Bio
I was born and raised in Detroit, where I attended a storied public high school, Cass Technical High School, that was a combination magnet, vocational, and exam school. At that time Cass offered a number of varied curricula in the arts and the sciences, as well as seven different vocational curricula. Located in downtown Detroit a mile or so from the Detroit Institute of Arts, it was the most inspiringly heterogeneous environment I had yet encountered, drawing an intensely diverse group of 5200 students from all over the city. Although my parents insisted that I enter the liberal arts rather than the visual arts curriculum, I was able to squeeze many of Cass’s excellent art courses into my schedule.
I went on to get a BFA from Boston University’s College of Fine Arts, and an MFA from Indiana University. I am Professor Emerita of Smith College, where I taught painting and drawing for 36 years, and twice served as Art Department Chair.
My work has been shown in over 24 solo and two-person exhibitions throughout New England, in New York City, and in upstate New York. The venues have included commercial galleries, museums, college and university art galleries, and other non-profit institutions. Work has also been included in numerous group shows up and down the east coast and in Detroit.
Museum collections representing my work include Smith College Museum of Art; DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park (Lincoln, MA); Rose Art Museum of Brandeis University; Danforth Museum (Framingham, MA); Bryn Mawr College; McMullen Museum of Boston College. Other public collections that include my work are Boston Public Library’s Collection of Prints and Drawings, and the Miami Hilton. My work is also represented in numerous corporate collections, including Merck Pharmaceutical, which in 1981 commissioned a mural for its new research center in Pennsylvania.
In 2005 my poet friend Annie Boutelle and I completed a project entitled relic-works; a collaboration, consisting of five linked images and poems. These were inspired by a rare exhibition of medieval reliquaries, “The Way to Heaven,” which we visited in the Netherlands at the turn of the millennium. The project was published as a hardcover book in 2007. A sample of the book can be viewed here.