Artist Statement
This poem by Langston Hughes is the underlying motto for my woodcuts, paintings and books
shown in this exhibition.
Langston Hughes the great Harlem Renaissance poet wrote this poem in 1935.
A timeless verse that could have been written today as an antidote to our present
government, a government that ignores the needs of its people and replaces a sense of
solidarity with disadvantaged and vulnerable groups with cruel and ethno-centered policies.
I am trying to interpret this poem in my work and hope that together with Langston Hughes
words
"Let America be America again / Let it be the dream it used to be”
I will be able to
encourage the viewer to think about this and to reevaluate and to ask him or herself:
“ What has and is happening to this Dream, the Dream of a country that is shared by African-
Americans, the working class, immigrants, and Native Americans, the Dream of Equality,Free Speech, Peace, Justice and Freedom?”
My woodcuts are direct references to the happenings of our times indicated by the newspaper
background, while the birch trees, the motif of my paintings, stand strong and untouchable as
symbols of hope, new beginnings, regeneration and the promise of what is to come.