Features Overview

To Reckon

To Reckon invites the viewer to consider their own response to the legacy of whiteness in the United States. Reflections from the tray are direct, while those from the concave gravy boat are inverted.

Family Tree

Family Tree, with its tree and well tray, introduces Samuel and Ann Wallace, my 3rd great grandparents, who relocated to Alabama in 1838, in the center of the work. The plate images are of Lenox plates, which are found in First Harvest and Harvest, with my direct Wallace ancestors’ images printed on silk. The silver-plate tree well platter was sourced at a thrift store.

John Mallory’s House

John Mallory was the last caretaker of the Wallace House, a retired railroad man who was likely the son of a freemen from Mallory Crossing. He was living there during the 1950’s summers I spent at the house. He was the person who told me my dog Brownie had died during the winter. The platter White Debt depicts John Mallory with my grandmother and with me on Easter Sunday in 1853. The dipper in John Mallory’s House contrasts with the silver dippers displayed in Pieces of History.