My first creations in the visual arts came about as a direct result of working with Peter Schuman’s Bread and Puppet Theatre in New York City in the early 1960s. It was after performing as a masked dancer in Schuman’s TOTENDANZ production in 1962, that I began mask-making and also creating small hand puppets. The materials I used were clay, paper mache and fabric . I also started painting in oils at that time.
I moved to San Francisco in 1964. A prolonged trip to Mexico in 1965-66 lent inspiration to further mask-making and I had a one-woman show of masks in San Francisco in 1967.
For many years, I have participated in classes and workshops at the Fort Mason Art Center in San Francisco, studying sculpture, ceramics, printmaking, batik and fabric arts.
I work in a variety of mediums. I enjoy the discoveries I make when I use a wide range of materials as I attempt to translate my ideas and images into form, shape, color and texture.
Some of my work has a narrative quality. Viewers often find themselves immediately attaching their own personal story to the subject.
I use human and animal figures in what might be called a kind of imaginary humanism. Often my characters are in an active and happy relationship to each other: the swimmer and the seal, the woman with the octopus, the dancer with her dance and the musician with his instrument. I attempt to infuse my work with the spirit and rhythm I find in the natural world and in my own imagination.