Conformity has never attracted me—curiosity and risk are where my art, and I, come alive. My work has leapt across mediums, styles and subject matter for decades—not from lack of direction but from a deep commitment to exploration. What some might call inconsistency, I embrace as artistic vitality. This website shows examples from all of my adult artistic eras.
Early Training & Mural Beginnings
I earned my undergraduate degree in Art Education at the University of Kansas, with a minor in English. The curriculum provided experience in numerous mediums—from weaving (which I quickly abandoned) to jewelry making, ceramics, drawing, painting, and print-making. I once ruined a wood floor while casting an epoxy resin sculpture of a wrinkled plastic bag. I loved experimenting—with both meaning and mediums.
While student teaching in Kansas City, I tried my hand at commissioned murals. These included an Easy Rider–style scene on the wall of a Harley dealership, a five‑foot‑wide painting of a thousand‑dollar bill featuring the bar owner’s face and, in that same bar, a royal flush in hearts—an image that sparked an ongoing fascination with hearts that still surfaces in my work.
Fort Worth: Museum Work & the Turn Toward Ceramics
Shortly after graduating, I moved to Fort Worth, Texas. Within a week I landed a job at the Fort Worth Art Museum, a small but progressive and beautifully curated contemporary museum. I adored being part of the museum’s inner workings. My outgoing nature and dance background served me well: I joyfully assisted with installations and performed in Deborah Hay’s early Circle Dances and in another performance piece where the costume consisted of just a bra and girdle.
During my tenure at the museum, I interacted with numerous iconic contemporary artists. I also had many opportunities to interact with museum guests and to overhear their comments as they walked through the galleries. looked at the art.
Later, as a Recreation Instructor for the City of Fort Worth, I taught classes in arts and crafts, dance and music. Our recreation centre was deeply committed to offering inclusive programmes for people with disabilities; I taught ceramics to blind adults, assisted with bingo nights for people with cerebral palsy and—my favourite—taught square dancing to people with intellectual disabilities.
It was there that I was introduced to slip‑cast ceramics, where students painted and fired clay objects such as Thanksgiving turkey platters and Easter bunny mugs. I resisted the medium at first, but it proved more seductive than I expected. I found myself playing, first by carving low‑relief images into greenware and colouring them with bright underglazes. The results were whimsical vessels with rainbows, clouds, hearts, stormy skies, metallic thunderbolts and winged hearts. I even made one featuring a cowboy against a Texas landscape.
Whimsey and Company & the Fine Craft Years
This direction captured my fancy. In the early 1980s, I founded Whimsey and Company and created a line of playful ceramic brooches—hearts, ice cream cones, red lips, crescent moons with unique faces, rainbows with pots of gold and clouds with silver linings, among others. Initially I carved each pin one-by-one, and later created plaster moulds and slip‑cast them. They sold well in boutiques, gift shops both locally and nationally through a showroom at the Dallas Trade Center. Although setting up small‑scale mass production was interesting, the actual production lacked the creative freedom I craved.
So I pivoted to creating one‑of‑a‑kind commissioned ceramics—hand‑built and slip‑cast vases, wall hangings and jewellery. Though I began with whimsical designs, I soon gravitated toward non‑objective imagery. I enjoyed developing my own techniques; one favourite involved repeatedly applying wax resist to the low‑fired surface, air‑brushing coloured underglazes and firing off the wax in the kiln. The results were painterly and luminous—essentially paintings on ceramic, with the forms themselves functioning as the canvas. I loved collaborating with clients to create deeply personal pieces, and the practice thrived for over a decade.
I also showed these fine craft pieces in galleries. My first solo show at the Front Door Gallery in Dallas (now closed) was especially successful. However, I preferred the personal interaction that commissioned work afforded.
MFA & the Language of Text + Image
After exploring ceramics fully and craving new stimulation, I enrolled in the Master of Fine Arts programme at the University of North Texas. Lacking a painting portfolio, I entered through the sculpture department. I fell briefly in love with stone carving but found it too hard on my body, so I returned to painting, drawing and mixed media—my first loves.
In graduate school, I explored a range of subjects and approaches: large abstract expressionist canvases that evolved into “X” paintings, then graffiti‑inspired works followed by intricate oil paintings made entirely of overlapping handwritten text; these pieces told stories of extraordinary moments in my life—experiences I could only describe as miraculous. Then, I began integrating images with text. That’s when I discovered the mannequins.
