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. As an in-depth exploration of those relationships existing beyond our ordinary field of awareness, my work innately draws attention to life’s moments where both chaos and order appear able to co-exist and actually cooperate. Perhaps, even thrive.
The interplay of organic and inorganic form plays a pivotal role in my visual vocabulary. The use of intense layering, erasure, and excavation, is no doubt embedded in my genetic make-up. There lies a mystery in foraging amongst those things fragmentary, discarded or lost. And my reconstructive approach remains vital to cultivating the definition and redefinition of the densely layered surfaces and traces of human presence left behind.
The studio is my tool for introspection, my unadulterated open space. It’s where I’m able to lean into the less seen and in-between places. I rely on it to find comfort when embracing paradox. And I find immense gratitude there for our shared humanity, vulnerability, and resilience in this world of rapid change, decay and renewal.
Small works. Huge impact.
