I have a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University and a BS in Management from Philadelphis College of Textiles and Science (Philadelphia University) with a 21 year interim between those two degrees full of work; travel, and relocations.  My formative education was at the Kimberton Waldorf School.

I've been a paste-up artist for a yearbook publishing company in Pennsylvania; assistant purchaser for an industrial textile company in South Carolina; an ornamental glassblower for a theme park in Virginia, and office support for a spiritual emergence newspaper in Colorado. I've journeyed on Medicine Quests; participated in Open Studios/Boulder;taken workshops in Animal Communication; spiritual emergence; remote viewing with David Morehouse; Shamanic Studies, and  courses in energy medicine with Dr. Jerry Tennant.

I grew up in eastern Pennsylvania; attended schools in Minnesota and Virginia, lived in New York state; Arizona; Montana, Colorado, and Massachusetts. I've visited Hawaii (Maui;) the Virgin Islands, the British Isles; Europe; East Africa, and Brazil.

I've enjoyed a myriad of fabric/quilting/art classes beyond college but my main source of inspiration has come from the fabric/fiber/quilting artists who participate in Open Studios/Boulder (and East Boulder) year after year. I also had to pleasure of being a member of Front Range Contemporary Quilters for a few years and loved meeting all the incredible fabric artists associated with this organization.

As a teenager I relished watching Wide World of Sports, and as a college student and beyond I made an effort to go see modern dance performances given by university dance departments, and professional companies like Pilobolus. I have been a past member of the Society for Creative Anachronism{reenacting the middle ages from 500AD to 1650AD) and still go to their events. The arts are alive and well!

Artist Statement

Soft colored pencil is my medium of choice. I prefer the watercolor pencil to the wax based one because there is more resistence between lead and paper, and the colors are more precise because there is no sheen on them. I also love working with fabrics. I enjoy the feel of cloth and the myriad of colors, especially bali batiks. Like a dedicated quilter I have worked on building my stash. (She who dies with the most fabric wins.) I've moved twice since starting the collection, and now it's just not ideal in a house with too few closets. My latest challenge is not to buy anymore fabric until I have used up my entire stash. That's tough for a fabri-holic.

I love colors. As a child I tried to capture the fractures of rainbow from the sun hitting the beveled mirror in the bathroom. Sometimes, foolish me, I'd get my eye in direct line and get a blast of brilliant colors directly into my pupil. As an adult, I have come to suspect there are more shades of purples in the spectrum than my being human can comprehend; I've noticed most colored pencil companies have the same limitation. During my sewing on paper series I had to buy exact thread colors of grays, browns and tans to match the colors of sidewalk or sky; earth, and stone in my photographs. Now these colors are part of my vocabulary.

I often try art mediums and ideas that pose a challenge, as long as it is not too messy like oil painting or involved with  lots of water like fabric dying or film developing. Since I lose momentum on set up and clean up, I migrate toward mediums where my tools and materials are readily available when I get the urge to create. In some areas there are artists who are light years ahead of me in the mastery of a medium; although we each have our own field of expertise, I still like to jump my boundries to check out something new. There is so much to learn during the hands-on process. From experience, I just follow the direction the inspiration leads me and usually end up far beyond what I first imagined. On the other hand, while attempting to achieve a certain outcome within a drawing that obviously, halfway through, is not going to occur, I do the discipline thing of completing the piece anyway. Visit OpenStudios

Often a medium dictates what it is capable of. If molten glass is too hot it runs like Grade A honey and won't pick up on the blow rod. A small hole punched in paper will not heal like cloth does. If allowed, wet colors will all run together and end up looking like muck. Conversations occur when a common ground is met between artist and medium, but it takes a whole lot of experimenting and listening first.