When did you realize that art is your path? You got your BA in Russian studies, right?

I got my undergraduate collage degree in Russian Studies, yes, but I had already had a healthy studio practice beginning when I was in high school. I put together my first portfolio for an arts high school program when I was 15.

I met a circle of interesting painters and creatives when I was 16 – they were already in university graduate art programs – and they became mentors and friends for years. I always wondered why they let me hang around … I was so young!

I had a disastrous first year of college at a Boston, MA art college. I willfully refused to follow any rules and turned in assignments that confused my professors: I made a lot of small, playful + colorful toys. I also got chastised for drawing “wrong”, which set me back for decades.

I moved to Brooklyn, NY with a few of my earlier artist friends, and we lived in a 3000 square foot unheated industrial loft. I went to college during the day and made objects the rest of the time.

I had my own studio space carved out in the loft, and I continued to make small, playful objects. Toys, for sure – if I think about it, currently I am just drawing the objects that I made over 30 years ago.

How do you balance your various projects since you are a manager, a curator, an artist? 

In my 30’s, I got overwhelmed and stopped making objects. I felt stressed and depressed by what I called the “striving” of creative work – the business side. I focused on my career at the museum.

I realized that more people saw my museum creative work than saw my studio creative work. That trade-off brought me peace for a number of years.

I went back into the studio about 8 years ago. It took a while to find my voice again. It has been an uneven journey … but I feel completely fed and uplifted.

You use mixed media collages. Could you tell us about the process of creation? How long does it take to move from an idea to a piece of art? How important is ‘layering’?

When I walk into my studio, I rarely have a fixed idea of what will happen next. I feel loose and unstructured. I know my materials and my limits, and that’s about it.

I often feel like I am jumping off a cliff, and hoping I float. I crave that intense feeling.

Because I currently make drawings, I battle the damage done decades ago by art professors who told me I was drawing “wrong”.

Strangely, the path to understanding and accepting my skill set in drawing was attached to fully embracing the name of “artist” – they must have linked deep in my lizard brain. When I made my first “drawing” I felt like an artist. Finally.

I intuitively make marks, and more marks, and cover and erase. I add and subtract color and shape. I see drawing as the balance between creation and destruction – this tension results in an object, and its aura. There is a certain amount of fear in my physical activity, and a balancing amount of joy, when the object, imbued with its own life, attracts my attention.

What are you trying to communicate with your art?

First and foremost, I am a diarist. I draw simple stuff that I see around me, the built environment. The work exists solely for me and is a series of fables I tell myself.

The most important experience I have looking at my work is joy and delight. In some ways, I use my work to reconnect with whatever shadow character traits I lost long ago: silly innocence, the belief that the ordinary can be extraordinary, a feeling of mystery about the world.

To what extent does the pandemic influence your depiction of art? Does it generate new inspiration? 

It doesn’t. I am a loner by nature, and the global lockdown did not change my habits too much.

The pandemic created new platforms for opportunity – like online artist residencies – and this feels so expansive and positive.

How do you feel about being involved in an online residency program? How important is it to stay connected with the international art community?

This has been an amazing experience, and I feel lucky to be a participant. I am already looking for other similar programs for the next few years.

What are your thoughts about the theme ‘artist on standby’? Tell us a bit more about your project…

I am an “artist on stand-by” because I only have a few months before I can leave my day job and be in my studio full-time.

I feel like I am gathering and harnessing energy towards that moment. I can’t predict what the work will be during this phase of my life while “on stand-by” and I don’t have a particular project in mind.

What do you want to achieve before things return to normal?

We are in the new normal! I can’t answer that question yet!

Any future plans/projects?

I am fascinated by the Dark Sky parks around the globe and have plans to visit several of them.

I’m not at all sure how the experience of the parks and dark skies will turn up in my work. I can’t make that forecast. I don’t have a clue about the energy I will take from the experience.

But I am pulled there.