Haint Blue Hues of the Eternal Muse

sirens adorned in haunting sea songs are lured in by her soul's tide, destined to run aground in pursuit of her.

muses are undone at the inspiration of her. their eyes catch flame as they gaze, and a thousand risen phoenixes fly free at her command.

the ink of the poet laureate runs dry. the nobel prize winner sighs ponders of her peace of mind. the gossip goes mute; the unobservant becomes astute.

mighty and majestic cathedral organs need new hymns to attune to her, higher ceilings to capture her resonance, more vibrant stained glass to refract her light.

dark corners of the forest's canopy long to slow dance in her shadow. dancing blue flames stand still when she enters the room.

desperate sailors long to suspend her high in a vast night sky to guide them home. lighthouse keepers are out of work. she is the bright and wise guide.

the feminine is allowed to breathe slow next to her, receive love, be a soft invitation, to know and be known. the masculine longs to unwind in her presence, to put its feet up after a long day, to know and to be known.

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JILLIAN RICHARDSON: In looking at your art in general, I can't help but be reminded of the human urge to tame raw materials to make them useful, thus enhancing their natural beauty. Would you mind sharing how your most recent installation carries this theme forward?

Jaleeca Yancy: I've always been drawn to the "labor of materials" quote from artist Theaster Gates—how they speak, how they resist, how they surrender. Like Gates, I, too, find myself in an ongoing dialogue with materiality, pushing and pulling between control and release. My process is often obsessive, teetering on the edge of labor and reverence. I'm captivated by what nature reveals when we allow it to guide us rather than merely use it. This is why I return, again and again, to natural dyes, upcycled textiles, and foraged elements. These materials are not just tools; they are storytellers, carrying histories, memories, and quiet, persistent messages.

Take Perched and Knotted 2, my recent sculpture installed at Equity Gallery—it first stood as a public art piece in Morningside Park, Harlem Sculpture Gardens to be a testament to resilience and reclamation. Made from foraged London plane tree branches stained in indigo and wrapped in indigo-dyed rope, the sculpture speaks to the layered history of indigo—its colonial past, its spiritual resonance, its ties to both oppression and liberation. Rope, to me, is an umbilical cord connecting us back to nature, back to each other. The branches, bound yet free, remind us that we are all limbs of the same tree, reaching, twisting, growing together.

JR: Your art often serves as a bridge that connects the haunted past; a harrowing present; and our precarious yet hopeful future. If you had to pen one tagline that this installation evokes from past, present, and future -respectively- what would it be?

JY: Past: "No, I do not weep at the world—I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife." — Zora Neale Hurston. Blackness is not a lament but a declaration—an inheritance of boundless imagination, defiant joy, and self-determined legacy.

Present: Desire – Reason – Truth. The dance of creation and reclamation—an urgent choreography of making, unmaking, and remaking.

Future: Necessary Autonomy (inspired by Sisters of the Yam by bell hooks). A future where self-determination is not an aspiration but a lived reality—woven from radical care, creative resistance, and an unyielding belief in abundance. It is a world sculpted by our own hands, echoing our ancestors' wildest dreams.

JR: Describe how the purest forms of masculinity and femininity meet through your use of textiles, natural dyes, and the medium of sculpture.

JY: This is a fascinating question because historically, the crafts I work with have been gendered—some mastered by men, others by women. Yet, through my practice, I see how these energies intertwine. Indigo, for instance, was often handled by women, despite its grueling, alchemical process. Textiles, soft and yielding, carry whispers of matriarchal knowledge, while sculpture demands a forcefulness, a bodily exertion often linked to masculinity.

For me, the purest meeting of masculine and feminine happens in the hands. Hands nurture, but they also build. They soften, but they also break. In working with clay, particularly porcelain and red clay, I find myself in a dance between the two—molding, destroying, and reshaping. The feminine in me plays, nurtures, and lingers in the textures. The masculine executes, punctuates, brings the work to its conclusion. It is a constant negotiation, a conversation between nature and nurture, discipline and surrender.

JR: Walk me through how your art captures your hopes for how humans can better steward the two most valuable gifts we've been given: our bodies and the Earth.

JY: One of my most beloved pieces is a quilt—though, in truth, it defies the traditional notion of quilting. It is a disruption, an unraveling, a reclamation. This work, entitled Give Up the Shit That Weighs You Down, takes its cue from Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon quote: "You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down."

If we are to truly care for our bodies and this planet, we must first release what no longer serves us—be it societal expectations, extractive systems, or inherited burdens. This is why I am drawn to the cyclical nature of sustainability. My work is in constant transformation, shedding, renewing, evolving. Haint Blue Waves Triptych (which I reworked and renamed Haint Blue Waves: Transfiguration Tapestry) is a sculpture-turned-tapestry inspired by the folklore of haints—restless spirits unable to cross water. I created it as a portal, an invocation to pass through fear, to reinvigorate ourselves, to allow both body and Earth the space to heal and regenerate. Just as snakes shed their skin, we, too, must learn the art of release and rebirth.

JR: What aspects of your most recent musings or research reveal hidden knowledge and/or forgotten historical narratives?

JY: I have been deeply moved by Fons Americanus, Kara Walker's monumental fountain. In her accompanying book, Zadie Smith writes, Kara Walker quote: "The effect was dreadful, in the ancient meaning of that term, and provoking and active to be called, exactly, a monument. Monuments are complacent; they put a seal upon the past, they release us from dread. For Walker, dread is an engine: it prompts us to remember and rightly fear the ruins we shouldn't want to return to, and don't wish to recreate—if we're wise. Dread is surely one of the things we want history to do to us, lest we forget."

This sentiment lingers in my work. I am interested in the histories that refuse to be neatly archived, the ones that still breathe beneath our feet. Whether it's the resilience of indigo, the spiritual lore of haint blue, or the symbiotic relationship between Black bodies and land, my research is a way of listening—to the earth, to the ancestors, to the truths that were never meant to be forgotten and won't be!

Lately, my work also has been pulling me back into the realm of the figurative—an unexpected homecoming after years of abstraction. It's thrilling, like rediscovering a song you once loved but hadn't listened to in ages, now humming with new meaning. This return feels like a conversation with history itself, a way of conjuring bodies that have been erased, distorted, or mythologized into something other than their truth.

A new muse in this journey is the work of Jasmin Graham, a marine biologist whose research on sharks—particularly endangered species—has me thinking about the pointed parallel between Black women and these ancient, often misunderstood creatures. I haven't yet bought Sharks Don't Sink: Adventures of a Rogue Shark Scientist, but as a longtime devotee of Shark Week, I'm drawn to her presence in marine biology, a field where Black voices are as rare as some of the species she studies.

There's a quiet poetry in this connection: the Black female body, like the shark, is powerful yet hyper-surveilled, feared yet commodified, revered yet vulnerable to extinction in certain spaces. The shark—majestic, resilient, and essential to the ecosystem—is often cast as a villain, much like Black women who refuse to shrink or soften their edges. And yet, both persist. Both adapt. Both are necessary.

In my recent work, I'm exploring these themes, peeling back layers of cultural memory and ecological storytelling. I see bodies moving through water—ancestral crossings, migrations, rebirths—intertwined with the fluidity and ferocity of marine life. What does it mean to be endangered, yet essential? To be seen but not understood? These are the questions circling in my creative depths, urging me to paint, to assemble, to carve out a new mythology where the Black body and the ocean are symbiotic forces of power and survival.