Pepper Jelly Lady conjures up this African-American artist’s past in the rural South. A return in 1976 to his native Charlotte, North Carolina prompted the artist’s "Odyssean" voyage of discovery through his own history. This image, rendered in silkscreen and lithography, invokes the Thirties. Beardon’s layering and collage compositional methods convey the way memories can be vitally specific and vague at the same time. The central figure honors a woman who sold pepper jelly from a basket while the sketchy border (which may include a self-portrait in the lower right corner) combines multiple scenes from Beardon’s past.

Beardon refers to poet T.S. Eliot when musing on his relationship to time. "In the Four Quartets, T.S. Eliot talks about time, about how you have to go back where you started to gain insights. Things that aren’t essential have been stripped away and the meaning of other things has become clear . . My great grandfather’s garden, the lady who sold pepper jelly from her basket, and Liza, the little girl I played with all left a great impression on me."

It was originally part of a portfolio of six prints by Bearden, Ansel Adams, Audrey Flack, Sam Francis, Robert Indiana, and Wayne Thiebaud that were created by the artists to be sold by the Democratic Committee Service Corporation to raise funds for Jimmy Carter’s 1980 presidential campaign.