FUUGS

Over the course of four years I organized and led community oriented art workshops in partnership with Hart Lane Farm, and it’s founder Jessica Shoffner, in Philadelphia, PA.

For over a decade Jessica and Hart Lane Farm have transformed a block filled with abandoned lots into a thriving community green space that provides a place of safety, food, and play to a neighborhood hard hit by the opioid epidemic. The garden is home to several vegetable patches, fruit trees, flowers, chickens, goats, and murals. Hart Lane Farm was recently recognized in an article by the New York Times for it’s influence in promoting community and safety in the city: “In Philadelphia, Beautified Blocks Build Community and Safety: Environmental design interventions play a subtle role in helping the city reduce gun violence.” The New York Times By Colon, Shayla Dec. 12, 2025

The art workshops I led were initially in partnership with Mural Art’s Kensington storefront community curator program in collaboration with Jessica and the farm. The workshops continued on to be fully supported by the farm through the Kensington Community Resilience Fund. These workshops created a safe, and engaging environment for children and adults to spend time in a community green space and make art. All of the materials provided were either foraged or second hand, providing participants with a low waste, regenerative outlet for creativity. I led the groups to make their own individual pieces as well as to collaborate on larger scale in-place installations for the farm itself. Through these workshops we were able to offer a place of peace, learning, beauty and community building.

Our final project together resulted in a collaborative painted mural panel installed within the farm. Local artist Meg Lemieur and I developed a concept, and design, then constructed the panel in a paint-by-numbers format. The phrase “Beauty grows in Kensington” is a proud statement that points to the reality of flourishing resilience in a place where many only see poverty, violence, and addiction. We hosted a painting booth at the farm’s annual party “Art on Hart” where neighbors were encouraged to add their contributions to the panel. Community members were thrilled to add brush strokes to the piece and expressed excitement at seeing a new art work displayed in the farm that they had a part in. The finished panel is now hung within the farm displayed toward the street for neighbors and passersby to enjoy.

A public art installation at the People’s Plaza at Independence Historic National Park. This event was one portion of a three part multi-year long project led by artist Phoebe Bachman in collaboration with Akeil Robertson-Jowers.

I was brought into this project as a fabrication artist in charge of building the structures that would hold the storytelling elements of the exhibition: the artwork and testimonies of inmates on the topic of the exception to the United State of America’s 13th amendment. This amendment abolishes slavery in the USA, however the exception continues to allow the slavery and indentured servitude of incarcerated individuals, disproportionately affecting black Americans most of all.

In this work I collaborated closely with the lead artist Phoebe Bachman and her creative partner Akeil Robertson-Jowers, who spent months hosting teach ins and compiling artworks, to build these forms as accurately as possible. The result of this collaborative effort were four “visitation booths” modeling ones found in prisons across the USA used as frames for artworks by artists who are incarcerated. We also developed phones with a speaker housed within to allow for attendees of the event to listen to audio recordings including testimonies of experiences from incarcerated artists. Finally I constructed a large free standing display on which the lead artist adhered a detailed map educating the public on the exception to the 13th amendment and a call to end it. This project was exceptionally fulfilling to me personally, my uncle endured life within the USA’s incarceration system for a decade and sent me his artwork as child. It was additionally fulfilling as an artist and activist working on such a signifiant and broad reaching project. The whole effort was deeply collaborative and was a success due to the intentional commitment of each person on the project to listen to one another, communicate clearly and work together.

This project was displayed as a powerful three day public art installation in the People’s Plaza at Independence Hall National Park in the center of Philadelphia, PA September 9th, 2025.

This exhibition is one facet of a far larger ongoing project that can be found at endtheexception.com.

Photo Credit Mural Arts Philadelphia