About Artist

Creating collage has become my calling now in my elder years, along with spending solo time in wild places to commune with Earth—to stay awake to her beauty. As Joanna Macy said: “In the face of impermanence and death, it takes courage to love the things of this world and to believe that praising them is our noblest calling.”

It’s a calling I can’t ignore—to create, to deepen my relationship with the holy and the wild. In the midst of our crazy collective unraveling, I’m experiencing a profound rise in creativity, aliveness, and joy. I almost feel guilty about it, but I know I’m also experiencing an equal sense of internal grief and devastation appropriate to being aware of the daily aggressive assaults on our collective stability. This isn’t spiritual bypassing—this is an important counter-balancing response to the relentless un-creating happening all around us now. I believe my work, and that of all artists, is fundamental to creating the world to come. We can’t just languish in this liminal time between what was and what will be. We must live inside the paradox itself--meeting collapse with re-enchantment, meeting loss with longing and love.

So why collage? It has long been my practice to pay attention to my nightly dreams, and I’ve had many mystical or visionary experiences during my life—some bidden, some not. Creating collage allows me to meditate on and explore their symbols and archetypes, the language of the collective unconscious, as well as honor these numinosities. I also love to play with color and juxtapose images that strike me as intriguing, paradoxical and/or provocative—in an effort to evoke meaning and highlight the mystery of life.

A bit more about my path… I initially started my college years as an art major, but dropped out and headed to Alaska. Years later, after a vision quest at age 40, rites of passage became the focus of a self-designed BA. At 50 I earned an MA in East-West Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. During this time, visions involving the homeless led to a powerful heart opening and an ego death of sorts, when I realized on a deep level that We are all One. I then began a new career managing non-profits which sought to help unhoused individuals and families as well as those with substance abuse and/or mental health challenges. Now 20+ years later, having come full circle, I’ve retired to create art.

Recycled “coffee table books” and calendars are my “go to” for use in my hand-cut collage. They take time to come to life—as I don’t have unlimited images to work with—so they often sit and wait for just the right image to make something spark. I meticulously hand cut each image, color each edge with permanent acid free ink, and glue them down with rubber cement.