Photo Credit: Michael Axelrod / circa 1969
Born and raised in a tiny suburb of NYC, I grew up a quirky, shy, pencil-thin young girl…
“By the age of two my mother had been hospitalized with tuberculosis. Nine months of healing felt like forever and required my brothers and I to be split up and cared for by both neighbors and distant relatives. With a significant hearing loss from birth, I must have understood little back then, and began spending my days transforming the torn and leftover into what I saw as delightfully reassembled creations. Over time, 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 strong belief in education and personal quest for excellence inspired my own career choice. In the classroom my specialty became ‘hands-on’ studio curriculum development, with an emphasis on providing emotionally supportive and stabile environments for young creatives. (Thank you, Dad!)
An MFA with honors from Syracuse University led to my Hudson Valley relocation in 1984, where my artistic endeavors wandered into the printmaking realm for close to two decades. Solar plate etching caught my interest, and most memorably, the privilege to study with Master printers Dan Welden and Ron Pokrasso.
Once retired from the public education system, I traveled the northeastern seaboard to paint and write. Crossing paths to work with the late artist, mentor and friend, Skip Lawrence, marked a dramatic shift in my work towards the abstract. It was just a another beginning. And today I enjoy frequenting the classroom as student in the Woodstock School of Art.
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…
“My creative passion is heavily influenced by a fascination with those relationships that seem to lie beyond our ordinary field of awareness. I enjoy inventing intricate spatial environments where apparent randomness and disorder suggest an organization happening on a different dimensional level. Comprised of painting, drawing, and print, this current body of abstract work draws attention to life’s moments where both chaos and order appear able to co-exist and cooperate. Perhaps, even thrive.
As I forage amongst the discarded and lost, the integration of organic and inorganic form plays a significant role in my visual vocabulary and reconstructive approach. No doubt incessant layering, erasure, and scraping away are all woven into my genetic make-up. And this is where collage comes in. It feels like home. Elements emerge while others dissolve into nothingness. I love the process for its ongoing definition and redefinition of densely layered surfaces and traces of human presence. I sense mystery there. And what is often excavated in one work of art will only end up concealed or revealed in the next.
A tool for introspection, the studio is my favorite place to further explore connection and relationship. The act of creating allows me to lean into those invisible, in-between places where I can learn to embrace paradox and surrender to the unexpected. And it nudges me daily to both rediscover and feel gratitude for our shared humanity, vulnerability and resilience in a world of such constant change, decay and renewal. Join me in the never-ending journey…”
