I believe I was born with a fine-tuned set of rose-colored glasses and have always looked for the silver linings — knowing that while they might be crowded out or buried, they are always there. In the busy, bustling universe we live in, my goal is to share my hopeful perspective and make sure that beauty and goodness are brought to light. It is what first drew me to explore rainbows — fleeting symbols of love and hope, usually only appearing after a storm. I stop to smell flowers and notice birds singing songs when I write and paint. Energy and magic surround us and connect us all.
My dream since I was young was to create and share beautiful things — leading me to pepper my surroundings with hopeful visuals that brighten the lives of others. I have always sought to understand my world through art — from watercolor and film developing classes as a child, continuing all through my schooling, and now in my home studio, with loads of sketchbooks, projects and explorations in between. And it is through art that I look to connect the pieces of the puzzle of life together.
Art can be really hard to define. It might seem obvious, but once you scratch the surface, you find infinite depth. On the first day of my first class in undergrad, we were confronted with this prompt: “So, what is ‘art’? Discuss …”
My husband and I met in that class, a required foundational course called Methods and Concepts. When presented with the seemingly simple question of “What is art?” it quickly became apparent that there were competing opinions. Some in the class thought that art was a painting on the wall of a museum. Others thought it was a broader umbrella and included forms of expression in dance, music and literature.
I found myself in a cohort of like-minded students with expansive views. We thought: Anything could be art if it was imagined to be so. It was the concept, the intention, the labor, the interpretation of the viewer that comprised art and our experience of it. A desk could be art. An idea could be art. A life could be lived as art.
Life is art, and art is life. Easy to say, but it’s hard to know what to do next.
My creative energy and drive sat dormant for a long time after graduating from art school. It is rare that a journey is a straight line from point A to B, and my journey has not been linear. After receiving my BFA, I spent the first half of my career working for Riverside Design Group — my family’s business — learning about entrepreneurship and all the elements required to run a business. In a small company, duties blur: owner, office manager, designer, marketing, customer service, client support, sales, fulfillment. I mainly worked in a creative capacity — I shot product photography, designed catalogs, assisted with client projects and even created the occasional new product. Between that job and taking on freelance projects, I didn’t have any juice left for my own art practice, which was frustrating.
After years of floundering, I rented a studio space in a mixed-use building with my husband and a friend. At the time, I was making paintings of poured nail polish. The tiny basement studio had no ventilation, and the fumes were so thick and so heady that even with a full respirator, the overwhelming smell would kick me out soon after making a painting. The results were beautiful and unexpected — a combination that delights me still. But while pretty, the work I was making was unsustainable for numerous reasons and we let the space go after a year.
It took the birth of my child to abandon toxic materials in favor of carving out a sustainable practice at home. After 13 years without a regular art practice, I was terrified of a white piece of paper — it was so overwhelmingly stark and blank.
I intentionally started small … using colored pencils on vintage found photographs. The photos offered an image that I could interact with, and I stuck to colorful supplies that were easy to use in the little windows of time I could carve out. I gained momentum by assigning myself the goal of making five small pieces of art every week for one year. That 5/52 project showed me that an entire body of work could be created a little at a time, and inspired me to keep going. That year, I purchased my domain name as a birthday gift to myself and an investment in my creative future.
After rooting in Chicago for 14 years, my husband accepted a job that moved our family to Buffalo. The transition was difficult and disorienting for me. We had a young kid; my income was unsteady; and I lost a network of friends that had become family. After about a year, as our life here began to gel, we started house hunting. Buffalo is rife with quirky, lovable old houses; and ours had been vacant for years before someone purchased it to flip. They refinished the main two floors but left the attic an unfinished mess. The walls were dark wooden wainscoting, and the decades-old crumbling vinyl tile was littered with nails and pink insulation — not to mention the leftovers from animals that had been living here before us. Still, the attic was the full footprint of the house with two dormers and south-facing windows that poured in light.
We bought the house because of this gem of an attic space. But even after we cleaned it up, it was rough, to say the least: cracked windows, no heat or insulation, and a billion nail points popping down through the roof. I worked up here on occasion for the first few years, but it was uninspiring and limiting. It was dark with no lighting; there were single-digit temperatures in the winter, and triple digits in the summer.
It took three years before we finally had the means to make any improvements to the space, and it has been evolving ever since. It was a combination of home art office and school during the pandemic. It hosts creative work sessions with friends; has been my shipping center for the holiday rush; and the launchpad for numerous collaborations and projects. It is the safe space the kitties run to if they are ever unsettled, and a great place for guests to spend the night or curl up with a book. It is also the hub where I host Studio Time! a weekly virtual art-making gathering for those in need of connection, accountability and creative camaraderie.
