In my artistic practice, I create site-responsive portraits of communities and examine contemporary identity in both physical and digital spaces. My work as an artist strives to illuminate the peculiarities of contemporary culture and to create a record of the historical complexities of the times in which we live. 

In August 2022, I was an artist-in-residence in the rural Tuscan village of Montegiovi, Italy. Having made photographs extensively in small towns in the rural United States, I wondered how the context of my practice would shift in a rural community in a new country and culture? Montegiovi currently has 172 residents, down from a peak population of around 1,000 people. I spent my month learning about the history of the village, working collaboratively to make portraits with community members, and documenting the vast and changing landscape. 

I wish to gratefully acknowledge Cultivate Projects, Samuele Pii, Madeleine Keller, Joe Giordano, Valentina Peruzzi, Susan Main, and the community of Montegiovi that welcomed me into their lives. The project will be exhibited at the Villa Clara Cultural Center in Montegiovi in 2025.

In the 2019 and 2022 academic years, I worked with students at the Commodore John Rodgers School in East Baltimore as the Commodore Photo Collaborative. CJR is a Baltimore City Public School serving grades PreK-8.  I loaned cameras to the student collaborators for the year to document the school community. We made photographs both separately and together, and come together weekly to discuss the nature of photographs, composition and technique, as well as what it means to make a portrait of a community. The result was two artist books, combining student photographs and my own. 

For the purpose of this Baker Artist Awards portfolio, I have highlighted photographs from my contributions to the project. The artist books that include the youth photographs may be viewed on my website. 

I'm grateful to my collaborators: Miya Jones, Aylin Cerezo, Destiny DeChamps, Lola Jones-Carter, and Glori Mahammitt. Thank you to the Commodore John Rodgers community for your trust. Special thanks to Michael Rennard, the CJR Gifted & Advanced Learning Coordinator, and the CJR administration for facilitating our collaboration. 

Centroid Towns is an anthology documentary project studying the twenty-five cities that have been the mean center of population of the United States using photography, oral history interviews, and local archive research. The project puts a face to statistical data, chronicling these towns and their inhabitants to illuminate the ongoing social and political transformation of America. The chapters in the project completed to date examine the environmental impact of overdevelopment, historical legacies of colonial settlers, the changing face of industrial manufacturing, the evolution of American Christianity, economic pressures created by multinational corporations on small business, and civic engagement in small towns. Selections from this project have been exhibited at the Baltimore Museum of Art in Maryland, Tephra Institute of Contemporary Art in Virginia, the Mason-Scharfenstein Museum of Art in Georgia, and the VHS-Stuttgart Photogallery in Germany.

Centroid Towns is an anthology documentary project studying the twenty-five cities that have been the mean center of population of the United States using photography, oral history interviews, and local archive research. The project puts a face to statistical data, chronicling these towns and their inhabitants to illuminate the ongoing social and political transformation of America. The chapters in the project completed to date examine the environmental impact of overdevelopment, historical legacies of colonial settlers, the changing face of industrial manufacturing, the evolution of American Christianity, economic pressures created by multinational corporations on small business, and civic engagement in small towns. Selections from this project have been exhibited at the Baltimore Museum of Art in Maryland, Tephra Institute of Contemporary Art in Virginia, the Mason-Scharfenstein Museum of Art in Georgia, and the VHS-Stuttgart Photogallery in Germany.