Charting the Afriscape of Leon County, Texas

Charting the Afriscape of Leon County, Texas

P h o t o g r a p h s

b y

J a m i e

R o b e r t s o n

Charting the Afriscape of Leon County, Texas

P h o t o g r a p h s

b y

J a m i e

R o b e r t s o n

Copyright © 2020

For those who came before, who are still here and who have yet to come.

“History is a clock that people use to tell their political and cultural time of day. It is also a compass that people use to find themselves on the map of human geography.

History tells a people where they have been, what they have been, where they are and what they are. Most importantly history tells a people where they still must go, and what they still must be. The relationship of history to a people is like a mother to a child.”

—John Henrik Clarke, A Great and Mighty Walk (1996)

Ar ti s t St a t emen t

My creative practice is an autobiographical examination of my family history.

These inherited histories are constantly shifting, evolving as I sort through the living storehouse that is the African Diaspora. The story of an axe that becomes a lightning rod and Bibles opened to Psalms 91 in every room, become more than superstitions. These stories and the images they conjure are the foundations of my work and the beginning of my understanding of the African retentions present within my family.

The excavation of archives and a growing understanding of African Metaphysics, such as Bantu-Kongo expressions of the universe through the ideogram Dikenga, inform my art. My immersion in the Diaspora creates a new understanding of the world, thus building a matrix of Africanness and Blackness. The ‘Home Place,’ the land my family has owned for generations, is the site of my creative practice.

My family’s collective memory of our Africanisms is a trace that serves as the beginning of reconciliation to ancestral concepts of place, time, and the sacred.

Dikenga dia Kongo An ideogram from West-Central Africa that represents the Bakongo people’s philosophy of time.

The Afriscape, a term coined by visual culture scholar Duane Deterville, is the cultural manifestation of Black life throughout the world. It is the mission of the Afriscape Cartographer to “identify the overlaps and commonalties in African cultural expression to locate them in an African and African diasporic cultural continuum.”

As an artist, I am socialized in the visual culture and art history of the United States as well as the rest of the Western world. However, my own identity as an African American sits at an intersection of Africa and America. A marginalized space and sacred crossroads simultaneously.

Taking on the role of Afriscape Cartographer means knowing the technical skills of the medium of photography to capture the image of a chinaberry tree at night but seeing beyond the tree’s physicality to its spirit; a Simbi.

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My maternal great-grandfather, who was affectionately known as “Big Daddy�, Jenkins Lusk, died in February 1988. His death came eight months before I was born. My mother tells me she went to see him in the hospital before he died. She did not know she was pregnant with me at the time. When she recalls that memory, she remembers the laughter and joy they shared. The next thing she knew he was gone. While this memory is not my own, I was present there in that hospital room unbeknownst to my mother and great-grandfather. He and I were in the same place once but in different times; me being in the time of pre-birth and him in the time of death. It is a commonly held belief in African American community that children and the elderly are the closest to the spirit world; because one has just entered the world and the other is on the way out. This occurrence would happen once more; in 2019 when I went in search of his house and grave in Hopewell.

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My mom told me when she was a little girl, that during really bad thunderstorms, her Big Mama (grandmother) would make the entire household go and sit in the hallway closet. No one was allowed to speak or move around because the Lord was working. His voice, like thunder and the flash of His eyes, like lightning. Along with them in the closet would be a Bible opened to Psalm 91 with a butcher knife across the page. Psalm 91 is the Psalm of Protection. My grandmother to this day keeps an open Bible in every room of her house open to this chapter. When I asked my mom, why the knife?

She did not have an answer.

She did not know.

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Jamie Robertson is a visual artist and educator from Houston, Texas. She earned a BA in Art and MFA in Studio Art with a concentration in photography and digital media from the University of Houston. In addition, she also holds an MS in Art Therapy from Florida State University. She is a former recipient of the American Art Therapy Association’s ‘Pearlie Roberson Award’ for her joint Frenchtown Mural project. As an educator, Jamie is interested in cultural community development through creative youth development.

Her creative practice is an autobiographical examination of history and identity in the African Diaspora through the mediums of photography and video. Her work was featured in Where We Are at Art League Houston and Through the Lens: Identity, Representation & Self-Presentation at Florida A & M University Foster-Tanner Fine Arts Gallery. She currently works as a Teaching Artist in Houston.

www.jamievrobertson.com

Acknowledgments

This photobook was created in lieu of an exhibition of my Master thesis work due to the global health pandemic COVID-19 also known as Corona Virus.

