The Copenhaver Scholars-in-Residence program at Roanoke College (Salem, VA) provides funding for visiting scholars to enhance the educational experience of students and enrich the college's intellectual environment.
My residency aimed to support Roanoke College’s Center for Studying Structures of Race (CSSR) by drawing on the research conducted by students who developed the Genealogy of Slavery database—an open-access resource documenting the history of enslavement in Roanoke County from 1840 to 1865. Within this extensive database, I focused on Reverend Peyton M. Lewis (1849-1934), who lived in the Roanoke Valley as an enslaved child. His father and uncle, also enslaved by local builders, likely contributed to the construction of several structures on campus. In 1934, Reverend Lewis corresponded with descendants of his enslavers, and these letters are now part of the Roanoke Historical Society’s permanent collection. I also discovered additional texts written by Reverend Lewis in other archives, providing insight into his life in his own words.
Using this research as artistic material, I created the site-specific work titled Forget-Me-Not: Reverend Peyton M. Lewis in a building on campus that once served as the living quarters for enslaved people in the mid-nineteenth century. For the project, I transcribed Reverend Lewis’s words directly onto the walls of the room (approximately 536 square feet), covering them from floor to ceiling in graphite text. His voice becomes embedded in the architecture of the building that his father and uncle likely helped to construct. The installation allows Reverend Lewis’s words to guide viewers through the space, reinforcing his voice across time and history. Due to the light tone of the hand-drawn text and the changing light filtering through the many windows, the experience of the work shifts throughout the day, highlighting or obscuring different texts.
The second component of the installation is a hand-drawn timeline outlining Reverend Lewis’s remarkable life. This timeline includes the date of every piece of evidence I found in various archives that he left behind as proof of his existence. The content is color-coded to direct visitors to folders in a corner of the room that contain further information about different aspects of Reverend Lewis’s life.
This project invites viewers to reflect on how individual lives, often overshadowed by larger historical narratives, can be illuminated through the fragments and traces they leave behind. Through this perspective, my work underscores the importance of recognizing and preserving these "clews" as vital components of our collective heritage and personal identity.

In addition to Roanoke College's Copenhaver Scholar-in-Residence, this project was funded by the Center for Studying Structures of Race, and the Joanne Leonhardt Cassullo Center for Art