ABOUT MY WORK

As a bi-racial woman from South Dakota, questions surrounding identity and representation have always plagued me. I identify as black. But as a farmer’s granddaughter in the Bible belt, my “black” experience was strikingly different from the images of blackness I saw in the media. Whenever there was an image of us, it was almost always an image of people in crisis, a people who were demonized, stereotyped, and narrowly defined. Nothing fit the multi-dimensionality I saw among my family and friends, which left me to wonder how I fit in. There is a James Baldwin quote that I love, “Being white means you never have to think about it.” Which could probably be extended to “Being white and male means you never have to think about it.” As a woman of color in a predominately white space, I was not only forced to think about my race and gender all the time, but also the dichotomy between the way I experienced the world, and the way the world experienced me. My work has become my way of knowing and making sense of these contradictions.

I recently completed my first feature, “Before the Fire,” and I am in post-production on my new documentary, “Rosebud,” which follows the lives of 3 Native American hip-hop artists on the reservation in South Dakota.

My clients include: Target, Google, Calvin Klein, GE, Narciso Rodriguez, The New York Times and more.