Very limited 3-print Artist Proof -- 24x24 inch gallery stretched canvas embellished, signed, numbered, and complete with an embossed certificate of authenticity.

This piece is part of my Signs of the Times series, where I use ordinary images to examine the rules, limitations, and assumptions of American history. I think about a time when something as simple as a Black child enjoying an ice cream cone could exist within a world shaped by segregation. During Jim Crow, Black people were sometimes denied vanilla ice cream in public, with some areas permitting it only on the Fourth of July. Though this was a custom rather than an actual law, the recollection appears in writings of Maya Angelou and Audre Lorde, reflecting the arbitrary rules that shaped Black life under segregation. I wanted this boy to hold onto something that segregation could not completely take from him: the simple pleasure of being a child, enjoying an ice cream cone, and imagining himself free.