ARTIST STATEMENT

I grew up in a cardboard box, not really, but figuratively. As a kid, I was enclosed indoors with the task of doing chores at my grandmother’s house during summer breaks. My playground was the basement where I would swing like Mowgli on water pipes after hanging clothes to dry. Enlisting the help of my brothers to become spy kids. We tapped my grandmother’s telephone, and collected intel to report back to my mother. I have been give a gift and that is the ability to visit other dimensions only with my mind. I can tell these stories through film and give others an opportunity to suspend their beliefs to come visit.

These new plains are filled with imagination infused with human truth. I enjoy creating stories full of merriment yet purposefully earth-shattering to knock the reader on their knees after viewing a movie theme that compels them to change thinking patterns. Growing up, dreams beyond the norms of black culture were an afterthought. My grandmother prepared me to be a superwoman: an educated housewife with a nice full-time job that included benefits. Luckily, I watched my own mother rebel every day. I followed the superwoman path all the way into a career in teaching only to make a sharp U-turn into the glorious world of visual story-making, film. At first, being a teacher seemed like the natural course of action, I would have an audience every day, choose any story I wanted to tell, and take risks with voice, tone, and genre. Storytime was the only part of my day that felt normal until I was given an assignment and a camera: Tell the story of this school in a short video. Panicky thoughts danced through my mind with the loudest being “I don’t know what I’m doing!” Despite my hesitation, I jumped in anyway. The reaction from the Teachers like nothing I’ve ever experienced. Tears began to flow from my Principal’s eyes. Then, my next question was, “How can I do this for the rest of my life?”

I construct characters to elicit an emotional response that provoke a physical change in people's lives because of the changes I’ve had in my own life. Go after your dreams and life your best live, admit your wrongs and change for the better, and be the change you want to see in the world. I want the public to have an out-of-body experience and see themselves on the screen. My favorite filmmaker tools are to observe, listen, and talk to humans in their natural habitats. Every human emotional response to a situation, I witness, is tucked and filed away in a mental library until it is ready to be connected to a story and character. The right story will always challenge the society's mindsets and force introspection. As an advocate and creator, I believe world peace starts on the movie screen. I feel like royalty knowing this will be the legacy I leave on this earth.