America the Beautiful

“America the Beautiful” is an homage to the thousands of African American women and men who have dedicated their lives to the arduous task of making America a more beautiful country. The inspiration for this project was cultivated from a dissatisfaction with the current political atmospheres in our country. Needless to say there has been a lot of fear, hate, and name-calling going to and issuing from Capitol Hill, and like many others I have felt an incredible urge to weigh in. After a couple derisive scribbles of channeled aggression I came to realize that I did not want to be a part of what has caused our problems in the first place. Instead I made an even more daunting and albeit less sexy decision to highlight what makes America a beautiful place to live. This started less than a year ago when I did an illustration of a salt of the earth elderly couple incorporating Walt Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing” which evolved into the book that now sits before you.