I am a lifelong artist, with many cycles and seasons of expression. After high school, I received my first formal training, studying painting with the Italian-Venezuelan artist Wladimiro Politano in Caracas, Venezuela. At Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD - 1975-1979), I received the next level of formal training, focusing mostly on large scale textural pieces popular at the time. Artist and Instructor Steven Sorman was a big influence from MCAD. Following graduation, I was employed at Vermillion Editions print studio in Minneapolis, MN, under owner and master printer Steven M. Andersen. Working alongside the artists we printed, I received even more influence, especially from Red Grooms with whom I worked on several pieces. After Vermillion, I married and moved to rural Wisconsin with my husband, working in my home studio as well as in different rented studio spaces. After my first child was born, we moved to Florida to be closer to family. Two years later I had our second child. Raising children consumed much of my time, setting aside formal art-making for several years. During this time I completed teacher training and became a k-12 art teacher, working at the elementary grade level in Collier County public schools. This kept me connected to art as I created pieces and backgrounds for stage productions as well as teaching children. However, there was little time nor energy for my own studio work. After our children left home, I was inspired to get back into the studio after working through “The Artist’s Way” workbook by Julia Cameron.
I made collages in my early twenties by combining cloth, magazine pictures, and other objects into my large-format drawings. I didn’t pick up mixed media again until late 2007 while working through “The Artist’s Way”. I began to play around with magazine photos, watercolors, color pencils, and cloth following the Artist’s Way. These break-through pieces started me on a path of collage making on a larger scale, using my own photography, specialty and rice papers, and my own painted and splattered papers. From 2007 to 2018 my collage process consisted of composing and combining those materials to create new images inspired by Florida’s natural environment: swampy land, animals, and diversity of organic plant life. I love the textures, patterns, and variety of color found in nature: leaves and flowers, as well as trunks and roots. Water in any form brings cool relief in all of its variety. The sky creates many moods, especially during sunset, providing another wealth of color, space, and time. I later created a series of sailing collages with photographs taken from a Yacht Club Regatta. The many textures of the water captured my imagination. They were finished with touches of brushy paint strokes adding to the flowing visual effect.
In 2020, during the pandemic, I found myself suddenly retired after 25 years of teaching, and facing surgery. I had days where I could do nothing but sit and wait for pain medication to kick in and sleep. But the urge to create, as always, pulled me. From my previous exposure to “The Artist’s Way” I knew some fundamentals about unblocking my creative self. I once again engaged with this process. One of the biggest unblocking strategies was practicing with some related activity. So, I began by looking at my favorite quilt book and coloring in a small adult coloring book of Mandala designs to pass the time. I appreciated how the circular Mandala designs were calming and Meditative. The visual eye flows from the center to the outside edges and from the periphery to the center. All I had to do in coloring was to practice balancing the colors of the markers in the already made designs. This play time was instrumental in opening up my creative process. I began thinking about creating my own mandala and quilt-inspired designs. I realized that since I didn’t know how to sew, I could collage the beautiful patterns of Specialty papers, my own painted papers, and arrange them just like the quilters do. I have always loved Geometric Shapes so the use of them in quilting was very attractive to me.
A couple of months after surgery, I began to develop these activities in an organized way. Starting with The Mandala Circles, I used typical quilting design motifs such as the Hour Glass, Wind Mill Blades, Wild Goose Chase, and Star Burst. Noticing the joy I had drawing geometric shapes, I incorporated more of them: Squares, Triangles, Circles and Rhombi. Always keeping the main idea of a meditative center of the Mandala. The Specialty papers I use are from all over the world: Japan, India and Malaysia to name a few. I also made up my own papers when more play time and/or material choices was needed, and to stock my inventory. Lately, I have set aside collage for painting. My recent work continues to evolve as I unify the elements and the principles of design in my compositions inspired by historic textile patterns. I strive to create unique visual experiences that honor the art and artisans that created them by giving them new life.