“I painted this mural in the RV Taylor Housing projects with kids who live here and some from the Strickland Youth Center. It was part of a program that I helped write. We were inspired by the idea of “Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design” that has worked in other crime-filled areas such as Chicago. We partnered with Judge Naman and the Juvenile Court of Mobile.  I wanted to paint something large-scale that could have the best impact in one of the toughest areas.

After we started the mural, a teenage boy from the neighborhood walked up and kept pointing with a surprised look on his face. He couldn’t believe there was something like this in his community. Some kids helped paint; others just watched. I told the kids that watching is still participating. That’s why I painted that kid sitting on the stairs, just watching it all happen. You can learn a lot by watching.

People treat things the way they look—if it looks better, people will treat it better. Perception of an area can be relative to how it looks on the surface, so art can be used to fight crime. I am proud to be back in Mobile and doing a project like this to help the kids.  I am going to do murals with similar projects in Biloxi and New Orleans.

I grew up in Biloxi and started as a sports fanatic. I thought I was going to be a professional basketball player or a lawyer like my dad. I didn’t think I was into art, but my mother was an artist, and it was always around the house and a natural part of my family. I would come home from basketball practice, and there was always something to draw, clay to play with, or a blender in the backyard for making something interesting out of Pepto-Bismol or other bizarre ingredients. We were encouraged to have fun hobbies or electives. I loved growing up playing sports, making art, and playing violin in the orchestra.

I majored in art education with an emphasis on ceramics and painting at the University of South Alabama and became an art teacher at Palmer Pillans Middle School. I enjoy teaching Art because it is the class where every child succeeds. I was so excited watching them make things. I had the kids for three years and saw some change in front of me. Some changed for the better, others went down a dark hole. We used every trick we had, but we still couldn’t save them all. That was hard. Then the school system cut all of the untenured art teachers; I was just ten weeks away from tenure. I was laid off and couldn’t help kids until I realized we could start our own programs and seek our own funding.

I moved to Mobile because it had a deep history, but it hadn’t embraced the arts the way New Orleans had. There were opportunities and blank canvases everywhere. There was also room for new ideas and mistakes. Downtown adopted me while I was in college and Soul Kitchen  was my first patron. I redid all of their bathrooms with custom ceramic countertops and murals. The Mobile Museum of Art gave me some interesting work and creative freedoms as a young artist, and I will forever be grateful.

After teaching, I opened my own business on Dauphin Street, Portal Studio, next to O’Daly’s. Then I moved around the corner to a warehouse for more space. One day the movies arrived in Mobile with a new tax incentive. A production designer banged on my door and begged for a prop knife that Nicholas Cage wanted for his character. At the last minute, they changed the prop knife. Someone on the crew heard we could make a mold. That first prop knife didn’t make it into the movie, but that pulled me in, and the films kept coming. Two years later, I was the prop master for another Nicholas Cage movie. After that and the success of working on the movie Get Out, I moved to New Orleans to be a prop assistant.

I worked as an on-set dresser for Get Out, a low-budget movie shot in Fairhope. When I read the script, I knew it was a unique way of looking at race relations that could shake up a few people, but no one thought it would become an Academy-award winning movie and a cult classic. Jordan Peele, the director, gave me the set decorations and props to help start my prop collection.

 I moved to New Orleans to be a prop assistant and have worked on about 40 movies. I have flourished with all the creatives and I want to keep giving back to the communities where I started.

Movie producers asked if I could handle running an art or prop department. I would think to myself, ‘That’s only a few dozen people. I used to have 200 employees a day, called students, and my budget was $500 a year.’  The teaching and budget stretching skills come in handy almost every day.

Being a freelance creator is intense. During the down times, the side projects become the main projects. COVID slowed the movies down, but friends started a production company  to make commercials and music videos. I also have fun playing music on the side.

People tell me if I would pick one area, I would be the best at it. But sticking to one thing isn’t good for my lifestyle. All of the projects teach me and make me better. The large scale projects for movies and commercials gave me the confidence to create murals and sculptures. I know how quickly we can put something together.

All of the projects inside my brain are like a fire with different logs in it. They are at different temperatures and the one that’s burning hottest gets the most attention. But I still have to check the ones that are barely lit. It’s like cooking a bunch of things at once.

Murals, movies, or music. At the end of the day, art is sharing memories and stories. These can also be used for more than just entertainment. They can help sooth souls and areas that have lost the attention that they need and deserve. “