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.

Featured in the May 2026 Student Exhibition at the College for Creative Studies

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.

Featured in the May 2025 Student Exhibition at the College for Creative Studies

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.

Featured in the May 2025 Student Exhibition at the College for Creative Studies

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