A star-splattered banner (2010) serving as an homage pulling together the work of two great American artists who were trying to pull art in two different directions: Jackson Pollock and his abstract expressionist action paintings (always a kid favorite!) and Jasper Johns and his concrete images of American flags. This piece was displayed in a couple of locations including a First Thursday event in my neighborhood of Del Ray.

This thirty-six-foot panoramic collage (2010) co-created with my long-time teaching and art collaborator Peggy Ashbrook explores the ecology and evolution of Alexandria’s waterfront communities and the relationship between Alexandria’s natural and built environments, a part of our experience that often is lost for us as we become increasingly urbanized. In taking the viewpoint of the Potomac River and therefore not distinguishing between the importance of historic community institutions built and shaped by Alexandria’s African American and white communities in the neighborhoods along the Potomac’s banks, the collage also tries to prompt us to consider some important social truths about the history and legacies of Alexandria’s experience as the northernmost outpost of Jim Crow segregation. That it hangs prominently in a public space for children, Alexandria City’s Soft Play Room at the Chinquapin Recreation Center, is therefore as an important marker for the continuing evolution of the City of Alexandria itself. Children can see aspects of the art of Romare Bearden in the collaging technique and of the great Mexican muralists like Diego Rivera in the scope and positioning of the work’s different elements. (If you click on this image, it will open as a larger image so you can see more detail.  You can magnify it further by clicking on the image again and see all of it by scrolling left and right. Then use your back button to return to this page.)  Thanks to Taki Sidley for his magic in taking this photograph.

The Whale (2011) was made entirely from driftwood, bottles, and other plastic pulled from the Potomac River by my family as part of their own personal river cleanup and constructed with the help of many family, students, and friends. Since a big part of me is still that young girl growing up at the beach in Florida, this twenty-five foot long mobile raises for me important questions about the state of our rivers and oceans and what we want to inhabit them: the real creatures of the sea or plastic facsimiles. The Whale initially was a temporary installation hung at Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Alexandria, Virginia, as part of a fundraiser for Matthew Maury Elementary School, and after the event the church welcomed it for an extended showing that was very much appreciated!