The Savvy Studio Guide to Superpowers

The Savvy Studio Guide to Superpowers is the first flowering in a series that includes a workbook centering steps to identify your superpowers, areas of brilliance and challenge, spaces of potential growth, and foundational values that root your practice, and Word Art divination cards based on a daily studio series of paintings reflecting current events and themes such as May Day. This is a transdisciplinary offering that provides essential guidance to artists, writers, designers, and beyond. Those who have studied with me know the depth and breadth of my advising approach. Honed over two decades with students and mentees, my pedagogy is grounded in a deep understanding of global art histories and contextualized through expertise in a wide range of material, studio and career processes. 

The Savvy Studio Guide offers studio practice support for artists and practitioners with a methodology that is also useful across a range of industries, including for students of all kinds, collectors considering their own approaches to art and curation, creatives looking to jumpstart or get support for a specific project, and even those working outside of the arts who could benefit from a new perspective or approach. The Word Art Divination Cards are a new form of “reading” rooted in the guidance of famed Dagara shaman Elder Malidoma Somé who foretold this moment of expansion, serving as a reflection of reading in multiple forms and example of a grounding daily ritual studio practice responding to contemporary concerns. The guide, divination cards, advising, and courses provide an opportunity to unlock and manifest new levels of clarity and direction and to protect our shared histories.

Your contribution supports time and resources needed for archival organization of course materials, preparation of the workbook, and creation of divination resources, including review and research, development and production, and assistance with setting up presentation formats including data protection. The materials will be culled from 20+ years of my course curricula, syllabi and strategies. This organization phase involves distilling key components—first-person artist advice from my work with some of history’s greats, prompts based on tried-and-true advising strategies, holistic and practical suggestions--into a self-guided process that works in tandem with 1:1 advising, part of the patron tiers. 

This project will roll out The Savvy Studio Guide to Superpowers with an option to sign up for advising and card readings. 3AP patrons will be notified to gain special access to my award-winning courses, including “Afrofuturity” and “Sculpting Space: Design, Architecture, and Sacred Systems in Africa and the Diaspora” to serve a diversity of audiences.  

The guide is currently in process with option for pre-order, and the Word Art Divination Cards will be available for pre-order ahead of the 2026 holiday season. By supporting this project, you are contributing to the continuation of arts education and creative possibilities for people across a wide range of demographics. Now more than ever before, it is important to offer the knowledge my teachers have entrusted to me and to share the research and scholarship that has had such a positive impact on so many. Your support goes beyond this project to provide access to those who want to learn real histories, who want to engage their authentic creativity. This is about legacy.