I’m a first generation American, daughter of a mid 20th century European immigrant mother, born and raised on Staten Island, in ultra-urban, multi-cultural New York City, in the ever presence of the Atlantic Ocean & NY harbor. For 40 years I’ve lived in tied-to-place, rurally engaged ways, working persistently against artistic isolation. In this environment, contemporary issues - worldwide displacements and migrations, racism, issues of home/no home, effects of climate change, and most recently pandemic seclusion, are no less relevant; they just play out and show up in the work differently. My work emerges in theme and variation, and series, and utilizes layers and multiples, through a variety of skills and materials often associated with craft. I have shown work locally, regionally and nationally for many years, in the middle of which I completed a Certificate of Craft in Fibers and Book-Arts from Oregon College of Art & Craft(’00-’04).


Over thirty years ago I became a felt-maker, having previously worked in printmaking. I’m twenty years into a shepherd’s life; twenty years from having also made the considerable shift in my art-making practice, from being a consumer of art supplies to participant in their production. It worked this way: I chose and bred my sheep according to the wool’s properties, ensured good pasture, enough hay through winter, engaged a competent shearer, and a good wool mill for making yarn, felt-bats, and roving. At one point I made 800+/- felt balls using this material for an installation entitled Newland. I placed them on a site-specific scaled down basketball court, with a viewing platform which offered multiple (pseudo) interpretations of the site. A later piece, Conveyance, that evolved as memento mori after a sheep-killing farm tragedy, took the shape of a sheep-headed felt boat. Awhile later a third piece, Displacement, combined the balls and the boat to make an installation examining on-going and troublesome marine migrations of people.

Wanting more color in the work I’ve turned to grown or gathered dye-plants using more linens, cottons and silks, and creating layered flat work. The works are closest in form to quilts and have begun to also include printed surfaces in recent years. This reawakens and revisits my printmaking skills and sensibilities, but farther along the road. Furthermore, I’m turning dye baths into lake pigments, which I turn into inks; these form much of my place-based palette. Another aspect of layering in meaning and image comes with embroidery and the addition of other elements.

My work comes together in an ongoing exploration of ebbs and flows of rural living, urban/rural tensions, and belonging to place. I’ve been using water imagery often as well as imagery of bodies, fauna, and flora, in order to visually engage ideas of a changing world. I return often to my experience as an immigrant’s child, a first generation European-American, mining this as a relatable connection with, and point of entry into issues surrounding migrations to and from all over the world.