Woman as Object & the Mannequin Years
Friends who owned Montage Imagers were manufacturing eerily lifelike mannequins. For me, it was love at first sight. The owners generously allowed me to photograph the assembled and unassembled mannequins to my heart’s content. I did so obsessively, using stark chiaroscuro lighting to emphasise their uncanny presence. These photos became the foundation for a new body of work exploring how we humanise objects and objectify people, particularly women.
This direction culminated in my MFA thesis exhibition, Woman as Object. I included large charcoal renderings of four of the mannequins, but the centerpieces of the exhibition was the installation consisting of twelve pieces. These included images of four women I knew, rendered to resemble mannequins—bald with seams where their body parts would attach. Each woman appeared in three pieces:
- a large charcoal drawing depicting her as a mannequin, seated or crouching and wordless;
- a large oil painting of the woman depicted like a mannequin with transcribed text from her interview subtly integrated; and
- a short video showing only her head as she spoke highlights distilled from a one‑hour interview.
The exhibition also included a MetaPhaser™ (borrowed from the inventor), a device I used to visually merge any exhibition guest’s face with that of a mannequin—an unsettling experience underscoring the theme.
New Mediums and New Meanings
After grad school, I returned to commissioned art—this time in the form of photographic portraits, nude and clothed, which I rendered in my signature chiaroscuro style. Many became large‑scale charcoal drawings. Photography remains a cornerstone of my practice—sometimes as raw material, sometimes as the final work itself.
Meanwhile, I did a series of small feminist works called Woman as Commodity. These pieces featured photorealistic graphite drawings of magazine models from around the world, overlaid with clear acrylic boxes printed with lists of products that could be sold with each body part. The text cast shadows across the women’s images—symbolic of how media‑imposed roles obscure their individuality.
One-Sentence Stories, Etc.
I’m continuing to combine text and images in a series I call “one‑sentence stories”—mixed media pieces that feature a single, often wry sentence that tells an entire story from my life.
One of my favorites is Bicycle Sentence, a mixed-media work recounting an incident when I was three or four years old. It features a blurry pencil drawing of me at that age on a tricycle. Two parallel sheets of acrylic are suspended within a clear acrylic box in front of the, imprinted with less opaque versions of the drawing and the sentence. When the viewer moves in front of the piece, it appears that the images themselves are moving.
One of my other favourite recent works is Paper Doll: a 7’4″ wooden replica of a paper doll modeled on a woman who’s a dear friend, complete with changeable outfits (a boudoir ensemble and a house dress with apron) and a traditional paper doll style stand. The large scale makes it powerful, both visually and conceptually.
A Mission Takes Shape
My career took an unexpected turn a few years ago. Beginning when I was working at the Fort Worth Art Museum, I became interested in making a difference with people who found contemporary art frustrating or inaccessible. I had a theory of what might work began practicing by taking groups of friends to contemporary exhibitions. The goal was for them to gain access to the transcendent, awe‑filled experience with modern and contemporary art that I knew was possible. Much to my delight, the tours worked!
Through these tours I learned that, in order for people to be free to deeply appreciate the art, it’s important for them to recognise and dispel preconceived notions that prevent them from being open to the experience. These counterproductive beliefs lie behind comments like “What’s that supposed to be?” and “My five‑year‑old could do that.”
After conducting many successful art tours, I wanted to reach more people, so I began writing a book to share this transformative approach. As I worked on it intermittently over the years, it evolved into an all‑around primer on appreciating and engaging with art—incorporating interviews with art professionals and practical guidance on everything from hanging pieces in your own space to starting a collection. With the invaluable assistance of my brilliant editor and talented designer, it was finally published under the title, The Magic of Modern Art—How to Love Modern & Contemporary Art in 2022
The original vision I’d had of transforming the world’s relationship with modern and especially contemporary art was reawakened when I attended the Conference for Global Transformation for the first time in 2020. At this online conference, I was surrounded by people who had taken on huge commitments for the world and were producing astonishing results.
I left that weekend conference fully committed to bringing about a world where everyone everywhere experiences the magic and wonder of modern and contemporary art. This had been my dream ever since I first began experimenting with art tours for friends.
Today, I lead a growing movement thanks to the efforts of a small but talented part‑time team and the generosity of an extraordinary group of supporters known as the Magic of Modern Art Mensches. Through workshops, museum tours, educator trainings and docent trainings, we’re spreading the magic far and wide. To learn more, please visit the Magic of Modern Art.
At my core I have always been an artist, and I have exciting plans for new work. In spring 2025 I moved from Austin, Texas, to Vancouver, British Columbia—new surroundings but the same commitment. For me, art isn’t just what I make; it’s what I awaken in others.