A little bit about my journey…
Art and music have been in my life since I was little. However, during my childhood and adolescence, most of my time was occupied with swimming competitively while growing up in a swimming family where my older sister was an Olympic athlete (1980) and my dad an Olympic coach (1970s). Training and competing at this level was ingrained in my psyche and expected by my coach and peers – I mostly enjoyed swimming and was very talented.
Simultaneously around the age of 13/14 I had been taking piano lessons for some time at University of Cincinnati’s Conservatory of Music (my dad was the UC men’s swimming coach) and had been a part of award winning school choirs since fifth grade. My piano instructor informed my parents that I had a great ear and a “genius” musical aptitude. They took that information seriously and offered me the option at age 13 to quit swimming and pursue music full time. I really loved music. I wanted nothing more than to quit the hours and hours of training in and out of the pool and instead do something my soul was more aligned with, and have a social life too! But I declined because swimming was where I got my love and approval and I didn’t want to let anyone down. I secretly regretted this decision. I went on to become an Olympic level swimmer – training with Olympians, qualifying for Olympic trails but did not qualify for the Olympics. I didn’t really want it. I went to Arizona State University on an almost full scholarship and swam well my first year, then quit during my second year.
Graduating with a BFA in Graphic Design in 1987 after attending four colleges was a start getting back to my artist soul. I dabbled in freelance graphic design but ended up mostly working in retail throughout the years. My lack of committing 100% to my art practice was a societal belief that one “can’t make money in art (or singing!).” In 1992 I went to live in California to be close to my family and it was while living in San Francisco that I decided to get back into music, as a friend inspired me to take private singing lessons so that I could become a professional jazz singer. I slowly built up my voice and began performing at many venues. I recorded a demo. I even lived in Los Angeles for a year and sang with some music greats who had played with Ella Fitzgerald (my hero).
As a desert lover, I moved to Santa Fe New Mexico in 2003 as I thought this place would nurture all of my artist visions in music, where I was now excelling, and inspire my visual art world. But I ended up losing my voice at the peak of my singing career right after I arrived, and could no longer sing. This issue was a mystery, except that it sounded like I had a cold – laryngitis – for a year, but I was not sick. At the beginning, every doctor said my vocal chords looked healthy but yet I could not talk. One vocal chord just wasn’t working properly. All those years of training, singing, down the tubes. I lost all confidence. It took a year for my voice to return while working odd jobs to make ends meet (ones that didn’t require connected speech). After that I continued to work in the Santa Fe art world, while not pursuing my own artistic voice on any level. It was awful. I was lost. I moved back to the San Francisco Bay Area after six years. While I did sing a couple of times, never got back into the swing of it.
Fast forward to the end of a 12 year relationship, where again after putting my life, my passion, my soul aside to support others, rediscovered and finally gave myself permission to pursue art as my full time career! I started by going back to College of Marin in 2019 and taking art classes and being so inspired that I was propelled to pursue an MFA at Mills College in Oakland CA, where I graduated in 2022. And after relocating to Nevada City CA, I’ve decided to go back to my first love, singing and writing music, in concert with my visual creations! I’ve rediscovered my inner Goddess, my Divine Feminine, so lost for most of my life. She is not going anywhere now and is my muse in every aspect of my work.
About My Art! 🤩
One of my all time favorite activities is to load up my tear drop camping trailer lovingly named “HRTEMYS,” (think heart and Artemis), grab my dog, and head out on solo road trip expeditions to the grounding and healing landscapes of the forests, desert, canyons, mountains, and beaches. A multi-media artist, I have a zest for adventure and photographing the awesome and mystical spaces where I hunt for the most unique scenes to capture the beauty and grandeur of Mother Nature and the Sacred Feminine. Through sharing these photographic images, I hope to inspire the viewer to step inside a magical place where one has been spiritually transported and can viscerally experience the sublime majesty of the natural world.
Once back at home, I spend a lot of time going through sometimes 1000s of my favorite photographic images, and choose which ones to edit that I will use in upcoming exhibitions and my other art forms, such as collage. In the past year I’ve been focusing on creating powerful bodies of work with my Goddess collage series, made mostly from my original photography, supported with some AI and found imagery.
In my other multimedia art forms such as 2D cut-out animation, experimental video, and installation, I bring the themes and stories behind nature symbolism, numerology, mythology, and ancient cultures to life to evoke remembrance of our spiritual selves and honor feminine energies and archetypes. My goal is to create meditative environments, sometimes with my original music to inspire metaphorical and literal reflection.
I recently was awarded the Fall 2023 Collage Artist of the Year Award at the Art Comes Alive competition and show with ADC Fine Art, where I have exhibited my work for several years, and in 2022 received the Mills College Nancy Cook Fellowship Award. I exhibit my work in various solo and group shows and juried art fairs throughout California and neighboring states and have been a photographic finalist in many competitions. I have a Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art degree from Mills College, Oakland California, and reside in Nevada City, CA where I also teach youth animation classes.
Go to this link to read more about my music!
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