Emily C-D served a year as an Americorps volunteer from 2006-07 as a part of the Civic Works Community Lot Team, practicing gardening in areas the Urban Dictionary calls “Blue Light Districts”—places in Baltimore City, Maryland where blue police lights cover the top of street lamps in order to monitor crime and violence using cameras that record all street activity. The urban matrix of neighborhoods crumbling physically, families strained by slim economic opportunity, and ongoing violence makes for a turbulent existence in Blue Light Districts. Led by the visionary Ed Miller, the Community Lot Team organized people and physical resources in creative ways, listening to the wisdom and dreams of residents, unearthing the stories of the spaces they transformed. Brick by brick, tree by tree, and person by person, the team of guerilla gardeners brought forth the inherent beauty of a city that the blue lights would condemn as forsaken. After completing her year of service, Emily continued to collaborate with Ed by incorporating murals into his garden designs, working with local children and youth to bring color to gray cement walls and dirty asphalt alleys, bright urban artworks that complimented the blooming gardens where before there had only been piles of garbage.
As a way to celebrate and honor the work of Ed Miller and the Community Lot Team, in 2016 Emily collaborated with poet Karen Brau to create We Garden Under Blue Lights, a chapbook of hopeful verses and watercolors about transforming blocks of Baltimore into greener spaces of grace. Emily exhibited the paintings in a solo show at the Vollmer Gallery at Cylburn Arboretum in Baltimore, MD from February 18 - March 7, 2023.
We Garden Under Blue Lights chapbook with poems by Karen Brau and watercolors by Emily C-D, 2016.
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