My maternal family history in art form. This story depicts our history In America. The medium for each painting is mixed media, acrylic and collage on canvas (18 x 24).
First painting shows the slaves crossing the Alabama River, some drowned from jumping or being thrown overboard. The river now serves as a tourist attraction apart of the Legacy museum’s exhibition.
In the second piece, we witness the auctioned slaves at the auction block. The auction block is now referred to as the Court Square Fountain in Montgomery, Alabama. The lady sitting to the right is my 3x’s great grandmother, Ola Mae Hoffman. The man standing alone by the horses is her husband, and my 3x’s great grandfather, John Wesley Hoffman. At the time the photo of him was taken, I’m told that he was the only blacksmith In town, and respected by many. He was a strict, no nonsense kind of man.
The third painting is of my cousin’s grandfather, Willie Burke, standing proud after taking part in the completion of the Bibb Graves Bridge around the time of the Great Depression, and my great grandmother, Julia Mae Hoffman, invisioning her departure from Wetumpka during the Great Migration.
Finally, my great grandmother, and older Julia Mae Hoffman, now Kendrick (second marriage) is seen, eventually settling in Bloomington, Illinois, founding not only her first church, but the first Church of God in Christ, called Holy Temple, on Oakland Avenue and Evans street, in the city of Bloomington, Illinois. Julia was an Evangelist at this church, and was in a sense, a neighborhood mother. Being the first African American female head chef at the Holiday inn, in Bloomington, Illinois, she’d often cook and serve food to the children, homeless, addicts, and anybody else in the neighborhood who was hungry.
