Objective/Challenge:
Feet Retreat is an annual dance weekend hosted by Fiddle & Bow Country Dancers (https://www.feetretreat.com/), a contra dance community in the Piedmont of North Carolina. Each year, they commission an original design for use on shirts and buttons for the participants. It is traditional to incorporate the names of the bands who will be playing for the dances into the design. This year, the bands are Hotpoint Stringband (https://www.facebook.com/hotpointstringband/) and The Dam Beavers (http://thedambeavers.band/).

Solution:
As I listened to the requirements and, based upon what I know of the style and feel of the dance community, I immediately envisioned a beaver playing an instrument. My first inclination was toward a guitar, but as no one in either band plays the guitar, I then latched on to the idea of the beaver playing a banjo. This connects the Hotpoint Stringband to the design, as they boast a well-regarded banjo player in addition to the other top players of their genre.

Deliverables:
The design was printed on both 100% cotton Gildan shirts and a cotton/poly moisture-wicking blend. The participant name tags are a pin-back button with a spot for a hand-written name.

Created using Adobe Fresco, Illustrator (iPad and Mac versions.)

Objective/Challenge:
This piece started as an assignment to create a mostly monochromatic poster for a National Park in the style of artist Jerry Schurr.

Solution:
I chose Everglades National Park, located in my home-state of Florida. The Everglades is a mysterious and vast area. I chose to focus on the cedar and other species of trees which grow in the rich, watery soil of the wetlands. I tried to capture the cool green and sticky humidity of the canopy and juxtapose that with the heat of the Florida sun.

My piece turned out more analogous than monochromatic, but I knew I needed both blues and greens to represent the trees and water without making the overall effect too flat. The pop of yellows and oranges gives it the warmth and brightness I was hoping for.

Original media: watercolor pencils on Yupo paper.
Created using Adobe Photoshop.

Objective/Challenge:
This project started as an assignment to create the front of a seed packet, first by hand, then enhanced with digital brushes.

Solution:
The original illustration and packet design was for Belladonna (also known as “Deadly Nightshade”). The company I created to distribute the seeds is the Magickal Medicinal Collective, purveyors of seeds for botanicals used in spells, rites and rituals.

I knew from the outset that I wanted to expand the project from a single seed packet to seven species of plants and a seed catalogue layout. The aesthetic is a fun blend of botany, magick, and antique whimsy.

Deliverables:
Seed catalogue layout, seed packets, company name and logo.

Created using Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, Fresco, InDesign.

Catalogue spread layout.

pen and ink on Bristol board,,Objective/Challenge:
The core objective for this piece was to create an illustration which could have been used on the cover of the Green Book, a travel guide for African Americans printed during the middle of the 20th Century for use throughout North America.

Solution:
I chose to work in pen and ink and to depict an open road leading into the horizon with a compass containing icons for food, lodging, fuel, and various cultural points of interest.

The result blends the hallmark green of the travel guide and the aesthetic of line drawings of the period, accentuated by typefaces and type styles which were used during the period.

Created using pen and ink on Bristol board, Adobe Photoshop.

Objective/Challenge:
This design was a submission for the 42nd Annual Greater Greensboro Crop Hunger Walk (https://greatergreensborocropwalk.org/), 2022.

Solution:
My initial thought was to use farmland imagery as my starting point, but I switched to the idea of using the Greensboro skyline with the distinctive Lincoln Financial Building in silhouette as the focal point. I also used footprints on the building to suggest lighted windows in the building.

It was a fun challenge to use the required tag line: “Create Change, Give Hope, End Hunger” and the required color combinations on the specified shirt color. It was also a fun typographical challenge to use color and point size to create visual hierarchy.

Created using Adobe Illustrator.