How Deep Is Your Love

"The How Deep Is Your Love installation is a physical representation of the love reflected back to me from Mother Earth on my journey as a Black woman- through gemstones, crystals, and other natural elements, and the connection to All That Is, known to most as God or the Universe. Thinking about the spiritual deprivation of living in a Eurocentric paradigm that separates humans from nature, disconnects women from their bodies and original people from their culture, is in part the impetus for this work.

Gemstone crystals are divine extensions of Mother Earth. They can assist all of us in balancing and healing ourselves, as well as the Earth. For people of African descent who are plagued with dis-ease for a number of reasons, all stemming from subjugation to an “unnatural environment,” knowledge of crystals is important to have. In addition, the understanding of herbs and plants and core truths found in indigenous knowledge like the medicine wheel, as well as African reflections of land and sky translated through symbolic language, has been key for myself, and many of us, in reclaiming, balancing and reacclimating our true identity into the self. Understanding ourselves from the perspective of children of God or creators or even as self-determining individuals and communities in a larger context demands that we take the concepts out of the abstract and begin to truly see and consciously experience our connection with life and all that exists.

The lyrics to the song, “How Deep Is Your Love” by the Bee Gees, re-recorded and amplified recently by music artist PJ Morton, is a love tune sung in the mirror to myself. It became my self-love anthem as I recounted the ways I have struggled in this life, and the universal truths that came into my spirit to ground me. The spiritual growth has truly been immeasurable. Walking into the installation, the cotton lines strung from floor to ceiling are symbolic for that spiritual growth, and are throughout the space like the rutile mineral striations (titanium oxide) that can grow inside of gemstones like quartz and sapphire. Rutilated quartz crystals emit a clarifying radiance that lifts the spirit and supplies you with a daily dose of spiritual nutrition. By reflecting light that contains all the colors in the spectrum, rutilated quartz symbolizes unity and transformation, the side effects of an elevated consciousness that links you with the heavens. Reflections of myself in photograph and excerpts of my poetry on the wall are indicative of the physical aspect of our basic humanness, and all other elements are reminders that we are made of the same stuff as the sun, moon and stars…a cue to being the culmination of all of our ancestors- we are present here in this body, and are also ancient and future simultaneously. We are moved and changed by crystal rocks, and we each also embody a crystalline structure internally that can move and change our environment for the better if we attune ourselves.

It’s necessary to be reminded of how deep our connection is with this Earth and environment, as it truly represents a mother who provides all you need to grow, learn, and maximize your life-force purposefully."