BLACKout
Sometimes peace becomes so hard-earned that protecting it can come at a cost.
BLACKout came from a period when I was becoming increasingly frustrated by what I was hearing about and witnessing in America—the repeated disrespect, mistreatment and misjudgment of Black men, women and children.
I felt buried in that discontent.
Some of that frustration was also directed toward what I saw happening within my own community, particularly among those of us who had managed to find some degree of comfort, success or peace. At times, it seemed easier to remain quiet than to risk disturbing what had taken so much effort to achieve.
But I don’t separate myself from that criticism.
I understand the instinct.
When you’ve spent so much of your life watching your people catch hell, peace can become something precious. And once you finally experience some of it yourself, there’s a natural desire to protect it—to hold onto it by any means necessary.
That’s where the conflict behind BLACKout lives for me.
How much should we be willing to overlook in order to preserve our own peace?
I didn’t have a comfortable answer to that question then, and the piece isn’t intended to provide one now. It came from my frustration with the silence while also recognizing why that silence can exist.
Visually, BLACKout strips away nearly everything except the name. JECK stretches across a deep black field in white linework, changing structure as it moves through the composition while remaining unmistakably present.
The title carries its own tension:
BLACKout.
Black identity. Anger. Discontent. Understanding. Self-examination. And the struggle between protecting the peace we’ve earned and remaining conscious of what continues around us.
BLACKout isn’t an accusation from th
