Chocolate Beans
Way too many years ago my grandfather and my uncle invited me to illustrate this story that my grandfather made up. It's still in progress.
Gordon School: An Episode from Memphis
As a CODA fellow I worked with an Art teacher at a public elementary school, Gordon Elementary. In passing she mentioned that the school had some historic importance, and I had to know more. So when I heard about the Rhodes Institute, a summer fellowship to foster academic research about the South (which embraces creative projects), I jumped at the opportunity. During the 2014 summer I became a fellow with the Rhodes Institute for Regional Studies so that I could spend eight weeks researching how Memphis began integrating its public school system in 1961. I chose a comic book as my end product because I had always wanted to try my hand at a more professional sequential art outcome, and because I saw sequential art as good way to reach a wide public, namely non-native Memphians who generally do not know the historic and social factors that impact Memphis greatly today. I had so much help from Professor McKinney, Greg Cravens, Whendy Merryman, Dave Mason, Liz Daggett, and Rin Abernathy, so thanks to these cool cats.
| gordon_school.pdf |
