Hi! My name is M. (they/them). I am a multi-disciplinary artist and cultural worker, materializing visions of collective and personal liberation, currently living, working, and teaching in so called St. Louis, Missouri, on occupied Osage, Kickapoo, and Quapaw land. This is an archive of my visual work, spanning 2018-present. My primary mediums include collage, watercolor, ritual, and photography. I also work with found objects, recycled items, nature, family heirlooms, and what I’ve inherited, including my own flesh and blood.

My work serves as a coping mechanism, survival strategy, and grounding tool. Many of these pieces have resourced through times of great change and great grief. In ways, this collection is an archive of my soul growth. Each piece represents a specific ceremony I need.

I am a politicized creator, which means my work reflects my intimacy with the white-supremacist, capitalist, cisheteropatriarchal, settler colonial project, as well as my commitment to abolishing and transcending it in this lifetime. I create from where I’m positioned within complex webs of privilege, power, and oppression, bringing my awareness to how I may make the most meaningful contribution. My work is and always will be a microcosm of the histories, traumas, social conditionings, complexities, contradictions, nightmares, dreams, and prophecies that make me me.

Throughout my work, I affirm and uplift community wisdoms that originate within justice-oriented lineages and movements, including but not limited to Black Feminism, Transnational Feminisms, Woman of Color Feminisms, Disability Justice, Reproductive Justice, Indigenous Sovereignty, Healing Justice, Queer Theory, and Trans Liberation. These wisdoms have been gifted to me, which means I cherish them, but I do not own them. I affirm and uplift these wisdoms because it is my duty to ensure brilliance like ours survives.

I create collaboratively, across geography, realms, and timelines, with ancestors, peers, and descendants who are learning, growing, and liberating themselves along with me. I am invited to work playfully, colorfully, emergently, and sustainably, in right relationship with all beings and with the Earth, guided by the Children of the Future, who call on me to steward the world(s) they need. My work joins with the work of other artists, cultural workers, healers, and thinkers, co-creating a powerful undercurrent that flows in the direction of new and mysterious- yet ancient and familiar- life.

My creative practice is a love offering, to and from my youngest and wisest self- the baby I once was, startled and disoriented by state and colonial violence, longing to be kept safe, to be touched and held. But even before then, when I was a cell, journeying through both of my parents’ bodies, experiencing the sadnesses, setbacks, and small victories of their lives. And even before then, when I was stardust, scattered somewhere near or far from you, dreaming of becoming a mushroom, wild rosebush, or a willow tree.

My divine assignment as an artist, I think, is to find a multitude of ever-evolving ways to listen- then, to make the consequences of that listening tangible, visible, felt.

There are many ways to explore this archive! You can scroll down to the bottom of this page for a broad overview of my work, and/or you can click on the tabs at the top of the page to learn more about specific projects, mediums, and offerings. I have done my best to make this archive as accessible as possible for cell phones, but please note that due to the size/nature of my work, some pieces are most clearly viewed with larger technology- like a laptop, tablet, or computer.

May this archive nourish and inspire you on your own creative journey, and serve as ongoing sustenance to our movement. May it also illuminate pathways for our connection and collaboration, in service of collective liberation and growth.

To get in touch, please email me at m.mccubbins.connect@gmail.com, or fill out my contact form here or at the bottom of this page.

Thank you for bearing witness.

In love and gratitude,