What does it mean to look at that stuff that we'd rather not present?

A lot of this work is about making an actual effort to conceal, and not just from society, from ourselves.

I really just tried to make the thing that I wanted to make that I was scared to make.

I'm finding a slay.

I'm finding rhythm.

They're trying to take away all that I got.

But I can't let ‘em.

People rise up to help each other.

We have to.

We have to navigate this landscape just like everyone else.

What does it really mean to be from somewhere and to grow up somewhere?

‘84 is when my family came here.

I grew up on 18th and Yesler.

In the summer we used to hop on the 27 bus, and it would take you all the way to Leschi.

And you could just jump in the water.

That was like my favorite thing to do in the summer.

When I was nine, I wandered into a kid artworks class.

A free one, at Pratt Fine Arts Center.

I think they were doing potato prints.

Its this thing where you cut a potato in half, and you carve out a little shape and you just stamp it in ink.

But I just was so fascinated by it that I kept going to that art class.

It was free on Saturdays, and then eventually graduated to the print studio and started doing the same way, but with traditional printmaking.

Bryant Manor, which is the low income housing project that I grew up in that was in the CD, growing up in that space changed my life because it was literally like across the park from Pratt Fine Arts Center.

And it's the only reason that I wandered into those classes and thought about that neighborhood and how it was a red zone neighborhood.

It was redlined.

If you look at the Seattle red line map, that CD area just is hazardous.

It's painted red, and it says “hazardous.” And growing up there, that's not the experience, right?

I walked to school.

There was a public library.

I mean, it wasn't hazardous, but the perception is what it is.

I wanted people to walk through it because that was my memory place.

And then the figures are the people who come in and embody the place.

It really gave me the opportunity to really think about what it means to be from somewhere.

What you gain depending on where you are from.

We could have landed somewhere else.

And that would have changed the trajectory of my entire life.

Traditional printmaking is really about youre carving into metal, and you are inking up a plate really carefully, and then you're wiping the plate down, taking away the excess ink so that all that remains is the image that you're going to print.

It's a 500 year old process, but it's also very intense.

And very tidy, which I don't clearly, I'm not that way.

It creates a lot of waste.

So, you know, you might print something and then you don't quite like it, or the right color didn't come out or it wasnt positioned on the paper exactly right.

And you kind of get rid of those pieces.

And I realized when I did that I wanted to keep the, the waste and turn it into something else.

Or just keep printing on it or see if I could add some color or rip it up, turn it into a collage.

I also wanted to tear up the things that I was printing and put them back together again, which is also not traditional.

So I found a segue into doing that, and they just kind of got larger and larger and larger.

I call Jites work kind of a quiet sophistication, the way she portrays Black people.

They're in lone situations, in kind of, mysterious environments.

So there's all kinds of ways to be Black, where to me, her work is kind of dialed back again.

And you've got to kind of look and there's a quietness about it.

She does a lot of silhouettes that she fills in with patterns and colors, which are very, very strong because you got the human form and we all, as humans, always respond to the human form.

But then you've got all these colors and patterns going on within.

Sometimes I take patches of fabric and I print color onto them and then mix it with paper.

Layering of the texture it happens a little bit more with that mixture of material.

Encaustic is painting with beeswax.

It's one of the oldest styles of painting.

So those are Egyptian Byzantine paintings, sometimes with a lot of gold leaf.

You use beeswax because it just doesn't degrade.

Some of those paintings are 3000 years old, and they're in pretty good shape.

To get those very rich surfaces, it's no easy task.

It would be comparable to polishing metal.

Which kind of blends the colors and the patterns and the pieces of paper and kind of creates this sheen over them, that makes them very cohesive and kind of knits them together or gives them a wholeness.

I think gesture communicates a lot.

They color our words right.

What does it mean to say yes with your hands folded versus your hands unfolded?

I do take care to think about what gesture is being captured in these pieces.

The fact that there's no facial features and the fact that you only get so much information because there's no facial features, it means that you have to project onto the piece.

It's a mirror now.

So now you're having a conversation with yourself.

You know, sometimes it's uncomfortable because I look at a piece and I feel a certain kind of way, and I'm immediately ashamed of feeling that way.

And then I think, should I move this piece in a different direction or should I take something out of it?

It takes some fortitude to say, no, leave it there because it's vulnerable.

And sometimes, you know, there's some pride.

Like I look at it and that mirroring happens and I'm proud of what I'm seeing, which is also an illusion as well.

I think when I started doing those potato printings, I was like, I can do this for my entire life.

Of course, you know, that's an innocent thought of a nine year old.

I didn't realize that you had to make money and stuff, but I also didn't really deviate from that thought after having it the first time.

Every time I walked into a studio, I was like, I could spend the rest of my days in the studio, and that's a life well spent.