri Central Public Library.