ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
I am a therapist-in-training, mixed media artist, and arts writer specializing in the creative process and art therapy. I am an Associate Marriage & Family Therapist currently working with clients to gain hours toward MFT licensure in California. When I was in school, I studied various art therapy modalities including sandplay therapy (in which clients build symbolic scenes in a sand tray using miniatures). Witnessing the building of “little worlds in boxes” inspired me to create 3-D assemblage artwork in shadow and cigar boxes. These works are surreal snapshots that reflect my love of the natural world, vintage trinkets from the past, and the science fiction and fantasy genres. My goal is to slow people down before my work, delivering a sacred moment where the velvet curtain is drawn aside, revealing a sneak peek into a wondrous miniature landscape. I also create illuminated jewelry mosaic pieces (made from upcycled vintage pins and earrings) in the form of animal silhouettes.
I am inspired by the assemblage work of well-known artists such as Louise Nevelson and Joseph Cornell. I’m also influenced by mixed media layering techniques discovered as I “play” within my art journal. My position as author for Beautiful Bizarre magazine has allowed me to speak intimately with over fifty artists about their creative processes and artistic evolution, and my therapy work feeds my love of people and my understanding of emotions and human nature.
In this increasingly virtual, fast-paced world, I hold dear the old fashioned arts of magic, stop-motion animation, and puppetry, and strives to create work which is based upon the same principles: using physical manipulation, illumination, and atmosphere to evoke feelings of enchantment and childlike wonder.