Being an intensely private person, I have always thought of  'artist bio' as a biopsy;  slicing out a part of myself and putting it under the microscope of public scrutiny.  I'm the kind of person who hates talking on the telephone, because I can't see the eyes, judge the reactions, and make a connection with the person I'm talking to.  The written word is even more remote and more easily misunderstood.  When I talk with you, I want something back.  I want to frown or smile with you and share our different views of this crazy old world, and relish those differences. 

If you want to know where I've been I can give you bits and pieces.

I'm old.  I was born in East LA, in 1944, ahead of the baby boom of the USA.  I drew and colored on everything I could get my hands on.  I was curious about everything.  I still am. 

I read voraciously.  I still do.  I was influenced by my times.  I graduated early and was in college at sixteen.  I was a beatnik.  I absorbed the poetry of Ginsberg and William Carlos Williams, the social philosophies of Sartre, and Marx, the ecological concerns of Rachel Carlson.  I spent my time in coffee houses.  I drew pictures on napkins, and people hung them on the walls.  I learned to play the guitar, and played folk music. 

I met some Hells Angels at a Janis Joplin concert and rode with them for a while. 

I went to San Francisco in time to catch the last days of the Haight-Ashbury scene.  I got a job doing make-up for the San Francisco Opera Company.  I painted faces on faces and got to watch performances from backstage.

I was curious to see more of the country and hitch-hiked through the midwest and up to Wisconsin,and spent a winter there.  All along the way I drew pictures in coffee shops for coffee and doughnuts.  I read Dostoyevsky and trudged through the snow to work at a department store.  Everything sparkled like a christmas card.

I wanted to see Alaska, and got as far as Juneau.  I thought I would get a summer job there in a cannery but the government had just put a limit on the catch because of the discovery of mercury in the fish.  A carnival came to town and I asked if I could draw portraits.  I made enough money there to get back to California.

I settled there and married, had kids, and then moved to Washington.  I spent years on a large piece of land covered in deep forest, raising kids, gardening, riding horses, baking bread, picking blackberries, and painting.  I learned to cook vegetarian and to use an airbrush.  I started going to science-fiction conventions and selling my work at at the auctions.

I volunteered some time at a small new alternative high school in my town, and was asked to join the staff as an aide, to create an art department.  I spent eighteen years there, and was eventually granted an "Einstein" certificate based on my artwork,  to be a full teacher.  I taught art and media, and got interested in the artistic possibilities of computers.  My first computer work was done on an Amiga.

While I was there I worked with another teacher who had a burning desire to connect students around the world.  We took students to Russia just after the iron curtain came down.  I got to take my students to the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg to touch art treasures of the world with our eyes.  That exchange took place for several years and is cronicled in the book "Guerrilla Visions" By Phil Davis.  Then we added Mexico, and took students to Calpalalpan, a town near Mexico City, and I got to introduce my beloved punky, tatooed, leather-jacketed kids to Teotehuacan.  We have climbed the Temple of the Sun, and participated in the temascal (aztec sweat lodge) and toured the beautiful museums of Mexico City.

I retired  in 2004, and my husband and I moved to Mexico.  I found a small town that has been an artist colony for years.  I indulged myself in a project I have been dreaming of for years, to learn 3d art and animation programs and create animations to my own computer music (Reason).  I had the shell of a house built and have been building my own furniture, and cabinets, and doing landscaping.  I intend a large garden.  I can see the Pacific Ocean from my porch and hear the crash and roar of the surf.  Hurricanes occasionally pass by in the late summer.  I'm learning Spanish poco a poco (little by little).  I have begun a bug collection (to draw from) and read books on Zen.  I am working on a sketch-book, drawing and musings, to publish.  I am also learning to make glass beads. 

So what's your story?