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I remember the rhythm of hand games—in driveways, at school, in parks—a language of connection shared in little Black girlhood.
My piece, Our Hands Play at Instant Park (2025), is a photo tapestry honoring African American hand games—songs and rhythms passed down by Black girls, the creators of these enduring traditions. Set against the backdrop of “Instant” Pat Baker Park in Reno, Nevada—a space built just in two days by mainly Black residents in July 1968 to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.—the work speaks to memory and place, to the hands that crafted the park and the hands that clapped these songs into the air.
As a student of plants and their healing, I wanted to tell another story: the magic of natural hues through dyeing cloth. I respectfully used materials from African and Indigenous-American roots, to choose pigments with intention and significance:
Pink for healing and joy,
Orange for creation and energy,
Purple for spirituality and humility,
Gray for balance and easing grief,
Brown for groundness and roots.
Each design was hand-painted with herbs, showing ancestral seeds at the bottom to the jungle gym at the top, with each stitch weaving together earth, memory, and play. Photographs I took embedded in the tapestry capture two friends at play, and echoes of Black girlhood, past and present.
Hand games trace back to African traditions—hand clapping, foot stomping, and body percussion. In them, we remember the music of our bodies, the stories on our tongues, the joy of being.
This is a reclamation—a remembering—of Black girlhood, of Lemonade, Slide, Miss Mary Mack, Rockin' Robin, Jigg-A-Low, and so many more.
OUR HANDS PLAY AT INSTANT PARK (2025)
