Charles Wadell Chesnutt was an early African American author who spent half of his career passing as White but his concern was always with Black issues and multiracial experiences. I began to reckon with Chesnutt’s racial fluidity in contrast to his legacy: in his death he is always a Black author but in his life he was received differently. Charles Chesnutt is among a number of subjects I explored in relief printmaking between 2020 and 2021 using color rhetorically to describe both multiracial experience, gender and the term “high yellow,” historically used to describe Black people with light skin. In relief utilizes black and white prints paired with different multimedia processes like painting, collage and paper marbling to reflect the activity of identity construction as a multilayered nonlinear experience.

I want to thank the University of Nebraska Lincoln and the New School for Design for introducing me to the work of Charles Chesnutt through our collaboration on the Charles Chesnutt Archive. Discover Chesnutt’s work and see the art I created for the site at https://chesnuttarchive.org/.