These works are part of an ongoing series of collages and assemblages exploring the history of Black-owned beaches and resorts in the United States. Stars and Stripes.

I began this series after completing the children’s book Saving American Beach by Heidi Tyline King. In the story, a single woman ignites collective advocacy to protect a beautiful and historic Black beach in Florida—American Beach—from the overreach of commercial development. She used her art—her gift for performance, her operatic voice, her costumes—to draw people toward her mission. One person, fully alive in her purpose, became a beacon.

That story stayed with me.

It led me into deeper research on other Black-owned beaches, particularly along the East Coast, and the agencies Black communities created to establish safe, activated spaces for leisure—spaces where we could gather without fear, without humiliation, without having to explain our belonging. These stories are not well known.

How can this work honor these places where Black joy was not incidental, but intentional?

Closer to home, an important and enduring beach is the Inkwell on Martha’s Vineyard. Its history is sometimes obscured by wealth and celebrity, professional connections and being seen. But beneath the sands are layers of struggle, self-determination, and creativity—built in the face of oppression, and sustained by community.

These works celebrate the ways we have always created spaces to simply be.

to fully rest,

to love, laugh and cry inside our own music,

to be free within ourselves.