This is an on-going series of drawings--my response to selected photographs and texts from several sources: two books: Miscast: Negotiating the Presence of the Bushmen, the catalog edited by pippa Skotnes, for an art exhibit that first opened at the South African National Gallery, Cape Town, 1996; and The Bushmen, photographs by Peter Johnson and Anthony Bannister, text by Alf Wannenburgh, 1979; several articles: from the New York Times International, March 9, 1997, "Spanish Town agrees to remome Bushmen Exhibit," and New York Times, Cape Town Journal, November 4, 2000, "Bones in Museum Cases May get Decent Burials."   The subjects of my drawings are the peoples of the Kalahari Desert and environs.

My feelings about them are reflected in a statement by a !Xu Bushmen, Staff Sgt.   Mario Mahongo of Schmidtsdrift, quoted in a National Geographic article (February 2001) on the Bushmen: "We Bushmen, we were the First People here so how come we are the last ones in line to get anything?" The blues composer Willie Dixon could have written these words for the late blues man, Muddy Waters.