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Hess Love

@hess2love

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magic in the mundane
poet.playwright.naturalist.
ethnographer of Afro-Chesapeake life 🦀
✨founder @chesapeakehoodoo
ΔΣΘ🔺

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Please join us for a free public program @cadvc_umbc
This Saturday April 4th featuring @hess2love , @sillysheilah , @justtbobbi and @milanrougee_ and @thebryreed

in support of @niand3rthal experimental film “The Labor/The Luxury” (2026), a documentary about the systemic impact of Black women’s labor on the crabbing industry, focusing on the Crisfield Crab Pickers’ Strike of 1938.

The conversation will explore labor, art, and the link between research, artistry, and political commitments to the working class.

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June/July Dump 💜

My summer has been filled with nothing but joy and loved ones. I've smiled & laughed so much in the last 2 months. The best ending to my grad school journey and the best support through my licensure process. Your therapist's therapy is community. ☺️

(...and therapy, obvs. I'm licensed now so I have an ethical obligation to say that 🤭😂😘)

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As today marks the close of National Black Family Month, we are taking a moment to let the many ways kinship is cultivated and roots are tended to year-round come into focus.

Our @marylandpublictv + @marylandstatearchives workshop this Spring that premiered a new @pbs Finding Your Roots episode, co-designed by @marylandserves member Marcelina Lewis ‘25, reached over a thousand memory keepers from Maryland’s largest city, current capital and rural communities across the entire watershed.

Night Kitchen centered our robust oral history collaboration democratizing the archive to usher community authorship in an American Alliance of Museums Annual Meeting panel and MuseumExpo booth exhibit, both taking on a renewed sense of urgency and shared purpose during its largest national convening in over a decade. Where better to trouble and critically explore the United States’ 250th than Philadelphia?

With support from @mellonfoundation and @cic_independent_colleges, Descendant Engagement Fellow Valerie Craigwell White anchored our attendance at the History and Legacies of Slavery: Reckoning with the Past Workshop on the University of the South campus in Sewanee, Tennessee. The cohort was inspired by the restorative principles and progress of our public archeology efforts at the c. 1746 Custom House with @radiochesapeake.

It was grounding to also make the journey alongside a @starr_center Young Historians’ Conference alumna representing Edward Waters University and Washington College alumni helming the Hallowed Ground Project from @gouchercollegelibrary Special Collections. All of which led up to an unforgettable array of Juneteenth festivities amplified by the @asalhbhm theme this year.

If any of this aligns with your own North Star and the Eastern Shore is home, please send a DM or reach out via email (chesapeakeheartland@washcoll.edu) to learn more about becoming a volunteer Ambassador!

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BTS of Echoes of 1619 in Washington, D.C. From slide deck to opening day, this section of the Freedom & Resistance exhibition was curated in just three months! So many thanks to @dcpubliclibrary and its phenomenal exhibition team Linnea and @n_c_a_m_p_b_e_l_l . To @rockyyoadrienne for a design dream come true. To @jessicavaloris for putting my name in the curatorial hat! To my brilliant co-creators Jess, @theconjurecreative, @thestoryofoh, and @hess2love . To the good folks at @jeffersonpattersonpark . To all my friends and family who came out to support. And to the descendants who trusted me and this space with their stories. We all inherit this city's history of slavery— and its legacies of resistance. May we heed our most revolutionary and freedom-loving ancestors in this time.

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I'm honored to announce my MFA thesis show, “Holding Each Other Down” will be on display April 1st - 18th at @cadvc_umbc

This multimedia installation surveys the more ephemeral aspects of the famous Chesapeake Crab feast. Focusing on the literal shells of the crab, newspapers, mallets and black women laborers that made the culture of eating crab in Maryland possible I thread developmental theory and labor history to speculate on black women crab pickers' role in the creation of the attachment forming ritual that is the crab feast.

This first image was taken by Spirit Adams on set of my experimental short film "The Labor/The Luxury" which will be running for the duration of my thesis show.

Artist reception April 2nd 6-8pm
Panel Discussion April 4th 1-3pm

🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀

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awp26 in Baltimore was a sweet time, i haven’t left a party musty wit my hair sweated out in a real long time, i needed that. i love getting to see everybody, i didn’t get nearly as many pics as i should have! pls send them to me. i’m looking forward to next year in the best city in the land 🤭

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The pomp and circumstance around the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence is an age-old public ritual exalting the originators of the anti-Black violence we face today. Them people was and is spiritual, and this presents us Hoodoos with an ordained opportunity to consistently work with the spirits of place, of the land, and of our freedom-fighting ancestors.

Join us this Sunday for WHAT LIES BENEATH: An Interactive Story Excavation to uncover the ways we can conduct powerful rituals at Black sacred sites and other spiritual portals to conjure liberation.

