Dedria Humphries Barker
Hi!
I write. Everything.
News, always what's new. And features. Only the most colorful. And I think stuff that doesn't get writ. LOL.
Seriously, I write to capture the tension between individual freedom, and the tyranny of the group. Family, especially.
Individual and group are an artistic collaboration. The tighter one pulls, the more conflicts. I see this in most situations, and relationships. Individuals create anew, outside the lines, as if there are no lines, or effectively moving borders. Groups come into being through lines, stability, and structure. Tyranny is the strenuous work of a group to maintain the lines, the order. And in the group individuals find conditions to create against.
My art is the result of impulses pushing against, around, through within, without the group. My stories tell of individuals doing something vis-à-vis their group. One might find an individual leaning on family, the invisible foundation, and denying it. It captures those moments when an individual finds it useful to be a part of a group, and when they must, bolt. Research is the DNA of my work, finding new story fragments between these two states.