Social and Civic Practice

As a socially-engaged artist, there is no greater pleasure for me than finding genuine growth and community engagement leading to action, especially complex projects exploring the delicate ecosphere that have invited all layers of community to engage. Below are some of the pieces I have created in a role of artist-producer and collaborator.  Keeping in mind that social practice is an art medium focusing on engagement through human interaction and social discourse, people and their relationships form the medium of such works – rather than a particular process of production – social engagement is not only a part of a work’s organization, execution, or continuation, but also an aesthetic in itself: of interaction and development. 

Socially engaged art aims to create social and/or political change through collaboration with individuals, communities, and institutions in the creation of participatory art. The discipline values the process of a work over any finished product or object. Although I also served as organizer, no project would have been as powerful if I had not been an artist first.

NOTE: We had hoped to create one final social work in Cowley County.  It was focused on the incoming meat packing plant and Hispanic workers who would be drawn to the community.  We were finalists for Animating Democracy, but sadly not funded.