Holdup in the Hood

“HOLDUP in the HOOD” is a body of work that documents an after-school children's arts collaborative. I co-authored and teach the collaborative to inner city children in the Manchester section of Pittsburgh, PA. The program and my documentation will have run successively for 12 years this coming fall of 2014. “HOLDUP in the HOOD” is both a personal and communal exploration of self that concerns the realization of making one’s mark. The focus of these photographs is on portraiture, both as an individual study and as a collective image. My subjects and the subject matter incorporate drawings, re-cycled photographs and print media as well as body gesture to explore issues of race, class and gender. I have been exhibiting images from this series since 2006 with the work being juried or curated by Eli Reed, Larry Fink, John A. Bennette, Linda Benedict-Jones, Aline Smithson, Peter Barberie, Kathy Ryan, Charles Guice, Mark Steinmetz, Lesley Martin and Alison Nordstrom amongst others. I continue to make new work and will begin my 12th year of documenting this project in the fall of 2014.