ECOLOGICAL ART
Garlic Breath
2023 - ongoing
Gardening, ritual, cyanotypes, block printing, screenprinting, bookmaking, garden meals, community workshops
“Garlic Breath” is an experiment in land magic and community printmaking. Over the course of 7 months, a pop-up collective of 15-20 residents of Southwest Philly harvests, plants, and eats garlic together at Farm 51, while also making art and rituals together with and about garlic. Garlic is the entry into shared artmaking about ancestral knowledge, climate resilience, and relationship to place. Project support provided by the Velocity Fund, administered by Asian Arts Initiative, with generous funding from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
the indigo project
2024 - ongoing, with Nicole Dupree and Jackie Soro
Seed to textile fiber art, fermentation dye vat, ritual, garden meals, community workshops
In this multidisciplinary fiber arts and community art project, we work with indigo from seed to textile: growing it, extracting pigment, creating a fermentation dye vat, hosting community dye events, and sharing food grown alongside the indigo. We are also creating learning resources for indigo projects in other green spaces and creative communities, in Philly and beyond. Supported by an Art and Change grant from the Leeway Foundation.
Environmental exposure
2025
Cyanotype series on paper, 18” x 24”
Cyanotypes created while in residency with the People’s Budget Office, a project that uses public art, education, and advocacy to empower Philly’s residents to engage directly in shaping how public funds are allocated. I researched Philly's relationship to climate change and how climate crisis management and resilience are - or are not - written into the city's budget. I layered news articles, documents from the Philly city budget, paintings, and pressed plants, and printed them onsite at four spots around the city, creating site-responsive portraits that illustrate the impact of a city’s policies and attitudes on its plant, animal, and human communities.
basketry
2024 - ongoing
Natural and synthetic materials
Baskets and cordage are artifacts of ecological relationship. Working with natural materials requires thoughtfulness about the impact of a plant’s presence or removal on the organisms around it and about the indigenous cultural and ecological knowledge specific to a place, as well as a rapport with the material itself - a willingness to listen to the plant’s proclivities and preferences.
Farm 51
2023 - ongoing
Urban farm and community art space in Southwest Philly
At Farm 51, we grow food with and for neighbors (shout out Free Brunch Program), host programming, and develop curious, organic, and long-term engagements with plants and people.