I would like to acknowledge and express my gratitude to the members of my thesis committee: Delilah Montoya, David Politzer, Rachel Hecker, Jean-Sebastien Boncy, and Caroline Docwra. Thank you all for your support and encouragement over the past three years. You all have challenged me in so many ways and for that I am grateful. Special thank you to Delilah, if you had not encouraged me to go back to school, this work would not exist.

Thank you to Jessi Bowman, Junior Fernandez, Tia-Simone Gardner, Joseph Roberts and Cris Skelton for all your help reviewing numerous drafts of my artist statement and written thesis. Your insights helped me to fine-tune my creative voice on paper.

To my family, especially my mom and grandma, thank you for instilling in me a deep love and respect for our family history. I am so grateful for all the weekends and summers spent shelling peas, playing with cousins at family gatherings, waiting for what felt like an eternity for tractors to be fixed or cows at auction, and visiting my elders in Centerville, Buffalo, and Jewett. Thank you for believing in my creative vision even though you may not have always understood everything I was doing.

Plate List

Construction of Big Mama’s House, circa 1950s from Family Archive pg.1

Chinaberry Tree (Simbi), 2017 Inkjet print 18 x 24 inches

pg. 2 Big Mama’s House in Egypt Community, Centerville, TX, 2017 Inkjet print 24 x 36 inches pg.3

Big Mama, Ms. Dolly, Michael Byrd and others, circa 1960s from Family Archive

pg. 4 Domino Game at the Family Reunion, circa 1980s from Family Archive pg.5

Domino Game, 2018 Inkjet print 16 x 20 inches

pg. 12 Little Cousins, 2018 Inkjet print 11 x 14 inches pg. 13 Tenderness, 2018 Inkjet print 11 x 14 inches pg. 15 Ant Bed, 2019 Inkjet print 11 x 14 inches pg. 17 Mommy (and me) and Millicent, 1988 from Family Archive pg. 18 Big Daddy at Home in Hopewell, TX, 1970s from Family Archive

pg.19 Hopewell Field, 2019 Inkjet print pg. 7 Big Mama’s House in Egypt Community, Centerville, TX, II, 2019 16x 20 inches Inkjet print 16 x 20 inches pg. 20 Sideview of Big Daddy’s House?, circa 1970s from Family Archive pg. 8 Night Fall at the Family Reunion, 2018 Inkjet print pg. 21 Big Daddy’s House in Hopewell, TX, 2019 11 x 14 inches Inkjet print 24 x 36 inches pg. 9 Pawpaw, Jimmy Brown, George Turner and others, circa 1980s from Family Archive pg. 11 View from Big Mama’s House, 2017 Inkjet print 16 x 20 inches

pg. 23 Big Daddy and Pawpaw Cleaning a Hog, circa 1970s from Family Archive pg. 24 Floor Inside Big Daddy’s House, 2020 Inkjet print 16 x 20 inches

pg. 30 Rod Stewart Exclusive, 2020 Inkjet print 11 x 14 inches pg.31 Mommy and Millicent, circa 1980s from Family Archive

pg. 25 Big Daddy’s Porch, 2020 Inkjet print 11 x 14 inches

pg.33 Kitchen Sink, 2020 Inkjet print 16 x 20 inches

pg.26 Big Mama and Uncle Melvin, circa 1950s from Family Archive

pg. 34 Psalm of Protection, 2018 Inkjet print 16 x 20 inches

pg.27 Lottie Bell’s Preserves, 2020 Inkjet print 11 x 14 inches pg. 28 The Creek, 2020 Inkjet print 11 x 14 inches pg. 29 Grandma, 2020 Inkjet print 16 x 20 inches

pg. 36 The Lusk Family in Egypt Community, Centerville, TX, circa 1980s (L-R: Uncle Melvin, Mommy, Aunt Gwen, Grandma and Pawpaw) from Family Archive pg. 37 Rut (Red Earth), 2019 Inkjet print 11 x 14 inches pg. 39 Unmarked Grave, 2019 Inkjet print 16 x 20 inches Jamie, age 9, sitting on the steps of Big Mama’s House, 1997 Henrietta Sweeney from Family Archive