M.A. (Liberal Studies) Hamline University, 1999

B.F.A. (Graphic Design) Carnegie-Mellon University, 1976

After working in graphic design for ten years in Pittsburgh, Washington, DC and New York, I became an educator, artist and writer. I have exhibited work internationally and in galleries, museums and public institutions in the United States such as the Contemporary Arts Museum of Houston, Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. As a pioneer in new media art since 1982, I presented and exhibited work at SIGGRAPH, ISEA, and other new international new media venues. My work remains interdisciplinary—from artist books to mixed media sculptural objects and textiles--usually including digital imagery.

My writing on former Black Panther artist Emory Douglas’s work appears in the monograph Black Panther: The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas, and West of Center: Art and the Counterculture Experiment in America, 1965-1977, among other publications.

Since 2004, I continue to write about Douglas’s work including his current international human rights activism. I wrote the introduction to the second edition of his monograph, published in 2011. An essay on Cuban artists in The African Americas: A Collaborative Project on the African Diaspora in the Cultures of Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States reflects my many visits to the island to study art, design and culture.

Putting my interest in socially engaged art into practice, I initiated two community projects in Wilmington, Delaware— Urban Garden Cinema in 2012 and The Beauty Shop Project, currently underway.