Emily C-D is an interdisciplinary artist with a community-based practice and a penchant for working with found materials. She has been based out of Baltimore since moving to the city to attend Maryland Institute College of Art where she received a BFA in 2005.

In Mexico, she has been an artist in residence at the Guapamacátaro Center for Art and Ecology in Michoacán, the Galería Gubidxa in Unión Hidalgo, Oaxaca, and the FARO de Oriente in Iztapalapa, Mexico City. She views the the time she has spent in Mexico as a sort of self-led graduate program in cultural studies, communication, and collaborative art.

Emily C-D's involvement in community art has been a natural outgrowth of a creative process concerned with transformation. From the US to Mexico, she has involved children and young adults in fun, interactive projects that blur the line between spectator and participant. She has been a pioneer in the mural movement of painting on the street surface. Lately Emily has been excited about teaching kids to make musical instruments and costumes out of garbage, and leading them in loud, bizarre public performances.

In 2010, the Maryland State Arts Council awarded Emily highest honors for Works on Paper. She has also been an Open Society Institute Community Fellowship Finalist (2006). As a member of Baltimore-based art trio Can Collective, Emily C-D has been a semi-finalist for the Janet and Walter Sondheim Prize (2009) and a recent recipient of the PNC Transformative Art Project Grant (2012).