This is a free event via Zoom. It will be recorded and shared with registrants who’ve confirmed their identity. Registration closes on Saturday, and the 🔗 is where you think it is!! 🖤

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Alright, alright, without further ado 🫣🤭

I present to you my spiritual artworks that are on display at @dcpubliclibrary MLK Library in the 1619 Project’s Freedom and Resistance Exhibition. In this retrospective, I share a glimpse of the journey of working with my beloved friends (all badass historians, artists, and Hoodoo practitioners) to respond to the call of uplifting the freedom fighting ancestors of the DC and Chesapeake area.

This process of creation possessed me for weeks, and when I was done, it was like something lifted up off of me, in both a sigh of relief and a swift wind, pushing me forward to a new level of initiation and responsibility for stewarding these legacies with care and integrity. Come by on Sunday to hear more!

FINAL CALL FOR TIX! Even if you can’t make it on Sunday, you can register to get the recording after you’ve confirmed you a Black person lol. I’ll be leading an activity where we interpret the bone set together. Also! I encourage ya’ll to go to these Black sacred sites in the DMV if you’re ever able to, they need our love, elevation, rage, and care.

Thank you to the elders, conjures, and priestesses who’ve taught me, guided me, and otherwise helped order my steps reach to this moment - @mamaruehh, @itsjujubae, @coilandbloomconjure, @iamsatarra, and @agenosluxurydecks for her online bone reading course! And of course, big gratitude to all of my spirits and loving support network!❤️‍🔥

Can’t wait to continue this sacred work in community! The exhibit closes on March 15th, so you got about two more weeks to go see it 🙂‍↕️🫶🏾

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a vision of love 💖 evidencia, if you will

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In the wake of America’s 250th anniversary, The 1619 Project @nikolehannahjones, @pulitzercenter, and the Martin Luther King Jr. Public Library of @dcpubliclibrary partnered to curate the exhibition, “Freedom and Resistance”. The exhibition, currently on display on the first floor of the library, amplifies a nuanced tapestry of Black freedom and resistance stories that persist in the heart of empire.

Featured in the exhibition section titled: Echoes of 1619: Freedom and Resistance in Washington, D.C. are photos of a Hoodoo cache, or bone set, that was unearthed in 2008 at the site once known as Bruin Slave Jail in Alexandria, VA.

18 years after this monumental discovery, we peel back the layers of meaning for our current resistance fight through spiritual artworks, communal research, and Black liberation praxis. Come bear witness to this wonderous Sankofa story of reverence and reclamation as we excavate vivid stories of:

🌊Our journey as Black organizers, artists, archivists, and Hoodoo practitioners —> and how Spirit ordered our steps to become the legacy keepers who created this public altar honoring those who fought for freedom in DC and the Chesapeake area

🌊 The haunting absence of the actual Hoodoo cache in the vitrine —> and how these implications of spiritual warfare are both ancient and still alive today

🌊Our pilgrimage to the slave jail strip in Alexandria to collect living items featured in our artworks —> and how conjuration at sacred Black sites is an inextricable component of our quest for liberation today

This experience will go beyond a typical artist’s talk, with interactive activities for participants to engage in Hoodoo-as-resistance practices that respond to this current moment of amplified state violence.

The exhibition is open until March 15th at Martin Luther King Jr. Library in DC. Whether you’ve seen the exhibition or not, this space is for those who seek to take part in co-conjuration towards Black spiritual resistance through our historical legacies.

RSVP in the 🔗🪾

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Beautiful poem by @hess2love

“Just stop talking about it. New rules are in. We don’t care about this stuff anymore, it’s been so long ago”

That’s what some people say. But if you look at history, the connection is undeniable. And those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it…

For centuries, Black mothers were forced to breastfeed the children of enslavers while their own babies went hungry and often, didn’t make it past infancy. This wasn’t just an individual hardship!!! it was a system designed to strip Black women of their autonomy and break the bonds between mother and child.

Even after slavery ended, those wounds never fully healed. The formula industry aggressively marketed to Black communities, hospitals failed to provide adequate lactation support, and racist policies made breastfeeding even harder. The result? Generations of Black mothers left without the resources to feed their babies the way they wanted to.

Black History Month isn’t just about remembering names and dates, it’s about acknowledging the struggles that shaped our present and fighting for a better future. Breastfeeding is part of that fight. It’s about reclaiming autonomy, health, and the right to nourish children without barriers.

So, does Black History Month have anything to do with breastfeeding? The answer is in the history. And history demands that we do better.

#BlackHistoryMonth #BreastfeedingMatters #SupportBlackMothers #HealthEquity #BreastfeedingAwareness IBCLC LactationConsultant

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When BAE thinks of you, good things follow, February is full of artful moments made just for you 😍

1. Alternative Income Streams for Artists
2. Listening Room Concert with Proverbs Reggae Band ($5 Off Drinks at @mixtfoodhall)
3. Unshrink My Heart
4. Sonic Frontiers Jam & Film Series
5. Artist & Curator Talk

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