I’m a street artist who lives and works in one of the poorest counties in the country. My work has appeared on abandoned and neglected structures throughout the rural Appalachian hills.  I make beauty from the broken. I see resilience in the ruined. I paint images of women, primarily using my own body as a model, in positions and attitudes of strength, solidarity and resistance. I never went to school for this. Paint is my calling. Rust is my church. Deer, crickets and coyotes: my congregation.  Every wall is an altar. Every moonlit night is Sunday. Grit Gospel is the ministry of making art in Appalachia.

by Final Girl

To Unsee / See

I started by following the hearts.

I’m not sure when I first noticed graffiti, when it made its initial undeniable impression on me, but I remember the hearts because I documented them. I took pictures. Here was a spray-painted white heart on a fence. Here was a pink one on a garage.

Then I noticed someone was writing with paint on doors and alleys and the back of signs, even on manhole covers: Beautiful. You are beautiful.

Then I wondered who that someone was.

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