The photographs in Grow Garden are from a collaboration with an elementary school within walking distance of my office and studio at the university where I teach. These particular pictures are a combination of portraits I made of students and images made by the children themselves. This work is also supported by the college photo club that I oversee as well as a program called True Blue Neighbors at The University of Tulsa. We were able to acquire compact digital cameras for the children to use for this summer program as well as during the regular school year. Our goal is to get the kids excited about photography and see it as a fun and accessible medium to capture their own experiences. We also periodically host exhibitions featuring photographs created by the children. We made the prints for the students as well as portraits for the parents. I even have to do a double take to remember if I took some of these photographs or if it was one of the kids. You might be able to guess, but a little over half were by the children. A couple of my former photo majors helped with this particular series, Shelby Poor and Jessica Walker.