I was born in California, fourth generation family. Growing up spent time between the beach and my grandparents ranch near the Yuba River and Oroville. Laguna Beach was home, and certainly the artist community inspired and shaped me.

I also was able to take drafting at Laguna Beach High School, and my degree is in architecture from the University of Southern California, School of Architecture.

Top row, designs for The Market in Century City,
and a layout for law offices in Santa Monica.
Center and bottom rows, a hotel in Mexico.

I both practiced and taught architecture and interior design in California. I taught at California State University, Long Beach, and I was a core instructor at the University of California Los Angeles for eight years before moving to Oregon.

In Southern Oregon, I began painting in earnest. BIG canvases, mostly acrylic, and then smaller pieces when I began making paper a few years later.

Eventually, I moved to watercolors.

For the longest time I stayed away from urban sketching because I had little interest in painting architecture, though I enjoy it now, and so you see two urban sketches here, of Pittock Mansion and Victorian Row Houses in NW Portland.

My skills as an artist are an asset in both painted finished and shellac work, two of the areas where I flourish, and am happiest!

My grandmother is responsible for my needlework skills. She hooked me on crochet at five, and taught me to tat, though sadly I have lost that memory. I taught myself embroidery, can do any stitch, and every pair of tattered jeans I owned in the 60’s had my handiwork. My grandmother left me her needles, a special gift.

I never made a quilt but Mitchell and I want to make one together! I repair quilts in the business, such as the Crater Lake Centennial Quilt, square above left. I perform most of the textile conservation and beaded repairs.

I am also our photographer and handle documentation of our treatment reports — and this is why there are fewer images of me, because I am usually holding the camera!

I am happiest when hanging with Mitchell and the cats, painting or writing on our book. (Some clients have met our studio cats. Now they have their own page: see Catservators!)

My sketch of the finish room, below. (And yes, the banners of Mitchell and I were painted by me.)