Arts-Based Research
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People often hear I’m an artist and ask, “Oh, what kind of art do you do?” I often respond, “It depends on the day!” Though I suppose it maybe depends more on what I am trying to say. I think about art as communication and so the content or the purpose of the work often dictates the form. Forms that I have used include: comics, collage, graphic design, poetry, and photography.
Next week, who knows?
(see CV & Design Portfolio)
I use performance as a lens through which the world can be seen and understood. I write and make work that explains that process aesthetically. Like this work that literally sees my collage work through the lens of Kilgard's essay "Collage: A Paradigm for Performance Studies."
Comics
Comics are a lot like performance because of the way they they both show and tell stories. I took to the medium during my dissertation when I was seeking to explore the complex relationship between image and text in performative writing. Comics has a rich history and a sophisticated vocabulary to explore how to tell aesthetic stories off stage.
(forthcoming publication in Storytelling Self & Society)
"Black Love" is a collaboration between two local BLM organizers Jerricha Griffin and Michael Coleman and I. Originally conceptualized for publication, this piece features the writing of the activists alongside comic style drawings of photographs they chose that represent "Black Love."
This page is an excerpt of a page from my dissertation chapter and publication "Pandemonium: Framing Performance in Pandemic." It features a series of auto ethnographic drawings stacked one on another to illustrate the complex experience of coparenting, grad schooling, and being an enby in Southern Illinois during a global pandemic.
Collage
I love collage because it brings together image, text, and materiality offering dynamic relationships on a surface. While I really enjoy working digitally, there is something really compelling about manipulating meaningful objects and text together to create something new.
Pride 2021: This series features four LGBTQ heroes Leslie Feinburg, Elliot Page, Sophie, and Billy Porter. It combines digital drawings with ephemera to share their history and legacies this year for pride. (Exhibited in The Varsity Center and featured in Life and Style by Southern Media).
Transgender Warrior Leslie Feinburg wrote one of the most amazing pieces of LGBTQ literature ever written. Stone Butch Blues was one of the first things I read when I was coming out of the closet and it inspired me to create this collage portrait of Leslie. It features a digital drawing of Leslie on top of a collage of rainbow watercolored newspapers and cellatape transfers of poetry pages written about Leslie by partner Minnie Bruce Pratt.
Graphic Design
As an artist, my bread and butter is often made from my work as a graphic designer. Creating logos, branding, advertising, packaging, and merchandise for local businesses and organizations brings me great joy. Seeing a project go from an idea to a recognizable icon is my jam. I like to think about a logo as a little performance machine. When you see it, you see the entity it represents.
Poetry
Performance poetry is my first love. I fell head over heels when I first heard spoken word poets share their work at open mics. Something about the sound, their voices, their trembling hands, the vulnerability, and the hot off the press feeling. I couldn't help but dip my toes in that water, and to this day, my favorite poems and poets are shared in a room full of snapping fingers. But IF poems must be written down, I prefer that they are done so performatively. Artists like Jenny Holtzer, Johanna Drucker, and Ann Hamilton find ways to make poems into art and art into poems and they inspire my visual poetry work.
Photography
Over the last decade, I have honed my skills photographing over 30 live performances, doing family shoots, head shots, author photos, and photo essays.
