Declaration & Resistance examines the American dream through the lives of Black Americans from the late 18th century to the present time. Using labor as a backdrop, Towns highlights the role African Americans have played in shaping the economy, and explores their resilience, resistance, and endurance that have challenged the United States to truly embrace the tenets of its Declaration of Independence.

On November 12, 1833, the Leonid meteor shower rained a dazzling array of light all over the night sky. 28 years before the American Civil War, this scene was so spectacular that it incited both fear and wonder all over the world. The paintings and quilts in ‘The Night Light Fell from the Sky’ use this pivotal celestial event as a moment of freedom and revelation for the enslaved people who experienced it at the time.

This series of quilts revolve around collective thinking. Each quilt features a series of figures observing the meteor shower. The titles and images in each work allude to collective thinking and obstacles a group of people may endure to reach a goal.

African-American spirituals served multiple roles. They could serve as jubilant declarations of faith or songs of protest. A Songbook Remembered is a series of quilts visualizing the layers and messages behind these works of arts.

Inspired by the novel Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom by Catherine Clinton, these works  are mythical images narrating pivotal moments in Tubman’s life.

My story quilts narrate the life of Nat Turner and his 1831 rebellion.

Sunken is a series of portraits on paper inspired by my research about the Zong massacre of 1781 in which 133 slaves were killed by their British slave ship crew. These works are a testament to the resilience of the Africans who survived the Middle Passage.

In The Gift of Lineage, I’ve incorporated fabric collected in the US and Ghana. This series examines the power of uncovering the past in order to create a prosperous and more certain future.

An Offering draws inspiration from Marcus Rediker’s 2007 book The Slave Ship: A Human History. The eight works pay homage to the many West African people who were uprooted from their families and forced to endure the brutality of the Middle Passage. The shape of each work mimics the diagram of the 18th century British slave ship the Brookes. The figures and shadows in each work represent the multitude of unknown Africans who were captured and forced to live an uncertain future shaped by their captors. The hands holding candles in each work are an offering to these ancestors in a gesture of gratitude and solace. 

Find Me A Constellation delves into to lives of children who experienced American slavery. Models for the portraits were sourced from archived images of enslaved children. Because the harsh realities of slavery may be inescapable, the only way to find internal peace was through daydreaming and the stars.

Black Magic examines the role religion has played throughout American history. The figures represent the Nat and Cherry Turner and how they use religion to escape the bonds of slavery, both real and imagined.