I have been taking photographs for over forty years. I want to catch moments in time that no one else sees, and preserve them forever. I have a bachelor's degree in fine arts photography, and worked in the film industry as a special effects camera operator in the early days of motion control. I worked on "Pee Wee's Playhouse" (dinosaur camera operator), "Jaws 3-D", "Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling", the PBS series "The Infinite Voyage", and many commercials.
In 1991 I started teaching elementary school in Los Angeles. I found I had a hidden calling. I have now taught for twenty one years, but I retain my love of images. I miss the old days of film, when the excitement of the latent image, the challenge of manipulating the film to show the way your mind's eye saw the end photo were part of the process, as one waited for the lab or developed film and printed. The immediacy of digital photography is intoxicating, yet it's not quite the same.
When I was pregnant with my son twenty three years ago I started making shrines. I continue to make shrines and collect religious and folk art. When I started teaching in Los Angeles I was immediately struck by my lack of identifiable ethnicity. I started searching for the culture I was raised in, and I realized that the culture of my childhood was Catholicism. While I no longer endorse Catholic doctrine, I find comfort and power in statues of saints, in shrines, and in religious artifacts. There is a strong sacrilegious voodoo power to these objects that I find very appealing.
