I love building my houses from repurposed materials but I think painting them has become my favorite part of the process. I’ve missed painting. I find myself feeling frustrated when I attempt painting on traditional flat painting substrates like canvas and wood but I love painting these weird 3D paper and found materials structures. I’m…

I have been feeding the crows for two decades. Every morning, without fail, I feed my dogs, cats, chickens and I feed the crows. For years I would put a little bowl of dog food out for them because that’s what attracted them to my place in the first place. I’d been feeding a stray…

Last year I started making weird little house sculptures. They are not literal representations of my home or studio but are inspired by them and the surreal period in my life these past few years as I’ve adjusted to all of the changes and challenges after my husband’s death. They are made from recycled materials.…

I hadn’t smelled smoke or seen flames the day of the fire but there were dozens of police cars and an ambulance and firetruck blocking the road that enters my neighborhood. There were flashing lights filling an entire block. There were police cars stationed at the bridge over the creek and a couple of blocks…

Once upon a time, during the pandemic, when we were in lockdown in our homes, I had this idea that I’d make a series of still life paintings of corners of my home to mark that period in our lives— to tell my family’s story. I only managed to make two. Our home life got…

Pictured: This was once a portrait of my grandmother. It was hanging in my studio when it burned. The frame survived and the glass only cracked but the photo inside melted and formed a new image. To me it looks like an old daguerreotype or something that wants to be a Sally Mann collodion wet…

I was talking to a friend recently about the joys and frustrations of my life as an artist and she used a farming analogy to describe a healthy creative lifestyle goal that I loved. It made me think of  something I read recently in an article about labor movements and unions. It was a quote by…

I’ve been reading essays on pro-environmental behaviors and interrelationship between personal and social identities. Fascinating stuff that sent me chasing definitions and ideas about vocation, social constructs, education, consumerism, caste, gender… ack! It was a tangle of tunnels and warrens that made my head and belly ache.  As we are bombarded with news everyday about…

From “Beyond the Reach of Woundedness” installation. I love this piece— this series. I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. After reading an essay on Thomas Merton in Emergence magazine years ago, I became fascinated by this idea that we damaged humans can reach beyond the woundedness that makes us inflict pain on others…

I often ponder and am always attempting to find balance between solitude and communion. The older I get, the more I lean toward a solitary life. It is difficult for some folks to understand the difference between solitude and loneliness and those same folks who lean more toward a social lifestyle don’t seem to believe…