For the kids of color in these United States of America who never quite saw faces like theirs next to the words “discoverer, pioneer” or “explorer” in their history books; here is a fragmentary sketch of your world-discoverers. Your ancestors who scaled mountains, and your forebearers who crossed oceans. Space travelers in the yet undiscovered terrestrial universe of the pre-modern world.

Using historical artifacts, first and secondhand chronicler’s accounts, and indigenous oral histories, my work explores the lives of some of the world’s earliest black travelers and seeks to transform a rarely discussed history into an impassioned and accessible visual anthology. This task is undertaken with imagination, and the belief that if these travelers’ paths had crossed, they would have recognized themselves in each other. Lots cast together, captured in the unspoken idiom,

“I too am a visitor from another star."

For the kid inside this artist, these works are produced as endless doodles. Thousands of penstrokes stretched across many daydreams, fused into one continuum. With the imagination and nostalgia of a moment of youth, the subjects are drawn over many sessions lasting several days. This process takes on a devotional element, the weight of which is expressed in time spent rather than in the expense or rarity of materials used.

The finished pieces represent a dedication of time and focus given in homage to the subjects. I draw hard historical research and a precision art-making methodology into a modern and grounded form of ancestor veneration. These rites performed, the subjects return as phantoms traveling the terrestrial universe once more, in our stories.