Power Object Series

The Broom Power object series is as much a material study of Southern visual culture as it utilizes Southern conjure beliefs to create powerful art objects. Each object uses the traditional tension-based means of broom-making to create objects that are not designed for sweeping but purely to protect, harm, heal, and yield power in various other ways.

While digging through the archives at the University of Georgia I found lists of conjure and hoodoo beliefs that had been gathered by WPA and other folk historians and anthropologist groups. The theme of the broom used to either protect or harm was reoccurring. My own family has many broom superstitions but I was excited to find the logic behind some of my family's beliefs. I'm interested in the history of everyday people finding to give themselves power with everyday objects. I learned how to make traditional Appalachian brooms so I could better understand how these many broom beliefs may have been formed and started a series of nonfunctional broom objects.

Medium specificity materializes the emotions tied to memories and speaks to the material culture of the Southern United States. I utilize these fibrous materials as a means of turning the everyday into the supernatural and as forms of Black resistance.