Artist Statement: My piano's design is based on the lines on the palms of my hands, abstracted into bright warm colors and broken sharp lines. Though it can be considered a specific "self-portrait," the content is meant to be universal. Like a fingerprint, everyone can relate to having unique creases on our palms. All of us have curiously and casually studied these individual markings, an accumulating result of both genetic traits and life experience. Of course, it is through the attention, labor, movement, and heat of our hands that a piano is played. Although it's based on palm lines, I also wanted to convey a feeling of heat and fire, something I also associate with hands and all that they create. Even though the design is relatively abstract, there is a warmth, ease, and subtlety that the public can enter without conceptual pretension and enjoy for its beauty alone. Ultimately, the piece is about the hot intimacy of hands—as is the act of playing the piano.
Born and raised in Reading, Pennsylvania, I have spent my last fourteen years in Brooklyn, New York, as a painter, muralist, designer, straphanger, and high fiver. I received a BFA from Syracuse University, MFA from Brooklyn College, and artist residencies from Prairie Center for the Arts (Peoria, IL) and Wassaic Art Project (Wassaic, NY). Although I have exhibited my paintings all over the northeast and beyond, after completing the Mural Arts Philadelphia apprenticeship in 2012 I shifted my professional focus to public art, art education, and social justice. I am currently employed as a Lead Teaching Artist for Groundswell Community Mural Project and as an adjunct instructor for the City University of New York. I'm also co-founder of Griot Apparel and a freelance graphic artist and printmaker. A few of my favorite things include hip-hop, jazz, dancing, wine, blending vinyl, NCAA brackets, street art, second lines in New Orleans, and re-watching episodes of The Wire.
