To say I was an artist took a lot.
Betye Saar
…
I went in search of the secret that has fed that muzzled and often mutilated, but vibrant, creative spirit that the black woman has inherited and that pops out in wild and unlikely places . . . .
Alice Walker
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WAVES is our generative source, steady and ongoing call to each other, and tribute to the enormity of what we make, witness, and inhabit as creative women.
We see ourselves as co-creators in this evolving, voluminous project.
Submit Your Art and Writing to WAVES
“Ophelia’s Flowers” by Yvonne Hosey
In sum, this work is about: Longing for something to the point of madness, being stifled, belittled and considered just a vessel.
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In the beginning of a time
we knew as sacred
Friendly enemies
at the cornucopia
The mark of Cain
furiously scrubbed and oiled
Laying at bay the darkness
the curse of dark continents
You ruffled my hair
twined in my fist
Growl the name
my momma shouted
You taste like dark mango
looked at me all hot eyed
I looked at you all hot eyed
The moment was air and opportunity
But you are like this aren’t you
I would like for you to consider
the way my thighs round with wrinkles
Curved like the grooves of a 45
They are mad like the dance of
the squeal of tires
in a blacktop jealous 45 smoke and pop
The hiss of the winner
“Anath” by Gayle Bell
“Sages of Haiti” by Vanessa Charlot
I seek to capture raw beauty in people as they balance their lives between resilience and struggle.
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The Q: How do you clear space in spirit and in life for your work?
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The scribbling becomes my song: harmonious
Scratching of pen on paper,
The ink swelling into a picture:
Black, bubbling, oneristic voice
Whispering
“Holy, holy, holy.”
Harmony of memory & dreams
Each night in a grateful waltz comes welcoming, sorting;
Lasket to sleep’s swollen soporific holy space
Holy, holy, holy: the three part harmony
The work of sitting,
The work of waiting,
The work of tracing the far-out fin
And the shark’s path
Scribbling across the ocean.
And the work of solitude, the most holy
And to be praised in every morning’s silence
Holy.
“Scribbling Song” by Sandra Inskeep-Fox
