Floating Butterfly Project

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I am a multidisciplinary artist who's work strongly centers around a love of imagination, and the power of connection.  My main mediums are photography, painting and writing.

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I am currently working as the art educator at a K-8th grade school in East Palo Alto, California.  I am extremely proud of the 530 amazing young artists I have the privilege to work with each week.  I continue to be inspired daily by the imaginations and resilience of each artist.

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My first children's book, "The Adventures of Devontay and Pineapple," was published in 2021.  This book was a joint venture in writing and illustrating with my dear friend, Fenyang Smith.

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In 2017, I took a solo artistic journey traveling across the United States, photographing what was seen and felt and recognizing the surrealism that is everywhere. 

It was part of a larger project, that I started in 2008 called the Floating Butterfly Project.  The project is about working with young people, about connection, learning and understanding, and that we all impact one another.  I have worked in Ghana and Guatemala, and on this trip across the United States.  In each town I worked with groups of young people that I met along the way, in libraries, local schools, and children of family and friends.  I learned from them and about them, hearing their hopes and dreams.  Their work was turned into small books and gifted back to each participant as it was in Guatemala and Ghana, in hopes of elevating their dreams and holding them at heart and in imagination as an artist and human.    (See excerpts from this journey on my blog page)

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I have worked as an Art Studio Educator in schools throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, including South of Market Child Care - a Haas Foundation Model Center, and GeoKids, a nationally recognized, NAEYC accredited early childhood center.  I have also consulted for San Francisco First 5, facilitating Documentation workshops for local educators. And have led workshops for families and educators on materials and the arts.

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In 2008, in a vegetable oil powered bus on the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, I worked as a production assistant on an all women crew, as part of a multi media art as activism piece, called Hurricane Season, with Climbing Poetree.

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Abroad, I was an artist in residence in two Cultural Centers in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala where I collaborated in the studio and on works with local artists.  I have worked in schools in Guatemala, Central America, and Ghana, West Africa with students on their own self-portrait projects and helped them to complete exhibits and books of their works.  

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