Year 5 Black History Month Hand-Painted earring fundraiser

As the title states, this is my 5th year painting Black heroes and icons on earrings for Black History Month. I started doing this primarily because a huge portion of my painted earring customer base is indeed Black women – as it has been ever since I first started my creative journey years ago on the streets of New York, but also because many of the people I paint are my own heroes. Every year I choose a different charity to support with half of the proceeds from earring sales, but this year I’m choosing to donate again to Taking Ownership PDX, LLC., “a small-but-mighty community collective of contractors, realtors, neighbors, and businesses brought together by Portland musician, activist Randal Wyatt. Together we renovate and revive Black-owned homes that have requested our help, with an emphasis on enabling Black homeowners to age in place, generate wealth and simultaneously deter predatory investors and realtors to deflect the gentrification process. While nothing can undo the decades of harm imposed upon Portland’s Black community via deliberate historical redlining, gentrification and systemic racism, Taking Ownership is turning the tide with a commitment to impactful grassroots change in support of the Black home owners of our city.” – from the Taking Ownership website.

I donated to the same cause last year and watching them do their work to uplift the Black community in my own neck of the woods felt really great and felt the most appropriate. This post features the creations for my first week with links to purchase in the captions. Stay tuned for a new piece each day and come back right here each week for the weekly re-cap!