About the Artist

I was born in Wisconsin, post WWII, a 1950’s baby boomer, to fundamentalist Christian parents.

Growing up, I was a regular little girl with an edge for cutting the hair off her dolls, and re-styling their clothes. During my grade school years, I would pour over shoe boxes filled with family snapshots, both on snow days and days of boredom.

My first camera was a hand-me-down Kodak 120, with a round red window to show the frame number. My favorite subjects were always people.

My second camera was a 1972 35mm Fujica. In 1977, my third camera, a Canon 35mm SLR, sealed my commitment to photography, and it is the same camera I use today. My favorite film is Kodak TMAX 100 black and white.

In the 1980’s, my artwork focused on collage work using my own photographs plus those of photographer friends, Joan Abbott and Joel Beeson. Surrealism with figurative landscapes took shape, and hand painting my black and white work emerges.

In the1990’s more collage work is born, using my own images alone. My 1994 studio work begins with tabletop still-lifes. Building little sets, and learning lighting techniques for my 2D photo cut-outs, “Stranger than Fruit” is a welcome change from my work in collage.

1996 closes with more stills - “Confessions and Keepsakes”, and opens with my ongoing series of portraits, “Ceremonies for Saints” .

1996 closes again with the onset of bilateral carpal tunnel, tennis elbow and shoulder pain. My art dwindles until 1998 when I’m in the thick of another freakish disabler – Fibromyalgia - which forces me to stop everything.

Now in 2014, I’m doing better, and my work resumes with a group of portraits called “Divine Enigmas”. In this series of images, I’m taking my old portrait negatives and setting them to flame. Printing from the melted transparencies is both fun and very experimental, as my control is limited and the end result is always a surprise.

My Work has appeared in Photo Metro magazine, in 1990 and 1995, and, Shots magazine, 1991,1993,1995,1996, and, in Darks Art Parlour Periodical in 1997.

I am happily living in Oakland CA, with husband Robert Silverman, The Theremin Guy.

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