STORY

my

I translate the human condition into powerful art that helps shift our perceptions of reality. I explore the beauty in chaos and have spent decades documenting the tiny nuances that make us human. My work reflects the visual metaphors which I see resting just below the surface of our human experience. 

I began working as a professional photojournalist in 1996 when I landed my first job as a staff photographer at New River Newspapers in rural Virginia. I also ran the Radford University darkroom in 1995/96 and spent hours in those dark, chemical laden caves. I began working with an SLR camera when I was ten (because my father thought it was a fad and wanted a camera he could play with- I rarely let him touch my precious camera.)

I began freelancing for editorial outlets in 2000, dabbled in commercial and wedding work and returned to school in 2005 to study photojournalism. My time at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Journalism and Mass Communications shaped the documentary artist whose work you are exploring or already support. My mentors are Pulitzer Prize winning photojournalists and leaders in community journalism and media agenda setting theories. I won multiple professional national awards for my work and won multiple fellowships and grants to explore my areas of interest. Documenting the cultural preservation of post-conflict diaspora and domestic income inequality are my core areas of focus.

My journey after UNC took me to the commercial photography and video production industries as an independent photog/producer and my client list included Whole Foods Market (pre- Bezos), Nissan North America, Junior Achievement/World Bank Collab and a multitude of other national, regional and local clients. I loved my work, but the market collapsed after the Great Recession and the struggle to fund my documentary work was real and overwhelming. I became a digital nomad, traveled the world and worked from my laptop, focusing on content production, web building and comms consulting for my clients.

In 2021 I returned to my roots as an artist and documentarian. I currently mint my art as NFTs on multiple blockchains and am pursuing graduate studies in visual ethnography. I believe firmly in decentralization and the creator economy that is emerging from blockchain and I am forever grateful to have begun working on the technical side of this space in 2017. I am an active member in multiple DAOs in the web3 space, including JournoDAO, SanghaDAO, UnlockDAO and Mirror. 

And in 2021 I returned to academics full time to begin my journey towards completing graduate degrees in Yoga Studies and Tibetan Buddhism. In December 2022, I will graduate with an undergraduate degree in Yoga Studies and a 500RYT certification and will then shift into graduate work specializing in Tantric Yoga and Tibetan Buddhism.