Courtesy of:: Michael Axelrod / circa 1969
Born and raised in a tiny suburb of NYC, I grew up a quirky, shy, pencil-thin young girl…
At the early age of three, I took my first Crayola crayon in hand to bravely draw a blue line across the family RCA tv screen, saving Winky Dink from grave peril. (I have just dated myself.) Little did I know my bold mark had transformed one brief moment and created a new reality, a magical process soon to become my own personal voice.
I fondly recall gravitating to worlds of the small and intimate. Long hours spent tearing apart and reconstructing tossed items provided a release from the daily chatter, confusion, and stress of growing up. And through my delightfully strange, reassembled creations, I learned to trust my curiosity and inner muse. Full circle, my favorite childhood pastime remains a trademark of the work I produce today.
Looking back on my life as artist and educator, I’m reminded of my father’s work ethic, and how his infectious belief in education and personal quest for excellence inspired my own career choice. For 30+ years, every day In the classroom posed its own unique opportunity. Noted for my development of ‘hands-on’ studio curriculum for grades 7-12, I embraced the arts as essential to the learning process and to the provision of emotionally supportive and stabile environments for young creatives.
Earning my MFA with honors from Syracuse University led to my Hudson Valley relocation in 1984, where artistic opportunities began to appear in the field of printmaking. In my search for innovative and spontaneous methods, I had the privilege to study with master printers Dan Welden and Ron Pokrasso, in New York, New Mexico, and Florence, Italy.
Once retired from the public education system, I traveled the northeastern seaboard to paint and write. Crossing paths with the late artist, mentor and friend, Skip Lawrence, marked a dramatic shift in my work towards the abstract. The challenge was a liberating and refreshing one at the time. Today the Woodstock School of Art provides me with a vast community of mentors, artists and friends.
Career highlights have included the receipt of: a National Endowment for the Humanities grant, 2 summer printmaking fellowships at Skidmore College, with additional studies conducted in Florence, Italy and Santa Fe, NM. Select awards have been received from the Palm Spring Art Museum and NAWA (National Association of Women Artists), along with recognition in the Smithsonian Institute Archives of American Art. (Thank you, James Mullen!) Known widely in previous years for my own unique and meticulous approach to the etching process, I have exhibited in juried competitions nationally as well as in galleries of the Mid-Hudson and Metropolitan area.
Further details may be found here: CURRICULUM VITAE
Beyond impermanence: finding beauty in the vulnerability and resilience of human spirit…
I love inventing intricate spatial environments where apparent randomness and disorder suggest an organization happening on a different dimensional level. Whether drawing, painting, or hand-pulling prints, this process has become my vehicle through which I explore, in-depth, those relationships that exist beyond our ordinary field of awareness.
The conversation(s) I find existing between organic and inorganic form are crucial to my reconstructive approach. Intense layering, erasure, excavation and collage are all tools I feel embedded in my genetic make-up. I forage amongst and make use of those things worn, fragmentary, discarded and lost. And I will then repetitively define and redefine the resulting densely layered surfaces and traces of human presence left behind.
I have a recent series of graphite drawings that are quite special to me. I make use of an old Patterson-Sargent brush salvaged from my late father’s basement workbench. The bristle is crafted from Chinese horsehair and was used in varnishing furniture. Yet it has oddly become an extraordinary applicator for powdered graphite, producing an intriguing dimensional ground for whatever else might materialize.
The studio is my unadulterated open space. It’s where I’m able to lean into the unseen, while leaving all expectations behind. I rely on it for comfort when embracing paradox, and feel immense gratitude there for our shared humanity, vulnerability, and resilience in a world of such rapid change, decay and renewal.
Small works. Huge impact.
