Waters are living beings, carrying emotion, memory, and imagination. (Watercolor, color pencil, and text-passage with a sea turtle)

Thinking of water, this project brought Toni Morrison’s chapter to mind: “The Site of Memory” in Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir (p. 199). Her metaphor of emotional memory to flooding really resonated with me during this time (and the last few years). As I’ve been practicing art to study Black history, water has been a major aspect or repetitive theme of my review on African/American diaspora experiences–physically and psychologically. More personally, my take on “flooding” has involved the waves and rushes of emotions/memories experienced over the past tumultuous years in my life and globally from societal and environmental ills of inequality, oppression, and exploitation. I’ve also thought of water as a balm or space for calm, rest, and hope for rejuvenation.