Anderson Gallery Magazine

The Ground We Stand On

Lavett Ballard
Anderson Gallery
November - February, 2023

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As a child I would spend summers at our family farm in Virginia. This ritual of traveling from the North to the south all the while being fed the stories of how we grew to gain the property and how the 'Big House ' I would be staying at was built by my 3 times Great Grandmothers sons. The home was a step back in time prior, to the flight of the Great Migration sent masses toward opportunities in the North. Through this experience I was drawn to the history of the log cabin that held generations, of my family in a home surrounded by photographs that chronicled our family history.

This experience helped to foster a interest in visual storytelling. While fusing the wood that surrounded my summers of my youth. My strong affinity for imagery and history has led me to focus on creating a visual lexicon of African American, female, self-identity.

I’ve spent hours compiling a photographic catalog of female images that cover the African diaspora over different geographic areas and historical periods. The prints are collaged, painted, destroyed and reborn to create a re imagined visual narrative to the history portrayed In my work. I use reclaimed large and small aged wood fences, as a symbolic reference to how fences keep people in and out, just as racial and gender identities can do the same socially. These fences are then arranged as 'altars' as icons to honor the strong the self-identity of each subject.