About
Background
- Retiring in 2002 after a 28+ year career with BellSouth in Human Resources, I returned to school to study what was always my first love, art. I earned a BFA in Sculpture in 2009, Summa cum laude at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) in Atlanta.
- My interest in the three-dimensional world began in the 90's with wheel thrown and hand-built clay/ceramics as a creative outlet and stress reliever from a hectic corporate career. At that time I studied ceramics at Callanwolde Arts Center and Spruill Arts Center in Atlanta. I also attended numerous ceramics workshop intensives at the John C. Campbell Folk School in North Carolina, Arrowmont School of Arts & Crafts in Tennessee and Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Maine.
- After graduating from SCAD, I participated in an arts incubator program, part of the revitalization efforts of the downtown historic district in Stone Mountain, GA, where I owned and ran a small art gallery and studio. This led to a position as the Executive Director of the Downtown Development Authority and the Main Street organization for the City of Stone Mountain.
- My husband and I moved to the Georgia coast in 2014 and I took the Executive Director’s position at Glynn Visual Arts in 2015. Most of my creative energies were spent managing Glynn Visual Arts, a non-profit community arts center on Saint Simons Island, GA. It was a perfect blending of my artistic and business experience. I was also on the Board of Directors of Golden Isles Arts & Humanities and completed the Glynn County Chamber of Commerce’s Leadership Glynn program.
- After COVID and other life changes, in 2024 I find myself back in Atlanta, GA, and again focusing on my own art. In this phase of my life, I’m drawn more to mixed media/collage and assemblage. I love the idea of reusing, repurposing and finding new and different ways to use ordinary materials. The materials themselves can communicate so much. My art has always leaned toward feminist themes. Contemporary women’s roles have certainly changed in some ways, yet in other ways, not so much. These roles can be messy, murky, poorly navigated territory.
- Much of my work, through the use of, well-known iconography and archetypal symbology, explores and asks questions about some fundamental relationships, roles, expectations and power structures that exist for women. And investigates a familiar subject matter within the contemporary context of the 21st century.
- My most recent work approaches feminism and domesticity by recontextualizing the tools and imagery that define household labor and female identity. By engaging directly with the everyday objects that shape the feminine – jewelry, dolls, domestic appliances, I seek to infuse both scathing critique and sly humor into my body of work that examines what it means to be a woman and how the things that define womanhood contain at once liberating power and crippling weight.
- “What a long, strange trip it’s been”, to quote the Grateful Dead. Thanks for sharing a little of my journey.
- 2024 Current - Studio - Atlanta, GA
- 2021-2023 - Studio - Americus, GA
- 2014-2020 - Executive Director - Glynn Visual Arts, Saint Simons Island, GA, 2015-Current www.glynnvisualarts.org
- 2010-2013 - Executive Director - Main Street & Downtown Development Authority, Stone Mountain, GA and Butterfly House Studio & Gallery Owner, Stone Mountain, GA
- 2007-2009 - BFA Sculpture, Summa cum laude - Savannah College of Art & Design (SCAD) - Atlanta, GA
- 2005-2006 - President Tucker Arts Guild, Tucker, GA
- 2003-2006 - Clay Artist, Atlanta, GA - Own clay studio. Exhibited and sold original hand built clay art
- 1974-2002 - BellSouth Telecommunications Career Employee, Jacksonville,
Medium(s)
- I use a variety of mediums and materials to communicate. Ceramics is a first love. I work with a variety of techniques but am mainly drawn to slab building for its architectural qualities. Assemblage and mixed/media collage provide design and material challenges which really appeal to me. Transformation is an important and continuing theme. The idea of making something interesting, beautiful or meaningful from nothing or discarded/recycled items is a really satisfying.
Inspiration & Philosophy
- I am inspired by a great variety of things, travel, nature, literature and poetry and politics to name a few. Most of my artwork has an underlying conceptual idea that I'm attempting to communicate. At times, it's fairly obvious, at other times, I want the viewer to decipher the message(s) the piece carries without obvious or overt explanation. The viewer always brings their own filter or life experiences to bear on any piece of artwork and I want to leave room for multiple interpretations. My work has always leaned toward feminist themes. I like to draw attention to the fact that there are still gender inequality issues to be dealt with, but I try do that mostly with a humorous twist.