About the Work

Throughout time, few materials have been more extraordinarily or vernacularly prized than plaster. It is the primary medium of the most ancient modeling and building techniques. For their finest work the Egyptians used a calcined gypsum plaster nearly identical with plaster of Paris. And very early in the history of Greek architecture (e.g., at Mycenae), plaster of a fine white lime stucco was used. Lakela Brown’s tablet-like piece, Jewelry, Chicken head, and Hands Composition with Gold, sculpts with plaster to immortalize, among other things like chicken heads and body parts, another set of iconic elements—gold and bamboo earrings, . Echoing the aesthetics of some of art history’s most studied artifacts, Brown presents this plaster relief in a way that preserves and glorifies the most important relics, those which she personally reveres, and which are frequently attributed to African American culture.