Ellamaria A. Foley-Ray

Fired-clay sculpture that evokes continental and diasporic African cultural expression to address questions concerning humanity.

Mud Text-Tiles

The Text-Tiles series gives me a space to play with fusing more than one adinkra symbol together, so that I, as a diasporic African, can engage in a visual dialogue based on a West African "call" to create a displaced African "response."

Literature Emerging from Clay

This body of work was created as an assessment tool for students enrolled in Black Women Writers at Metropolitan State University of Denver. Each mask is a visual analysis of the novels the students are required to read. This body of work insists that students challenge their notion of what it means to "read" and is an ongoing series

Bottle Trees and Seeds

"Spirits in the Trees and Bottle Seeds" explores bottle trees as a site for the living and dead family members to commune, and it ponders the relationship between family trees and trees of life. This body of work goes further to ask what is within each bottle that has the potential to grow into a vibrant bottle tree or family.

(Un)masking Meaning

This on-going series offers me an opportunity to explore masks as a gateway to ancient and contemporary spiritual lessons and truth.

Children of Akua

The series Akua's Children is a study of akua'ma (singular akua'ba) figures, Asante abstract or, less commonly, naturalistic nude black wooden figures with flat disc-like heads that are expressions of fertility and beauty.