About the Artist

 

I am originally from New York. I lived in Brooklyn as a child, but I spent much of my youth in Ohio and later moved to Japan after spending a year there as a high school exchange student. After a year at Webster College (now Webster University), in St. Louis, I earned an undergraduate degree in Japanese and a master's degree in modern Japanese literature at Ohio State University and then moved back to Japan more or less permanently, living there between 1984 and 2000, mostly in Tokyo. I relocated with my family to Santa Rosa, California in 2000 and have lived here since.

 

I am self-taught and active in a range of media, including drawing, painting, printmaking, collage, and photography. I got interested in photography at the age of eight and began drawing at an earlier age. Figure drawing has been a life-long interest, and the nude has figured prominently in my photographic work as well. In the realm of abstract art, I have worked extensively as a printmaker and more recently in collage. My printmaking has included traditional methods such as etching and woodblock printing, but many of my prints use methods of my own—for example, printing from corrugated board and from found objects such as twine, bubble plastic, and paper cutouts.

 

My work is in private collections in the US and Japan. Gallery shows of my printmaking have included solo shows at Suikatou, in Tokyo (1995), at Suikatou again (1996), and at Mominoki Gallery, also in Tokyo (1997). My photography has been shown at The Canvas Gallery, in San Francisco (2006), at The Spinster Sisters, in Santa Rosa (2015), and the Healdsburg Center for the Arts (2016). Photographic works have been published in Naked, Feierabend Press, Germany (2004) and in Nudes 3: The Best of International Nude Photography, Feierabend Unique Books, Germany (2012). Collage works were included in the Small Works Show at Gallery 1337, at Art Works Downtown, in San Rafael (2013) and in a solo show at The Spinster Sisters (2015). Collage works have been included in the juried Collage and Assemblage Show at the O'Hanlon Center of the Arts (2016), the international Marvelous! show of collage, assemblage, and construction at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts (2017), a solo show at Mario Uribe's Seishin Studio (2018), The 18th Annual Wabi Sabi Show at the O'Hanlon Center for the Arts (2022), The 19th Annual Wabi Sabi Show there (2023), and in Dualities, also at the O'Hanlon Center, and in Paper's Edge: Collage and Mixed Media at Hammerfriar Gallery, in Healdsburg (2024). I have participated in the Sonoma County Art Trails open studio event (two weekends in October each year), since 2014.

 

I am the creator of Serendipitous Art, a blog that celebrates the unintended art all around us. Other interests include wine and winemaking, beekeeping, bird watching, and bird photography. On my personal blog, I write about many subjects, but a substantial chunk of the content there is about art. 

 

 

Collages

 

I've made drawings, paintings, and photographs since childhood. Collage is a new pursuit (since summer 2013)—but one I’ve quickly come to enjoy. I paint with abandon on paper, cut the paintings up and glue them back together in new ways, or I paint on paper and use still-wet colors to print onto other sheets of paper that I then slice and dice, or I make monotypes (pressing paper directly onto colors spread on glass). I enjoy seeing compositions emerge from the paper elements as I arrange them and contemplate their relationships. I hope you enjoy looking at my collages as much as I enjoy making them.

 

 

Photography

 

I began making photographs as a child and have been photographing the world around me all my life. I photograph whatever interests me, but have a deep body of work focused on the female nude. Other recent work has included a series of photographs of museum shadows, photographs of folded cloth, and images of dune formations at San Francisco's Ocean Beach.