Meet Dorathy Anne Carver — better known as Dora — the young protagonist of my original short story Spell of the South. The story unfolds in 1913 in the fictional town of Roadsway, Kentucky — a small, majority-Black community where Dora’s father pastors the church. In the wider world, the Great Migration is reshaping the South, jazz is rising in the cities, and Louisville pulls at small-town imaginations like a magnet. Dora is a talented singer with second sight — a gift her father fears comes from the devil — and she longs for the wider world beyond Roadsway. She’s the first character I’ve developed end-to-end from my own writing into illustration.

College for Creative Studies – 2025/26

A figure painting from a freshman drawing class at CCS, based on a live model. I worked the study in blue and green hues to explore how color carries mood.

College for Creative Studies – 2024/25

A vivid pencil drawing from my freshman drawing class at CCS. The apothecary interior features a wood-grain table, fluid-filled bottles, book-lined shelves, a pinned corkboard, and a window seat where sunlight flows through sheer curtains.

College for Creative Studies – 2024/25

From my freshman drawing class at CCS. A still life of a water-filled bottle, a skull, and a crow on draped stands — gray pencil throughout, with red outlines on each subject pulling them forward from the page.

College for Creative Studies – 2024/25

A layered still life — a skull atop two books, bones, gourds, a woman’s face, a sheer star-patterned scarf, and fur — a study in texture and the symbolic weight of everyday and mythic objects.

Interlochen Center for the Arts Advanced Drawing Summer Program- 2023

A still life of working tools — a paint can topped with a brush, two more brushes on the ground, and a gas can with handle and screw top — a study in metal, wood, and the texture of practical objects.

Pre-College Summer Experience - College for Creative Studies - 2022

This image was made in response to a prompt about the personal impact of the pandemic. A woman wears a clear bowl as a helmet — her head submerged in water with sharks circling, air bubbles rising from her mouth — a literal vision of fear as something you live inside, struggling to breathe.

Pre-College Summer Experience - College for Creative Studies - 2022

Selected for the cover of the 2022 CCS Pre-College Zine. A young circus performer with freckles and curly hair conjures magic through swirls of smoke.

Pre-College Summer Experience - College for Creative Studies - 2022