This journey I am on, and the road I am traveling, has been charted with a mix of serendipity and intention and has taken a lot of reflection, learning and encouragement. Moments accumulating and layering into a life: habits, actions, connections, ideas, thoughts, fears, hopes and dreams. As I’m gaining perspective on my creative practice, I am seeing that all these little things are the foundation of my art, and my life. From the smallest moments that grow and generate the whole and the family stories handed down over generations, to the way my days unfold — notes, lists, anecdotes, mementos and photographs — each small decision accumulates and lays out a road to the future.
It is natural to want to wait to share because I want the work to get just a little bit better, and for myself to get more established. Imposter syndrome is real, and something I know I share with so many. We don’t feel like we know enough or have enough; there’s the desire to climb just one more rung before putting ourselves out there. There will always be so much more to make, see and learn. But we are connecting here now, with me sharing where I am — even if I’m not yet all the way where I intend to go. In part, because I want to encourage you to keep taking steps and doing what’s yours to do. Because, to me, that is where the magic is.
I’m excited to continue to nurture my practice in this studio and, among other goals, expand my garden and work on manifesting a cabin in the woods. I want to fill this house with art and paint murals on the walls. I want to make more happy products and patterns. I want to take care of my body and mind. I want to inspire others to follow their dreams. I want to travel and go on adventures. I want to nurture my family and the earth. I want to love deeply and have fun. I want to get my hands dirty in the garden, and play with all the art supplies. I want to continue to make and share rainbows, flowers and other bright spots on this beautiful earth. It is such a beautiful thing to be able to create tangible things that make the world a brighter place, or connect people in the moment.
At a recent artist talk with Deborah Roberts and vanessa german — two artists I deeply admire — the phrase “blur the lines between life and art” came up in conversation. This is a phrase I have written in several notebooks and sketchbooks over the years … perhaps even since college, when the seed was planted that life could be lived as art. It has been a goal that felt elusive, but knowing that artists further in their journey are sowing these same seeds feels validating and encouraging.
It is something I will continue to chase — living life as the ultimate artistic practice.
I believe I was born with a fine-tuned set of rose-colored glasses and have always looked for the silver linings — knowing that while they might be crowded out or buried, they are always there. In the busy, bustling universe we live in, my goal is to share my hopeful perspective and make sure that beauty and goodness are brought to light. It is what first drew me to explore rainbows — fleeting symbols of love and hope, usually only appearing after a storm. I stop to smell flowers and notice birds singing songs when I write and paint. Energy and magic surround us and connect us all.
My dream since I was young was to create and share beautiful things — leading me to pepper my surroundings with hopeful visuals that brighten the lives of others. I have always sought to understand my world through art — from watercolor and film developing classes as a child, continuing all through my schooling, and now in my home studio, with loads of sketchbooks, projects and explorations in between. And it is through art that I look to connect the pieces of the puzzle of life together.
Art can be really hard to define. It might seem obvious, but once you scratch the surface, you find infinite depth. On the first day of my first class in undergrad, we were confronted with this prompt: “So, what is ‘art’? Discuss …”
My husband and I met in that class, a required foundational course called Methods and Concepts. When presented with the seemingly simple question of “What is art?” it quickly became apparent that there were competing opinions. Some in the class thought that art was a painting on the wall of a museum. Others thought it was a broader umbrella and included forms of expression in dance, music and literature.
I found myself in a cohort of like-minded students with expansive views. We thought: Anything could be art if it was imagined to be so. It was the concept, the intention, the labor, the interpretation of the viewer that comprised art and our experience of it. A desk could be art. An idea could be art. A life could be lived as art.
Life is art, and art is life. Easy to say, but it’s hard to know what to do next.
My creative energy and drive sat dormant for a long time after graduating from art school. It is rare that a journey is a straight line from point A to B, and my journey has not been linear. After receiving my BFA, I spent the first half of my career working for Riverside Design Group — my family’s business — learning about entrepreneurship and all the elements required to run a business. In a small company, duties blur: owner, office manager, designer, marketing, customer service, client support, sales, fulfillment. I mainly worked in a creative capacity — I shot product photography, designed catalogs, assisted with client projects and even created the occasional new product. Between that job and taking on freelance projects, I didn’t have any juice left for my own art practice, which was frustrating.
