Let’s see… I grew up in Detroit but have lived in Southern California for many years because I cannot bear the cold. Once upon a time I was an attorney (& a single mom), but with ever-hungry creativity being in my being, free evenings and periods of unemployment found me in art & design classes or doing self-study (many thanks to community colleges, public libraries and online learning platforms.) I have taken coursework from drawing to industrial design, but classes in ceramics and screen printing introduced me to surface decoration and lit a fire that has burned excitedly ever since. A long, winding and rocky road has brought me to this point, but my heart wouldn’t allow me to do anything else.

I’ve wanted to do this since high school, but I have to tell you, learning to draw as an adult was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done (and I was a science major!) But faithfully rendering something feels so left-brain for me, and I think that left-braining is very much overdone in my life (probably true for a lot of people), so my style of art is an attempt to be balanced and operate more from my feelings/heart/intuition/spirit. And it feels really, really good.

Influences: Nature, traditional African art, mid-century art & design, Scandinavian design, and pretty much any shape that catches my eye. I love Marimekko and early on hoped to be like Maija Isola, but was dismayed to see that my style is quite different (not that it shouldn’t be, but you know what I mean). I do think, however, that a similar preference for simplicity can be seen in my work. 

Process: I work intuitively, letting my hands do as they wish or attempt to express my feelings through my hands. I respond to stimuli - nature, shapes, images of interest from the many, many library books I borrow… Sometimes (often annoyingly as I’m drifting off to sleep), images appear in my head and I am simply obligated to get up and transcribe. (So my nightstand is covered with cans of tools for bedtime doodling & scribe work.) It seems the bottom line of my process, as well as the essence of Bibilakka, is freedom and expression. It’s all I ever want. It is a constant yearning, and is everything to me.

What else? I enjoy sleep, being in or near water, MUSIC, meditating, nature, museum stores, travel, Japanese brush pens…

I am a confirmed introvert, bookworm, and lovable curmudgeon (try as I might to live up to my name :)  Ok, that was quite a bit of sharing. Enough of that.

I hope you enjoy my work, and thanks for stopping by.