I offer an invitation to you to see some of the writing work, photography and teaching passions and engagement I’ve been cultivating for many years, which has allowed me to explore, experiment with, and develop concepts and experiences into artistic forms that try to deal with some of the mysteries of ourselves with ourselves, and with the world, that give continual challenge and pleasure in doing the work. Writing in several genres and utilizing visual arts of film and photography for expression and understanding our world, has taught me to continually observe what’s around us, and to find new perspectives. As a child, creative opportunities were plentiful: free music lessons in grade school, ballet classes with a small performing company, and acting workshops and productions, which captivated me as I saw how a person could “become” another human being through craft, heightened awareness and stepping into other people’s shoes. At CalArts, an art school just north of Los Angeles, I worked in their wonderfully experimental theater school, and also acted in film students’ short movies where I found that I liked being behind-the-camera more than in front of it. I was able to transfer into the film school, and after editing student films there, I went into the “real” world of film post-production. I assisted editors, and edited television and film (before digital editing) often supervising processes in the editing rooms, working with sound effects, visual effects, and music composition crews. The crafts of fusing so many elements of a film taught me how to love the processes of layering language to create story and emotion and depth of character. Editing allows for endless conjunctions of images, and it was those possibilities that fueled my desire to write, to discover some of the endless ways that art can illustrate experiences other than the ones we personally live.
During the years in the movie business, I found a poetry workshop at The Midnight Special Bookstore in Santa Monica, the store being one of the holy grails of bookstores when I moved to Los Angeles at fifteen years old. Out of this weekly participation I concentrated on developing craft and voice and uses of language to reveal the truth of situations. I met wonderful poets I still work with, and heard renowned poets read their work which inspired me to “stay the course.” I attended graduate school at Vermont College, a low-residency MFA program, and after graduating, was able to teach poetry at the University of Redlands for a while and spent years teaching students at The Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandizing where fashion designers, marketers and visual artists were required to take English Composition and other communication courses I taught. The students created a constant situation of give-and-take, and I keep in me the indelible lessons from teaching a wonderful diversity of students.
During the years of long hours and weeks in my two careers, I concentrated on my own writing as I expanded my scope with poetry by participating in additional workshops in Los Angeles, helping run reading series for other poets, and was and am involved with Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center, the oldest literary organization in LA. I am about to have my second full-length book, titled Only So Much, come out in October 2022, and am now assembling a book of short nonfiction narratives and a book of prose poems, both of which will use photographs to enhance the texts. My energy and curiosity mercifully help me continue to discover creative ways to understand people and our connections to one another, our actions and consequences, as I also try, in my daily tasks and urgencies not to burden our struggling Mother Earth any further than she is.