With my project, Structures that Transformed Education – 1724 to 1974, I am creating a typological study of the history of education to highlight the variations and similarities in educational systems throughout the United States of America. I am photographing school properties that are related to critical events, court cases, and educational programs associated with proceedings that both led to and followed the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown vs Board of Education that in 1954 overturned the doctrine of “Separate but Equal” in public education. The purpose of photographing and building architectural sculptures of these properties is to highlight these historic structures that best exemplify and illustrate the historical movement to provide for a nondiscriminatory education for all. While the African American segregation within the school systems anchors this narrative, this typological study integrates the school desegregation struggles of Asian Americans, Native Americans, and Chicano/Latino Americans as well. This study thus considers the school desegregation struggles of the communities of color together and separately as dictated by the historical record. Therefore, included in my photographs and architectural models are schools that were designed to provide segregated education for Caucasians, and schools that were designed to provide segregated education for African Americans, Indigenous People, and People of Color. School desegregation has always been an important part of the ongoing struggle for educational freedom in America. With this typological study, I am working with school buildings that have already been identified as significant places, and I am actively searching out properties that have been overlooked in the larger national narrative in the history of educational reform.

To create photographs that are clearly delineated and neutral views of these school buildings, I am using a 4x5 large-format view camera, which also helps fully immerse myself in the slow meditative process of creating a tangible photographic object. To create these photographic images, I use 4x5 black and white sheet film, hand process this film, and make archival contact prints. A small contact print has a delicacy to its sharpness, richness to its tonality, and allows for a private and personal viewing of the image. When creating these photographic images, I am continuing the documentary tradition practiced by Walker Evans, William Christenberry, and Bernd and Hilla Becher. To create the architectural sculptures of school buildings, I use computer-aided design software to layout the parts of the structure, then I use a laser cutter to precisely cut out the parts, and then hand assemble the parts. When building the architectural sculptures, I am continuing the precedent set by William Christenberry who translated some of the buildings he photographed into sculptures. This project focuses on providing a platform for students, teachers, educational researchers, and community members the opportunity to consider the challenges and goals of education and how educational structures influences the learning process. One of my hopes for this typological study is to allow historical thinking and contemporary thinking about education to reach a wider public audience. The subjects I select for this project hail from a time frame of about two hundred and fifty years, comprising school properties that are recognized as being associated with the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown vs Board of Education.

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In 2022, my project Structures that Transformed Education was awarded an Artistic Innovations Grant, a program of Mid-America Arts Alliance. This project is generously funded by Mid-America Arts Alliance, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Arkansas Arts Council. The financial support from these organizations will support photographing and building architectural sculptures of schools that played a role in changing education in America. This grant also supported a forthcoming solo exhibition, an artist workshop, and a panel discussion, at the Arkansas Regional Innovation Hub.