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Coming to Jones Road.

Article Excerpt
INTRODUCTION

I moved to Jones Road in Englewood, New Jersey, on November 23, 1992, with the dream of constructing a studio and creating a garden.

Soon after I came to live on Jones Road and began to pursue my dream, I discovered that I was surrounded by hostile neighbors, who saw my presence on Jones Road as a threat to the "quality" of their lives. My dream of a studio and garden was to them no more than a rooming house with transient occupants. For more than six years I struggled with the town board to obtain the permits necessary to override my neighbors' opposition and build my studio.

Having traveled the world but never having lived anywhere but Harlem, this was an extremely traumatic experience for me. But art is a healer and the sheer beauty of living in a garden amidst trees, plants, and flowers has inspired me to look away from my neighbors' unfounded animosity toward me and focus my attention on the stalwart tradition of black people who had come to New Jersey centuries before me. In Coming to Jones Road, I have tried to couple the beauty of the place and the harsh realities of its racist history to create a freedom series that turns all the ugliness of spirit, past and present, into something livable. I am also trying, which is the hardest part of all, to speak in the voice of my grandmothers and fathers who made it possible for me in the twenty-first century to walk free...