After a rainy day, I couldn’t wait to get home from school and play with the mud the rain had made, building igloo houses around my feet and shaping clay pots and figurines that I’d let dry until I could hold them proudly. I hand sewed clothes for my toys from scrap fabrics, in a way that made sense in my little mind. I loved working with my hands.

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I grew up around women, my sisters first, then six years at an all-girls Catholic boarding school alongside girls from many backgrounds, and I was soaked in femininity, and who I am today was shaped by it.

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Now in my work, I’m unpacking every memory, decision, and influence that shaped how womanhood is seen, from the inside out, as someone who knows it firsthand and sees it in other women, Black women especially. All my life I knew myself as a woman, but coming to Canada added a word to my existence, and I was a Black woman now, too.

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I build each piece in layers of plaster, resin, and acrylic because we are complex, and womanhood even more so. Plaster gives my subjects weight and a body that takes up real space, acrylic gives them color and a voice, and resin gives them depth. The sculpted parts are clothing, accessories, and makeup, the tools Black women use to define themselves, and through them the women in my work tell their story on their own terms, carrying our roots, culture, and identity.

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The resin reflects, inviting the viewer to step into my subject’s story and see themselves in it. In my newer work, I draw fine lines into the dark figures that appear only up close or in the right light, because we only really know people when we are closer to them.

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My faith is central to my practice, and everything I give through my art was first given to me by God, so I count it a privilege to share this. I imagine the women I create are women of faith, with faith as their source of hope and strength.​