ABOUT ME

Intro

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Although born in Texas, I grew up in two suburbs of Chicago. My creativity and ability to research and present information emerged early on, and I benefitted from attending two small grade schools and one very large high school, where these skills were given the opportunity to see the light of day – and be graded.

A family vacation during high school included tours of the mansions of Newport, Rhode Island. Combined with ongoing drafting classes, a fire was lit inside me, and for all intents and purposes, I became an architect. I did not play baseball with the neighbors – I designed houses, using pencil, bic pen, ruler, and poster board. The die was cast and although my fantasy collided with calculus and physics classes at Iowa State University, I enjoyed a non-traditional career with two large architectural firms, in offices from Chicago to LA to San Francisco. Their size and flexibility gave me plenty of opportunity to explore my interests and skills, ranging from building models and designing hospital bathrooms to writing marketing proposals and directing the creation of brochures and party invitations.

The Chicago firm was directly across the street from the Art Institute, and I spent hours there. An entire wall was devoted to Joseph Cornell’s meticulously worn boxes, and another, to Seurat’s A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. I absorbed a lot, without ever having to take art history classes. Much later, during a midlife transition, I encountered the work of artists like Jess Collins, Achilles Rizzoli, Henry Darger, and others whose work might be classified as Outsider Art. It is fair to say I belong to this group, but the art is inside me, and that is what matters most.