Flashbacks: Echoes of Past Issues
N C L R ONLINE
55
Cash Crop, 2011 (sculpture) by Stephen L. Hayes, Jr.; photographs courtesy of the Cameron Art Museum, Wilmington, NC
Tell me how paint strokes captured the convoys of cargo ships delivering swollen holds of tea and tobacco, coffee and cotton, silk and sugar from the far islands of the empire, how those billowing sails brim with amber light as they enter the harbor of Amsterdam, how towering clouds triumphantly welcome the God-blessed fleet returning home without any notion of the chained wrists, blistered feet and blood-whipped backs, generations who mined and plowed, chopped and slogged, heaved and hauled the bounteous fruits and treasure that made these lords of portrait prosperity so damned rich.
STEPHEN L. HAYES, JR. was born in Durham and is an Assistant Professor at Duke University. He earned a BA at NC Central in 2006 and an MFA at Savannah College of Art and Design in 2010. He was the 2020 winner of the prestigious 1858 Prize for Contemporary Southern Art. The artist’s work has been featured at the National Cathedral, Rosa Parks Museum, and Harvey B. Gantt Center for African American Art + Culture, among others. His art explores the African American experience, often incorporating historical context, as in his thesis exhibition, Cash Crop, which has been traveling and exhibiting for nearly a decade. See another of his sculptures in NCLR Online Winter 2022.