Big Chef spends a lot of time behind the camera, capturing other people’s stories through his work with Hustle Ave ENT. That’s how I first encountered him. But for this Power Portrait, the camera turned around.
He chose the Blue Grosbeak, dressed himself in Midnight Blue and Chocolate Brown, and brought his two-year-old son, Silas, to Joe Taylor Park—the place where Big Chef himself once played as a child. What unfolded became a portrait about more than a bird. It became a story about fatherhood, color, memory, community, visibility, and who gets to document our lives.
How We Met
I met Big Chef at the Zone of Authenticity’s final show at Four Star Theatre. He was handling media and production for the event, spending much of his time behind the lens capturing everyone else’s movement, performances, and stories. Eventually, he made his way over to my booth, where I was taking portraits of people’s joy, and he was more than ready to play.
I laid out my collection of Dash-Dyed colors, and Big Chef immediately gravitated toward Chocolate Brown and Moss Green. We started layering and draping until he looked almost like a tree. Something about him felt incredibly natural in those earth tones, and I could see how proud he felt wearing them.
When I told him about the Michigan Birds project, he lit up. He wanted to know more, and it didn’t take long for him to choose his bird.
Who He Is
Big Chef moves between several worlds. He’s a media producer and storyteller through Hustle Ave ENT, serving the Grand Rapids and Grandville area. He also genuinely loves cooking and good food, which makes the name Big Chef especially fitting.
But during our session, the role demanding most of his attention was simply being Dad. His two-year-old son, Silas, came along for our adventure, and toddlers don’t particularly care that you’re in the middle of an art project. Silas wanted to run, explore, investigate everything, and occasionally venture a little farther than Dad would prefer.
Watching Big Chef move between posing for my camera, playing with fabric, talking about his childhood, and keeping an eye on Silas added another layer to the portrait. This wasn’t only about the person Big Chef has become. I was watching him raise another little person while returning to a landscape that helped raise him.
Why the Blue Grosbeak
Big Chef chose the Blue Grosbeak because he was immediately drawn to its colors. The male Blue Grosbeak carries rich blue plumage with chestnut-brown wingbars and darker markings around its face. Something about that combination of deep blue, black, and brown resonated with his inner spirit.
I found that particularly interesting because when we first met, Big Chef had chosen Moss Green and Chocolate Brown. For the bird portrait, we kept the brown but shifted the green into Midnight Blue. It wasn’t an enormous change in the palette, but it completely changed the feeling.
It also feels fitting to choose this bird for someone who usually works behind a camera. Blue Grosbeaks can be surprisingly unobtrusive despite their remarkable coloring. You may notice them by their song before you spot the bird itself. Big Chef spends much of his creative life making other people visible. For this portrait, I wanted him to step out from behind the lens, wear the color, choose the setting, tell the story, and allow himself to be seen.
The Look
We built Big Chef’s Blue Grosbeak around the darker shades that first drew him toward the bird. A denim jacket Dash-Dyed in Midnight Blue became the foundation, paired with a Midnight Blue Festival Scarf that added fabric for movement and drape. His cowboy hat carried another Midnight Blue accent that pulled the color upward and framed his face.
Underneath, a shirt dyed in Chocolate Brown referenced the warm chestnut tones of the Grosbeak’s wings, while a Chocolate Brown rayon Wild Rag wrapped around his neck connected the palette. The finished look felt grounded, masculine, strong, and comfortable.
What I liked most was that Midnight Blue didn’t erase the earthiness Big Chef had responded to when we first met. It deepened it. He still looked rooted, but there was something expansive in the blue.
The Session
Big Chef chose Joe Taylor Park because this place belongs to his story. He played here as a kid and remembers the neighborhood long before the splash pad was installed. He told me about summers when kids would break open the fire hydrants and water would spray across the block. The park and the streets surrounding it were simply part of childhood.
This time, he returned as a father.
We wandered through the park together, noticing what had changed and what remained familiar. Things were growing everywhere. Silas explored with the complete confidence of a two-year-old, occasionally running a little farther than expected, while the gates around the park gave us some freedom to let him wander. The surrounding roads dead-end near the park, and despite being in the middle of the city, it felt surprisingly quiet.
