As an artist who is dyslexic and color blind I want the viewer to gain a better understanding of the many different hidden disabilities that exist.  For “A Day in the Life . . .” I have photographed twenty students with hidden disabilities across the UNC-CH campus. With this project I want to ask the viewer: “If you knew this person prior to finding out about their hidden disability, would your perception of this person change or stay the same?”

I have always wanted to hide my dyslexia from classmates and others thinking that I don’t want to be seen as this person who is “broken”. Most of the people portrayed here have many stories to share that are very similar to my own. I interviewed each person before taking their portrait. The whole process took 45-60 minutes. One of the questions I asked was how to represent their hidden disability with their portrait. I have been in touch with all students after the photo shoots to figure out with them if I have represented their hidden disabilities the way they perceive them. The students that agreed to be part of this project were and are still very nervous about having their photo on display, but they know that this could be something that will give a better understanding of hidden disabilities and how they go about their daily lives. 

Title:  The Kwinana Project

Year:  2018

Medium: Recycle Trash

The idea behind “The Kwinana Project” comes from the city of Kwinana in Australia were they have started trials with new drainage nets. The idea started back in August of 2018 and since then the netting has stopped over 818,000 pounds of trash from getting into the oceans.  The drainage nets are what caught my eye, the way they look as they are bulging out of the drains. I started to use nets to hold jugs but I wanted it to look as if the nets could break away at any moment. I placed the jugs in a formation that is a water drop symbolizing where the trash will end up in if place like the City of Kwinana don’t start thinking about just where their waste going too.

“Suffering is always hard to quantify - especially when a cruel disease as Alzheimer’s causes the pain. Most illnesses attack the body; Alzheimer's destroys the mind - and in the process, annihilates the very self.”  - Jeffrey Kluger -

The photographs that you see are apart of a series of work showing the progression of the Alzheimer disease. The yellow and red embroidery are showing the shapes from the brain that is tangles in a textbook representation. The photos are the representation of plaques that are also forming but normally in our brain as we age. This is the reason why we forget where we put our keys, as we get older. The main idea for this project is to show the progression of the Alzheimer disease that has on the mind and memories that of a person identifies in life.

To date, there are no absolute ways of knowing what the cause for Alzheimer, but the plaques and tangles are one main theory of what kills the cells and tissue in the brain. Plaques are abnormal clusters of chemically “sticky” proteins called beta-amyloid that build up between nerve cells. The small clumps may block cell-to-cell signaling at synapses. Though most people develop some plaques and tangles as they age, those with Alzheimer’s tend to develop far more at a faster rate. The plaques and tangles tend to form in a predictable pattern, beginning in areas important in learning and memory and then spreading to other regions.

My goal is to bring more awareness to what Alzheimer is doing to people’s minds, and how every 65 seconds someone in the U.S. develops the disease.

Photos that never got used in other works.