scene from a map of the empire that was of the same scale as the empire (2024)
I am a visual artist confronting ecological and urban change. Much of my work involves on opening visual portals collapsing historical time, creating site-specific installations brought to life through motion-activated video projection, sound, and kinetic sculpture based on cartographic data, aerial photography, and LiDAR scans.
I am also the founder of Drift the Map, a series of experimental durational walk-happenings imagining urban walking as a form of time travel. I invite the public regularly to join me in navigating the city using historical maps rather than current maps, or to re-enact significant walks from Atlanta history. These happenings are inspired by the psychogeography concept of the dérive and Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities and are led on behalf of the Museum of Design Atlanta and the urbanism activist group ThreadATL.
My work is intended as urban archaeology, recovering lost histories of our communities and drawing audiences to sites reverberating with ancestral memory—where the passage of time or intentional forgetting has blurred our vision of a shared humanity. It is artwork that is unfinished until a viewer becomes an active participant in reenacting pivotal moments of liberation, bearing witness to long-past spasms of violence, or the peril of a fast-warming planet.
My work is informed by a past career as a former environmental lawyer and political organizer steeped in democracy work. My work as an attorney and artist takes the Civil Rights Movement’s dream of a “beloved community” as a starting point, in which a critical mass of people become committed to the philosophy and methods of nonviolence. Love and trust might yet triumph over fear and hate.
I am also a history museum curator and exhibition designer confronting human rights and social change through projected site-specific video projection, glass sculptures cast from geospatial data and the use of video game engine tools as narrative forms. My studio practice and curatorial projects synthesize disparate disciplines— art, the law, and cartography --into a unified narrative of power, place, and advocacy for sustainable change.
My advocacy for Atlanta arts and culture began in 1997 when I successfully sued the City of Atlanta as an ACLU attorney to overturn Atlanta’s ordinance banning street artists and musicians from busking in public. Soon after, I was asked by Georgia Governor Roy Barnes to assist former Mayor Maynard Jackson and future Mayor Shirley Franklin in drafting an anti-sprawl strategy for the Atlanta region that incorporated city arts funding, environmental justice, and clean air goals into a regional transportation plan. I continued this advocacy once I quit the law at age 30 to become an installation artist and photographer. I have also taught since 2008 as adjunct faculty at Emory University, Georgia State University, and Agnes Scott College, teaching college classes on photography, experimental printmaking, and filmmaking with a focus on social justice-minded artmaking, digital futurism, and photographic and cinematic art history.