AS AN ARTIST INTERESTED IN NATURAL MATERIALS AND ART MADE OF EARTH, I ENJOY FINDING SOURCES OF COLOR IN PLACES THAT ARE STEEPED WITH BLACK HISTORY. Harriet Jacobs’ grave at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts is covered in black walnuts—a popular form of medicine in African-American (and other herbal medicine) traditions. Black walnuts are also an amazing natural dye and pigment, making a dark umber that can stain clothes and offer paint. Jacobs’ was a fierce abolitionist, a runaway slave, writer of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, and dedicated educator. By transforming the walnuts that dotted her grave into dynamic paintings that echo the life, vitality, and freedom she stood for, these paintings bring life out of a graveyard.