After years of floundering, I rented a studio space in a mixed-use building with my husband and a friend. At the time, I was making paintings of poured nail polish. The tiny basement studio had no ventilation, and the fumes were so thick and so heady that even with a full respirator, the overwhelming smell would kick me out soon after making a painting. The results were beautiful and unexpected — a combination that delights me still. But while pretty, the work I was making was unsustainable for numerous reasons and we let the space go after a year.
It took the birth of my child to abandon toxic materials in favor of carving out a sustainable practice at home. After 13 years without a regular art practice, I was terrified of a white piece of paper — it was so overwhelmingly stark and blank.
I intentionally started small … using colored pencils on vintage found photographs. The photos offered an image that I could interact with, and I stuck to colorful supplies that were easy to use in the little windows of time I could carve out. I gained momentum by assigning myself the goal of making five small pieces of art every week for one year. That 5/52 project showed me that an entire body of work could be created a little at a time, and inspired me to keep going. That year, I purchased my domain name as a birthday gift to myself and an investment in my creative future.
After rooting in Chicago for 14 years, my husband accepted a job that moved our family to Buffalo. The transition was difficult and disorienting for me. We had a young kid; my income was unsteady; and I lost a network of friends that had become family. After about a year, as our life here began to gel, we started house hunting. Buffalo is rife with quirky, lovable old houses; and ours had been vacant for years before someone purchased it to flip. They refinished the main two floors but left the attic an unfinished mess. The walls were dark wooden wainscoting, and the decades-old crumbling vinyl tile was littered with nails and pink insulation — not to mention the leftovers from animals that had been living here before us. Still, the attic was the full footprint of the house with two dormers and south-facing windows that poured in light.
We bought the house because of this gem of an attic space. But even after we cleaned it up, it was rough, to say the least: cracked windows, no heat or insulation, and a billion nail points popping down through the roof. I worked up here on occasion for the first few years, but it was uninspiring and limiting. It was dark with no lighting; there were single-digit temperatures in the winter, and triple digits in the summer.
It took three years before we finally had the means to make any improvements to the space, and it has been evolving ever since. It was a combination of home art office and school during the pandemic. It hosts creative work sessions with friends; has been my shipping center for the holiday rush; and the launchpad for numerous collaborations and projects. It is the safe space the kitties run to if they are ever unsettled, and a great place for guests to spend the night or curl up with a book. It is also the hub where I host Studio Time! a weekly virtual art-making gathering for those in need of connection, accountability and creative camaraderie.
This journey I am on, and the road I am traveling, has been charted with a mix of serendipity and intention and has taken a lot of reflection, learning and encouragement. Moments accumulating and layering into a life: habits, actions, connections, ideas, thoughts, fears, hopes and dreams. As I’m gaining perspective on my creative practice, I am seeing that all these little things are the foundation of my art, and my life. From the smallest moments that grow and generate the whole and the family stories handed down over generations, to the way my days unfold — notes, lists, anecdotes, mementos and photographs — each small decision accumulates and lays out a road to the future.
It is natural to want to wait to share because I want the work to get just a little bit better, and for myself to get more established. Imposter syndrome is real, and something I know I share with so many. We don’t feel like we know enough or have enough; there’s the desire to climb just one more rung before putting ourselves out there. There will always be so much more to make, see and learn. But we are connecting here now, with me sharing where I am — even if I’m not yet all the way where I intend to go. In part, because I want to encourage you to keep taking steps and doing what’s yours to do. Because, to me, that is where the magic is.
I’m excited to continue to nurture my practice in this studio and, among other goals, expand my garden and work on manifesting a cabin in the woods. I want to fill this house with art and paint murals on the walls. I want to make more happy products and patterns. I want to take care of my body and mind. I want to inspire others to follow their dreams. I want to travel and go on adventures. I want to nurture my family and the earth. I want to love deeply and have fun. I want to get my hands dirty in the garden, and play with all the art supplies. I want to continue to make and share rainbows, flowers and other bright spots on this beautiful earth. It is such a beautiful thing to be able to create tangible things that make the world a brighter place, or connect people in the moment.
At a recent artist talk with Deborah Roberts and vanessa german — two artists I deeply admire — the phrase “blur the lines between life and art” came up in conversation. This is a phrase I have written in several notebooks and sketchbooks over the years … perhaps even since college, when the seed was planted that life could be lived as art. It has been a goal that felt elusive, but knowing that artists further in their journey are sowing these same seeds feels validating and encouraging.
It is something I will continue to chase — living life as the ultimate artistic practice.
