Flashbacks of the Last Summer: A conversation w/ Righteous Path 2002
“IT WAS HOT AND I WAS [NOT] BORED.”
LAST SUMMER, BRIDGEPORT-BASED BRAND RIGHTEOUS PATH 2002 HOSTED A JUNETEENTH CELEBRATION AND GARMENT PRESENTATION AT THE GARDEN OF SISTERLY LOVE.
Interview: Karen Montejo
Juneteenth flyer via Instagram @righteouspath.2002
Born and raised in Bridgeport, Connecticut, Elisha Brockenberry is a nineteen-year-old multi-hyphenate artist whose presence feels like being calmly electrocuted. It’s a feeling that lies somewhere in between doing Balasana (Child’s Pose) and speeding down the highway. Intuitively self-aware with a skillset to match it, Brockenberry’s demeanor is few and far between.
Brockenberry first began with painting, and overtime learned to sew, garden, and cut hair – she is also known as the “Demon Barber of BPT”. Among her creative projects is Righteous Path 2002, a clothing brand of collage-like garments made from repurposed, organic, and ready-made materials. The garments and their presentation can be described as intrinsically anti-fashion. Maybe it's intentionally disruptive or maybe Brockenberry is just a decade ahead of everyone else.
On Juneteenth, Righteous Path 2002 held an “emancipation celebration and garment presentation,”. The event was held at The Garden of Sisterly Love, (@gardenofsisterlylove) a neglected city-funded garden that she and her community brought back to life over the past year. There were maduros, coconut water, and bubble wands. Trey Thomas (@herbwor) conducted live t-shirt screen printing and Elisha’s father grilled food. The garment presentation began on the sidewalk across the garden, and concluded on a cinder block base framed by a wooden pergola. The three looks were marked by their Pollock-esque amalgamation and their methodological subversion of everyday materials — both conventional (tulle, canvas, cotton) and non-conventional (mesh laundry bag, dried papaya skin, hair tracks). The garments both attracted and evaded attention; were unruly and meticulous, conventional and confrontational — a chaotic and beautiful duality that is most reminiscent of the natural world we inhabit.
After the presentation, Elisha and I walked over to the sidewalk for a brief interview, where we discussed the garments, gardening, and her plan for the future.
Dayii in Righteous Path 2002, photo courtesy of Aviolah Joseph @aviphotog (left); Alma in Righteous Path 2002, photo by @montejjo (right).
Karen Montejo
Elisha Brockenberry
How long have you been creating for?
I've been creating like, forever. I would say I've been creating professionally since I was like 13.
And is that just clothes or everything in general?
Well, I started making clothes when I was 13. But yeah, I guess. So that was like middle school when I started going to band and all that.
What got you into it?
I've always been a drawing artist [and an] illustrator. And I've always been very prone to drip. Like, being a kid and going to Goodwill by myself and racking up. Like, I always wanted to be fresh. I wasn't fly when I was a kid and going to public school in Bridgeport, that shit was really hard to be social if you weren't a certain type of way. Like, I’ve always been prone to drip and that just developed into a passion.
What was the first thing you made?
[laughs] In my head, bro. All I'm seeing is — I was thirteen and I had got these jean shorts from Goodwill and I painted Piccolo on there from Dragon Ball Z and that's the first thing I remember. Yeah. Then that year, I got cool with Jahmane from Kultjah through one of my friends and he was really gassing me. He ordered me my first shipment of clothes. He was the catalyst lowkey at the time because what I was lacking was the confidence. He was like, “Come sell at the flea market,” and that's when I first touched a sewing machine. I was like 13 [or] 14.
How old are you now?
I’m 19. I just graduated last year.
Elisha in Righteous Path 2002 via Instagram @righteouspath.2002
What are you doing now?
Right now, I’m scheduled to go to Housatonic [Community College.] I went to art school for like a semester but I didn’t really think it was worth it. I went to MICA in Baltimore. Yeah it was cool but you can tell when something is for people that really need guidance and —
Structure.
And I don’t really need that. But I'm scheduled to go to Housatonic for Biology.
Biology?
Yeah I run this garden right here.
Why Biology?
I’ve been really into science since I was a kid but the two go very hand in hand. Everything that we wear is grown. Unless it's polyester or something or acrylic. It's like cotton, you know. There's so many things we can use.
