Sometimes the art pieces I gravitate toward speak to me in terms of narrative, at other times they speak to me in terms of mood.

For me her image, the triptych, became a study of the weight the black male figure carries, given the fact that they are targeted by the police, and are constantly in danger of being misread in public spaces.

If you admit to being racist, it says you acknowledge that you are being driven by projections and stereotypes that were formed in the creation of our country. Racism is deeply rooted in America.

Intimacy is important in my work because I don't understand existence without intimacy. All of us are dependent on other people - and in ways we don't know. You cross the street and assume that person isn't crazy, they don't want to mow me down with their car. I don't know that person but I am already in a relationship with them. I am asking them to abide by the traffic laws. If they decided not to, I'd be dead. Even in those anonymous ways, we're in relationships.

If you make a mistake, then you should own that mistake.

I also found it funny to think about blackness as the second person. That was just sort of funny. Not the first person, but the second person, the other person.

In the future, we've forgotten it. It's disappointing to find out that the past is the present is the future. Nobody wants that. And yet, that's what it is. Maybe it's a kind of surrealist move, to use language like "post-racial" - thinking that if you create the language for it, it will happen. I wish it worked that way. But that's not our reality.