"Go To Your Studio And Make Stuff". I took Fred Babb’s advice long before I ever had a studio. As a child, I often brought home leaves, plants, rocks, and shells that I found on various outdoor "treasure hunts". I would turn them into posters, jewelry, or whatever else caught my fancy. I was always the happiest when I was either outside in the middle of nature, or at home "making stuff".

My earliest relationship with glass came about when I began collecting and trading marbles with the neighborhood kids. When I discovered that I could super-heat the "clearies" (by throwing them onto the caged coil of my parents' space heater from the ‘60’s), place them in ice water, and end up with crackle-glass marbles, I began a whole new "line" of jewelry. All this at the tender age of 9 - how I kept from burning down the house is beyond me.

Ah, but mucking about with glass wasn’t quite enough. The following summer, I took a clothing construction class at the local Singer store and thus began my obsession with fabric, thread, and yarn. After years of making clothing and creating works with crochet, cross stitch, crewel embroidery, rug hooking, and needlepoint, I discovered the world of quilting. This is where I developed my sense of color – glorious color!

Many years later, an afternoon stroll in the Cow Hollow area of San Francisco provided me with my first Fred Babb encounter. I came home with a canvas bag proclaiming his prophetic words. The concept of studio was foreign to me, but it had a nice sound to it. A short time later I learnehow to create earrings with beads and wire, and a whole new world of jewelry making opened up to me. Fast forward a few more years - I started making those wonderful lampwork beads that I had incorporated into my jewelry. There I was, back in the world of glass again, loving every minute of it. And I gained a total appreciation for that word "studio".

Fiber called out to me again while I was selling my glass and jewelry creations at a show in 2008. I came face-to-face with the world of felting, and fell totally in love. Ten years later, I happened upon a video of acrylic fluid painting, and was intrigued. After creating a few canvases, I overhauled my felting studio, the "wet lab", to make a place for painting. Since that time, I've begun monoprinting and creating collage works.

One never knows where you'll find me at any given moment; the glass lab or the wet lab. But it's almost certain that I'll be "making stuff" in some place or another, even if I'm not in one of my studios.