Grandma Ruth's Bountiful Garden
Year: 2022
Medium: Acrylic Mural, Digital Illustration, Animation, and Augmented Reality Installation
Dimensions: 4 × 8 ft.
Project / Exhibition: Around the Table, New York Botanical Garden
Description
Grandma Ruth's Bountiful Garden was created for the New York Botanical Garden's Around the Table exhibition, a citywide celebration of global food traditions and cultural storytelling. Inspired by my grandmother, Ruth Harrison, and her life in Ocho Rios, Jamaica, the mural celebrates the agricultural knowledge, culinary traditions, and intergenerational wisdom of the African diaspora through vibrant color, symbolic geometry, and layered visual narratives.
The work extends beyond the painted surface through an integrated augmented reality experience, allowing visitors to access animation, storytelling, and additional cultural content using their mobile devices. By merging public art with digital technology, the project transforms a familiar gathering space into an interactive experience where memory, heritage, and contemporary technology intersect.
Relevance to the Proposed Project
Grandma Ruth's Bountiful Garden represents a significant milestone in the evolution of my interdisciplinary practice. As the New York Botanical Garden's first mural to integrate augmented reality storytelling, the project demonstrates my ability to seamlessly combine painting, digital illustration, animation, and interactive technology into a single cohesive artwork.
This work directly informs Same Same * But Different, where physical and digital experiences function together rather than as separate artistic components. The project also reflects my continued interest in symbolism, layered visual storytelling, and creating artwork that encourages audiences to actively participate in the discovery of meaning. The integration of augmented reality established both the technical foundation and creative methodology that will be further developed throughout the proposed project.
Biggie Buddha
Year: 2021
Medium: Digital Illustration, Animation, NFT
Dimensions: 960 × 720 px
Project / Exhibition:Harmony and Balance NFT Art Exhibition
Description
Biggie Buddha is a digital illustration and animated NFT that reimagines Christopher Wallace (The Notorious B.I.G.) through the symbolic language of Buddhism. Crowned as both the King of New York and a contemporary spiritual icon, the portrait merges hip-hop culture with sacred visual traditions to explore legacy, transformation, and collective memory. By placing familiar cultural imagery within an unexpected symbolic context, the work invites viewers to reconsider identity, mythology, and the ways popular figures become modern archetypes.
Relevance to the Proposed Project
Although Biggie Buddha predates Same Same * But Different, it demonstrates several core elements that continue throughout my current practice. The work combines digital illustration, animation, and emerging technologies into a single artistic experience while using symbolism and cultural references to encourage viewers to look beyond first impressions.
This piece also reflects my ongoing interest in juxtaposition—placing familiar images within unexpected contexts to generate new meaning. That same approach continues in Same Same * But Different, where painting, mixed media, digital illustration, animation, and augmented reality converge to examine perception, identity, and the creative possibilities that emerge when conventional ways of seeing are challenged. The work illustrates an early commitment to interdisciplinary storytelling and the integration of physical and digital artistic practices.