Art historian turned IP attorney. I see the same extraction patterns in 17th-century enclosure movements and 21st-century AI training.

I’m an intellectual property attorney with a J.D. and Ph.D. in Art History from Duke University. I co-founded Implement Legal to provide copyright, trademark, and transactional counsel to creative businesses that need a lawyer who understands the ecosystem, not just the law.

My dissertation examined appropriation art and fair use doctrine in the 1990s and 2000s. Richard Prince, Sherrie Levine, Jeff Koons. The argument I kept making: transformative use doctrine had become cover for powerful artists to strip-mine working creators — treating their work as raw material, not authorship. In 2023, Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith landed on the same conclusion. I’d been waiting eleven years for that decision.

Now tech companies run the identical argument to justify training AI on copyrighted work without permission or payment. The extraction logic doesn't change. It just finds a new vehicle.

Before law, I ran museums and arts organizations — including the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center. That matters because I've sat on the other side of the table. I know what it's like when your gallery owner is also your friend. When your collaborator becomes your client. When the person across the negotiating table will be at the next ten openings. That's the ecosystem I work in. The law has to account for it.

My practice covers copyright strategy and enforcement, trademark prosecution and defense, business acquisitions and sales, licensing agreements, gallery representation contracts, commission structures, and estate planning. Galleries, production companies, agencies, creative businesses navigating complex IP challenges.