About Me

I have a BA from Amherst College and MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston / Tufts University. High school was in Homer, Alaska, a small town with a vibrant art community. Some years ago I moved from the Boston area, where I had been for almost 10 years, to Petaluma, California. I have a strong background in Japanese art and art history, lived in Kyoto for two years, studying, teaching, and translating, and spent five years working on the collection of 50,000 Japanese prints at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston as a Research Assistant. More recently I've been focussing on graphic design, product development, and publishing. I have two published books (great fun for children and adults of all ages!) that are linked here.

I am an active artist, working in collage, printmaking, photography, digital design, and sculpture, and have shown art around the US and in Japan. Most of my artwork deals with issues and images relating to the body and people. I explore concepts of the body as mechanical and physical object and humans as the substance and material of art rather than just the subject. Paper dolls are a link between my 2D and 3D work, straddling the line between image and object. For sculptures I use a range of materials including wire, welded steel, clay, wood, plastic, and found objects. A lot of my work involves found and assembled parts, often with electric, kinetic, and sonic elements.

I think it is important to openly discuss the many human cultural hang-ups and confused perceptions of bodies and body parts. I am amazed at the beauty and intricacy of bodies and the delicate mechanics that make us function, and also at the abnormalities and peculiarities that may remind us of our mortality. At once we are just so much meat on bones, but at the same time we are living, breathing, conscious beings, and all of that meat is arranged in subtle structures that enable action, gesture, consciousness and life. Art is just one way to confront some of these issues.