Yeah, my friend pointed out one of the looks. There were braids on the pants?
Yeah, and then on the first one, there was papaya that had dried. I'm really interested in like, not traveling backwards, I mean it's all the same. Everything is a cycle, so traveling backwards is traveling forward but going back to, you know, really cultivating your own clothes as well as your own food. Which we’re barely at right now. Like n-ggas is barely doing the gardening thing. But we're going at it. Like recently, I've been looking into bacteria and fungus sort of thing too. I've been making — this, like, you know Kombucha right? What makes it Kombucha is this big ass bacteria that grows and fills the whole space like a thick disc.
Are you making your own bacteria?
It’s called Scoby and you just put in some Kombucha and like some sweet tea and it just gets big and thick. Then when you take it out and dry it for like a day, it turns into a leathery-type material.
No way.
Bro! Bro. Like, you can literally buy a bottle of Kombucha. Pour a bunch of them, add tea and then you have like a Scoby factory.
That is crazy. How’d you find out about this?
One of my friends from school, Elijah Ramos. He's from West Palm Beach and he's very into that. Like, his parents were farmers and everything.
How'd you get into gardening? And this is a community garden, right?
Yeah, we revamped it. And like, I've just been coming in and facilitating. I've always been doing that for like science fairs and such. You know grow, plant. And you know labels really prevent you from doing things or recognizing your passions.
Branching out.
Like, I'm not like that but [the] whole time I am. I'm a farmer, all of that. You're all what you think you are, what you say you are.
Then it feeds into the clothing too.
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah I was doing that and then during quarantine, I was really sick. Like, I was sick, bro and I was like, “Alright. I need to do something.” And I started growing random things in my dad’s balcony and it just started producing. Like, I had mad spinach and mad stuff.
Wow.
Yeah. So I'm like there's a space down here. Nobody uses it and it's huge.
Who owns it?
This whole strip was put here by the city a few years ago. But you know, it's hard to keep something up like this if you're not paying someone to do it. Especially if people aren't in the know, don't have the time or just the outreach too. But I was like, “Come on, guys. Post it on Instagram. Garden of Sisterly Love.” This, that and the third. And people came and we cleared it out.
I did see that progress. It looks great now.
Thank you. We worked mad hard. Mad hard. We still have yet to plant this year. Last year was crazy. We had butternut squash. Anybody can post up and snag a bed and I'll just come and tend it. I mean, you can’t just drop off the seed and leave it and collect the yield, but you know. It's all a community process.
Do people ever say that you’re so young to be doing what you do?
I mean, I’ve been around for a while in different scenes. So definitely. I've been like 18 for like five years.
You had a really good turnout, too.
Yeah, it was originally just a cookout at the garden but I was like, “It's Juneteenth. Let me make some fits.” And then I exhausted myself.
Putting it all together.
Yeah. Just making three fits from scratch.
What's your sign?
Pisces.
Pisces!
As soon as I start something, I’m making a flyer.
I feel that. I feel that. It's like a form of manifesting.
Yeah, you gotta give yourself a deadline.
Elisha Brockenberry via Instagram @righteouspath.2002
What do you want to do with it for the future?
In the future, my grand plan is to have a community research center. It's like part garden. It has land you can cultivate and you can bring all that inside where we have instruments and you can really start to figure out what works for you. It's just self-sufficiency. Like, I want to show people that they can be self-sufficient. And I just want to use things that are available to me. I don't want to order this and that. Like a thousand of these and this. That's OD. I want to be able to just cultivate it and show people that you can manufacture things on your own again. Because I don’t know why we veered. Well, I do know why we veered so far from that, but you know, big anything: big food, big pharma, big all of that; they really stripped us of our self-sufficiency and our minds. So in order to get that back, we just have to start from scratch. We can produce anything because we all have that humanity in us. That God in us.
It's about creating community and getting into the habit.
Exactly. Like daily. Consistency. But definitely having a community center where people can study [and] have information.
If you can sum up who you are in one sentence, what would it be?
Shit, I'm a child of God, bro. Point blank. Like, I can only be so much on my own. When people do say this and that for my age, I feel like I attribute that to being mad faithful to what's above me because I know there's billions of us, so I'm not better than anyone else. Something is better than me, though. So I gotta attribute it to that. I'm so grateful for that.
This interview has been edited for brevity.
