Two New York Artists Transform How We See the City's Trash
Rowing through a Superfund site in a homemade boat, looking for meaning in the debris.
I grew up without a TV in rural Colorado. I inherited a love of books from my outlaw father and went on to earn a PhD in literature at Rutgers University. After teaching at the Bard High School Early College for more than a decade I’m now earning a master’s degree at the Craig Newmark J-school. In my first semester I wrote stories about the Christmas tree market in New York City, how two artists are reinventing the meaning of trash and why Caribbean merchants are struggling in a new development. I also created a video feature about a cobbler in Brooklyn, a data visualization of racial disparities in infant mortality rates. I'm studying both Business and Economy and Arts and Culture and am particularly interested in the overlap of these two fields.
Explore My Site
Recent Work
Christmas Trees Have Returned to Crown Heights Sidewalks
It was a holiday tradition; then, during the pandemic, it ended.
Flatbush’s Caribbean Merchants Struggle in New Space
(forthcoming)
The city said the new building would help the merchants thrive – but that wasn’t the full story.
The city said the new building would help the merchants thrive – but that wasn’t the full story.
Portrait of a Flatbush Cobbler
A Corporate Landlord Got $191 million from New York City. Its Tenants Got Eviction Notices.
Jeannite Prince, 55, won her two-year eviction case against her landlord Clipper Realty in October. But she’s still terrified of being removed by force from the apartment in Flatbush Gardens in Brooklyn where she has lived since 2016.
A Fire's Aftermath
In January, 2023, a fire ripped through the large multi-unit building at 3400 Snyder Avenue in Brooklyn, killing a 13-year-old boy and injuring six others.
Racial Disparities in Infant Mortality Rates Persist in New York City
According to Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, an assemblymember in Brooklyn, there is an infant mortality crisis in New York City that affects the Black population in particular.
