Neckles’ practice combines mixed media techniques of printmaking, textiles, book arts, sculpture, installation, and social investigations to further explore concepts of past and present-day colonialism, notions of provenance as it relates to origin, authorship and ownership.
[2] Grenadian folklore, Afro-Caribbean diasporic storytelling, to West African philosophy inform the ways in which ideas on womanhood, matriarchy, spirituality, astrophysics, memory, to home, fuse in her work.
[2] In 2004, she developed the Red Rag Rosie character, a young black girl rendered in silhouette from whose perspective the viewer follows from childhood to motherhood.
[6][8] Using mixed media techniques of collage and embroidery, the artist explored concepts of past and present-day colonialism, and notions of provenance as it relates to origin, authorship, and ownership.
In the 6@30 exhibition catalog, published by Flushing Town Hall, the writer E.A.Durden noted: “Neckles reminds us that the events we allow to happen and the stories we choose to tell, versus those we choose to deny create layers of our present moment and our future as well.” Creative Wellness Gathering Station is an interactive art piece where Neckles occasionally sets up her cart in areas like her neighborhood in Jamaica, Queens and invites the public to create their own loose herbal tea blends for free.
[16][17][18] The cart is filled with jars of loose herbs, including: nettle root, hibiscus flower, and dried carrot, reminiscent of healing remedies from her childhood in a Caribbean household in Brooklyn.
This installation affirms the Museum's sense of place and belonging within the Flushing and greater Queens community and honors the lifework of humanitarian Lewis H. Latimer.
She makes a small doll, dark and featureless, like a silhouette, sitting at a miniature school desk fashioned out of scrap wood, reading Dick and Jane wondering where she fits in this whitewashed world.”[15] In Jamaica Flux, Bushra Rehman writes: ““Ever since Neckles and I began to speak about her Creative Wellness Gatherings, I have been thinking of illness as a consequence of the oppressions we face as people of color in this country, and at the same the very real restraints of physical pain, which keeps us trapped in our patterns of hurt.