There was something beautiful about watching Big Chef settle into himself there. This was his landscape. He knew its history through experience, not a plaque or a website. As I photographed him with Silas nearby, it felt like I was watching two generations occupy the same childhood space at once.
The boy who played here had returned as somebody’s dad.
The Camera
Another presence in the park became impossible to ignore during our session: a Flock automated license-plate-reading camera.
Grand Rapids uses Flock cameras as part of its public-safety system, and their presence has also created community conversations about privacy, surveillance, transparency, and how this technology should be governed. Standing near one in the park where he grew up carried particular significance for Big Chef.
As he described it to me, “Standing right here at Joe Taylor Park where my history is rooted hits different. Capturing this moment isn’t just about a flick—it’s about witnessing.”
For him, being photographed as a Black father standing beside his young son, dressed in the deep blues of the Grosbeak, created an unavoidable contrast. There was an automated camera nearby documenting information from the roadway, and there was my camera—a camera he’d intentionally stepped in front of.
That distinction stayed with me.
Big Chef chose my lens. He chose his clothes, his bird, his location, and the pieces of his story he wanted attached to these photographs. He actively shaped how he would be seen.
His concerns about the other camera raised questions that don’t necessarily have simple answers. Who is watching? What information is being collected? How is it being used? What oversight should exist? And perhaps most importantly, what does safety feel like to the people who actually live, play, parent, and grow up in the places where surveillance technology is installed?
I don’t know exactly what the answer should be. But I do believe the people who call these neighborhoods home deserve to be part of the conversation.
A Place With History
Joe Taylor Park carries history beyond Big Chef’s own memories. The space began as Baxter Green in the 1970s after houses and vacant lots were combined to create neighborhood green space. It was later renamed for Grand Rapids Police Officer Joe Taylor, who was shot and killed in 1986. Today, the park is an oasis for children and families in the Baxter community. There’s a splash pad, playground, green space, and room for kids like Silas to simply run around and be kids.
That’s what made this portrait feel so layered to me. This park holds Big Chef’s childhood memories, the neighborhood’s history, the complicated questions we still ask about policing and public safety, and now the beginnings of Silas’s own relationship with this place.
For one afternoon, it also held this image of a father and son standing together in blue.
Color Connection
Midnight Blue carries depth, dignity, introspection, and strength. It isn’t an electric blue demanding immediate attention. It’s darker and quieter, a color you have to spend some time with. That feels right for Big Chef. It has confidence, but also something internal and reflective.
Chocolate Brown brings the palette back to the earth. It feels like roots, history, home, and the places that shape us before we even understand what they mean.
Together, Midnight Blue and Chocolate Brown feel like sky and soil. Where you’re going and where you’ve been. The person you’re becoming and the ground that made you.
I think that’s why the shift from Moss Green to Midnight Blue mattered so much. Big Chef didn’t lose his roots when we changed his colors. He simply gave himself more sky.
Join the Flock
The Michigan Birds ↗ portrait series is about birds, but it’s also about becoming a record of people and place. Every person brings a different landscape, history, palette, and reason for choosing the bird that eventually takes shape in front of my camera. Thirty people have now stepped in front of my camera and allowed a bird to become a way of exploring identity, color, movement, belonging, and the parts of ourselves that are still becoming.
The portraits may be finished, but the flock isn’t done moving. On September 11th at 6 pm, Rewind is hosting us for our FLASH MOB Dress Rehearsal, where anyone who wants to become part of Michigan Birds can create a bird-inspired look, learn Whitney Pyles’ Praise You choreography, and get ready to take flight at Rosa Parks Circle the following evening. On September 12th at 6 pm at Rosa Parks Circle, the birds leave the photographs. The Joyful Disruptors will gather at Rosa Parks Circle for our Michigan Birds flash mob, transforming thirty individual portraits into a living, moving flock for ArtPrize.
Join the FLOCK PARTY ↗ for more details.
Find Your Bird
Where did you grow up? What colors make you stand taller? What landscape still holds a younger version of you? And what changes when you return there as the person you’ve become?
Sometimes finding your bird means looking toward the sky.
Sometimes it means looking back at the ground that raised you.
Let’s find yours.
