This exhibition examines the history and lore of the snake as a notorious American symbol, the fear serpents evoke, and the ways these symbols are employed today in mythology as local as that of Mobile, or as broad as the countless uses of the Gadsden flag. 

The history of the snake in American and Alabamian ideology is fundamentally a material history. Had newspapers not published an article by “An American Guesser” (known now to be Ben Franklin) recording descriptions of military flags with images of rattlesnakes, had French explorers notebooks not described the serpent tattoos covering the torso of who history has decided was the co-founder of Mobile, the resulting visual culture would not remain pertinent. 

Melissa Vandenberg and I take up that material history with a sewing needle, while local tattoo artists Rachael Ellzey Black, Suzette Callahan, Tyler Johnson, AJ Ludlow, and Grace Schuessler created flash paintings to explore how the tattoo needle continues to intersect with the story of the serpent (these were turned into flags in the last image).

Installed at Alabama Contemporary Art Center in Spring 2021.