This weekend, I started working on my new digital collage series entitled “Celebrating Black Joy in My Ancestral Womanline’s Friendships.”
I created four collages featuring my grandaunt Paulyne Roberts (“Aunt Paul”) and her best friend Cleo, grandmother Frederica Stanley Roberts Leeke (“Freddie” and “Grandmommy”) and her girlfriends, and grandaunt Mabel Roberts (“Aunt Mabel”) and her sorority sisters.
The background for each collage comes from a photo I took of fabric from a dress I bought at Katuka, my favorite Afro-Brazilian boutique in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil in 2023. I used Canva to create small strips of the fabric and placed them in different directions in the main photo. The strips created a different fabric design. I included photos of the original fabric, dress, and Katuka boutique. I added Ghanaian Adinkra symbols to each collage. A description of each symbol is included on graphics attached to this post.
COLLAGE TITLES WITH BRIEF DESCRIPTION
1) Aunt Paul and Her Bestie Cleo (two women seated)
I placed a photo of Aunt Paul and her bestie Cleo that was taken in 1918 or 1919 on top of the fabric photo. I removed the photo’s original background on Canva. I added brown Ese Ne Tekrema symbols to the fabric. Ese Ne Tekrema is a Ghanaian Adinkra symbol that represents friendship and cooperation.
2) Freddie’s Gal Pals (group of women standing and kneeling)
The collage celebrates the relationships Grandmommy had with her girlfriends. I used Canva’s background remover tool to recreate the image of the 1933 photo of my grandmother and her girlfriends. I imagine they were posing for a photo at one of their AQ Club meetings, teas, or events. My grandmother is the young woman kneeling in a dark colored dress. She was 18 when the photo was taken and a freshman in college. Brown Nnamfo Pa Baanu Ghanaian Adinkra symbols were added to the collage because they symbolize friendship and fellowship, two key ingredients in my grandmother’s life.
3) Freddie & Her BFF Creating Black Women Joy (two women standing)
The collage reminds me joy is one of my birthrights. It includes a 1937 photo of Grandmommy and her sistafriends Forest Park in St. Louis, Missouri. They were visiting Aunt Paul who was lworking as a nurse at Homer G. Phillips Hospital, the only hospital for African Americans in St. Louis from 1939 to 1955. I added brown Ghanaian Adinkra symbols called Duafe and Nea Ope Se Obedi Hene to the fabric to celebrate beauty, femininity, sisterhood, and joy.
4) Aunt Mabel’s Community of Sisterhood
This digital collage celebrates Ant Mabel and the sisterhood she shared with her friends in her career, church, sorority, and community. She was a FABULOUS, FIERCE, FLYY, and FASHIONABLE woman who made sure she was properly groomed and “dressed to the nines” at all times. She loved the finer things in life.
Aunt Mabel studied education and graduated from Indiana State Normal College (before it became Indiana State Teachers College and Indiana State University) in Terre Haute, Indiana. She became the first African American teacher in Elkhart, Indiana and joined Zeta Phi Beta Sorority.
I used two 1940s photos of Aunt Mabel. One photo is from her career as a teacher in Elkhart, Indiana. They second photo features Aunt Mabel and a group of women that she is connected to. I imagine that the women are probably her Zeta Phi Beta Sorority sisters. I added brown Ghanaian Adinkra symbols called Duafe and Nea Ope Se Obedi Hene to the fabric to celebrate the beauty, femininity, sisterhood, and commitment to service.
Ananda Leeke 