Bio
BFA, East Caroline University (2000); MFA, University of California, Irvine (2005). Exhibitions: Paul Robeson Gallery, Newark; Gallery 400, Chicago; CUE Foundation, New York; Krannert Art Museum, Champaign; Miller Gallery, Pittsburg; Pinkard Gallery, Baltimore; Gallery 727, Los Angeles; META Cultural Foundation, Bucharest, Romania. Publications: (chapters in) Art As Social Action; Art Against the Law; Cities and Inequalities in a Transnational World. Bibliography: Newcity Art; Third Text; Hyperallergenic; Journal of Aesthetics and Protest. Awards: Soros Justice Media Fellowship, Graham Foundation, Illinois Arts Council Artist Fellowship, Propeller Fund
Experience at SAIC
Generative, creative, inquiry driven, materially sensitive, exploratory
Personal Statement
As an educator, I’m interested in how and where education takes place and who is educated. Over the past decade, I have taught college-level classes in both conventional and non-conventional classroom spaces, including a private art school, public universities, libraries and prisons. Here, critical questions about pedagogical ethics, horizontal co-learning and methodology come into focus. Teaching outside the conventional classroom demands a renegotiation of basic assumptions for teaching inside the classroom. My goals as an educator involve weaving together these worlds using intersectional methodologies to engage myself and students in the process of education, social justice and critical thinking.
One might (or should) raise question about how academics or artists work in such contexts, including asking "Who really benefits?" Common concerns involve situations where well-resourced learners are learning from, not with, incarcerated, poor or other marginalized populations—suggesting that such populations must maintain their marginality so that others may learn. My pedagogical approach tries to reckon with these concerns by examining structural inequalities and policies, as well as by facilitating community responses and solutions. Others suggest that less resourced populations should learn skills—reading, writing or math—rather than art or critical theory, to prepare for a world that so radically segregates into classes of manual and creative laborers. I work against this notion by developing a pedagogy that insists on an art education that creates methods, makes analysis, and envisions new realities.
Current Interests
I'm interested in collaborative art and education projects that take up critical questions around equity. Some of the projects bring together a range of stakeholders and/or constituencies to ask questions and imagine solutions and alternative futures. I like to learn in community and make art that asks questions and visualizes "the world we know we need" (to quote scholar Erica Meiners).
Disclaimer: All work represents the views of the INDIVIDUAL ARTISTS & AUTHORS who created them, and are not those of the school or museum of the Art Institute.
