About

I was born and raised in Southern California where the sun and bright skies allowed me to run around free outdoors.

At age 5,  I was given my first complete set of crayolas, 48 colors.  I thought I could never do anything as beautiful as the colors all by themselves.   Somehow, I traced a big Maple leaf and very carefully I made rings of different color filling the interior of the whole leaf.  It was breath taking to me as a kid easily enchanted by the world.  I remember carefully putting this precious drawing in a very special drawer at home and every few days taking it out  to be dazzled by its beauty over and over.  I guess that is how it all started it for me........  I was hooked on color and what I had created. 

I have always loved making things and I have worked in several different media-----clay, photography, paper arts, acrylics.  After graduating from UC Berkeley in psychology and Design, I spent a year in London learning how to make clay objects using a kick wheel.  I could make a set of dishes that were identically matched in size, weight and shape.  I then went on to get my MFA from Mills College in Ceramic sculpture and Photography.  After grad school I studied graphic design at California College of the Arts and along with doing my own art, I worked for Smith and Hawken and received an award for catalog design from Metropolitan Magazine.

Always exploring, always curious, I became intensely interested in molding making and bright low fire glazes.  During that phase I won an award from the Society for the Encouragement of Artists for the most promising artists under the age of 35 and showed my low-fired ceramic sculptures at the San Francisco Museum of art. 

When my kids were young, I found photography to be a very versatile media to work in for I could take them and my camera with me where ever I went.  I photographed and hand colored skies and put a show on in conjunction with the Lawrence Hall of Science on the Art and Science of Weather.  Lawrence labs provided the Science and I provided the Art.  For me it was a thrilling marriage of the known and the unknown something that has continued to intrigue me all my life.

My kids were raised on Art.  My oldest became an architect and my youngest son before he died in the late 90's spent from 10 in the morning til 10 at night making art at CCA while I was Associate Dean of Students there.  After almost a decade of being with him and his journey and loss to brain cancer, I re-immersed myself into Art with great vigor; I needed to heal and Art was one of my healers.  This time I found color and form through acrylic painting.  And to this day, I have continued to explore and excavate the riches of this media along with oil pastels and collage.  It's the colors and the discovery of the unknown that continue to lead me. 

Learning about my own vocabulary, my own markings, my particular resonating ways occupies me in a deep conversation between myself, the materials and what wants to come forth.  During the last 20 years, I have run art groups for artists of all media, fascilitated cancer support groups as an art therapist, and taught workshops and classes in art in various forms and for vafious purposes. 

Throughout my life, what hangs it all together is my insights, intuition and sensitivity to creativity, to color and form.   I help other creative find  their own personal vocabulary and their art intentions for personal growth.  . 

It is a dance of color, shape, living in the mystery and letting ourselves be led by what calls us in our own unqiue lives.