It Tastes Like Flowers, composited photographs with colorized image from 1910
 

ABOUT

     I  have lived a charmed life.

     I was educated in fine art (painting, drawing, etc) and went to school for art and photography in Santa Monica, California where I lived for 45 years.  I inherited a house in upstate New York and moved into it in 2014.

     My first job was at an architectural firm in Santa Monica where a couple of MGM art directors set up their firm which designed most of the amusement parks in the world at that time. I married the feasibility consultant.

   I was always surrounded by very interesting people in an era when California living was absolutely the best. In fact, when we bought our house in Santa Monica, we ended up owning Shirley Temple's playhouse, sitting in our back yard, but torn down by the new owners when the owner not only confirmed with Shirley Temple Black that it was hers, but demanded that Mrs. Black take it off the property. 

     My husband encouraged me to continue painting. I had turned our Model T size garage into a studio and I was visited regularly by a couple of movie people who lived in the neighborhood and who were curious to see what I was up to. Frank Gehry moved in around the corner. I never met him, but remembered seeing him driving around in his burgundy BMW 2002. If I lived in a bubble, I would like to live there all over again and never leave. I was surrounded by creative energy. Mr. Wilson and I were divorced and life required other priorities.

 Why did I stop drawing, painting and making art?  This is a true story. I was in a graphic art at Santa Monica College. I had about 14 years' experience over the other students. It wasn't a competition. I had to explain to the other students that I had a lot more mileage on them. I was pretty well known because the exhibit in the art building was, as my instructor bragged, basically showcasing me. The exhibit stayed up for two semesters. There was a girl in my class who was an awful artist.... I shouldn't say that - she didn't have the mileage yet. She lived with her parents and could afford to get any job at entry level. She ended up in the movie studios. One Christmas, she sent me a card, telling me about her fabulous job. At the end of the paragraph, she said, "What happened to you? You were my hero." I was crushed. I had rent to meet. I did not have a live at home opportunity. I stopped my interest in art and denied myself too many years of drawing. How do you spell this backwards: "I lived a charmed life." It was tough at times, but there's a lot of polish left on that stone. Nothing stops us, excpet ourselves. I'm drawing again. It's a bit of a journey because loss of time equates to some loss of skills, but it's an exciting adventure with room for something new.
 

   My first camera was a Pentax K1000 Asahi. My first digital camera was operated with a floppy disc. I pursued photogrpahy forever and when anybody and everybody could call themselves a photographer, I was unable to find work in the field. A friend of mine, a rock and roll photographer who travelled with top stars complains about the same thing! It sort of reminds me when I spent all of that money to become a paste up artist and most of you don't know what that is. It was killed by something known as Quark desk top publishing. Killed off immediately at that.

  In the 1990s, I wanted to learn a new program called Photoshop. I hunted around and found someone I could pay to teach me. He was in the "adult business." I was not, but we had a good laugh all too often over his crazy work style and I learned how to use the software. He and his wife are still good friends to this day.

   I sell photographic prints at Munson Museum store in Utica, NY.