Suzanne Scott Constantine
Mixed media on canvas, 2024. 40” x 30”

Few people use real maps these days. But I have always been in love with maps. Here, a 1945 map of my childhood home on West Park Drive in the Cameron Park neighborhood in Raleigh. The reality of the lines and curves of the old map mingles with my personal recollections of the streets, houses, parks and landmarks of my internal “soul map.”

My soul map, I discover, is not bound by the certainty of borders and boundaries. It includes travel over shifting emotional sands and through landscapes and empty spaces.

This artwork represents my real-life journey from North Carolina to Washington and back to North Carolina after six decades: back to the place where it all began. A home and family I loved in a city I hated because of the artificial separation of people based on color. The Cameron Park neighborhood, named after the state’s most prosperous holder of enslaved people, had restrictive covenants that prohibited African Americans from living in the homes unless they were live-in domestics. I discovered that after almost 100 years, the neighborhood voted to change the name from Cameron Park to Forest Park.

That was in 2022, so today I view it all a little differently. I can see anew for the first time. This time I am a witness, but I am also a participant in a hopeful – if ambiguous – future.