The Story Behind the Work
I am a mother of three, an artist, and a lifelong observer of the small moments that reveal how quickly life changes. Motherhood has shaped the way I understand time, growth, resilience, and identity. I have watched my children grow into their own lives while continuing to discover new versions of myself. That experience the simultaneous act of holding on and letting go has become inseparable from the way I create and the stories I choose to tell.
Although I was born in San Diego, California, I have spent most of my life in Ridgeville, South Carolina. The Lowcountry has profoundly influenced the way I see. Its fog-covered roads, changing waterways, tangled trees, open fields, and traces of forgotten human presence continually remind me that transformation is always taking place, even when it happens quietly. I am drawn to places and details that are easily overlooked because they often hold the most compelling stories.
My relationship with photography began long before I understood what kind of artist I would become. I first explored image-making through film photography and collage, but photography gradually became more than a way to preserve what I saw. A photograph I made during South Carolina’s historic 2015 flood became an important turning point, showing me that a landscape could carry memory, emotion, and meaning without relying on a literal narrative. As my practice developed, I also used photography to help teenagers express emotions and experiences they found difficult to communicate while raising awareness about teen suicide. That experience showed me that photography could give people a voice, create connection, and communicate what words sometimes cannot. It strengthened my commitment to using symbolism, environment, body language, and visual narrative to explore complex emotional experiences.
My education gave me the language to understand what I had already begun to feel instinctively. I earned my Bachelor of Fine Arts in Fine Art Photography from Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design and am currently completing my Master of Fine Arts in Photography at the Academy of Art University. Throughout that journey, my work has continued to evolve. I entered graduate school still searching for a clear artistic identity, but through experimentation, research, and many changes in direction, I discovered that transformation itself was not simply a recurring subject in my work it was at the center of it.
Outside of my art practice, I work as a lead engineer and drafter within the defense industry. At first glance, engineering and fine art may appear to occupy entirely different worlds, but both require patience, precision, problem-solving, and the ability to visualize something before it fully exists. My professional work has strengthened my attention to structure and detail, while art gives me the freedom to work through intuition, emotion, and ambiguity. One side asks me to find exact answers; the other allows me to remain inside the questions.
My current photographic work explores time, memory, resilience, and transformation through the natural environment. I am especially interested in the quiet tension between beauty and unease an image that first appears peaceful but gradually reveals evidence of disruption, absence, or change. Light plays a central role in that experience. Nature is not simply the subject of my photographs; it is the language through which light, time, and emotion become visible. Weather, scale, composition, human remnants, and the gradual reclamation of those remnants allow me to suggest a story without completely defining it.
Metaphor is the thread connecting every part of my creative practice. I do not use metaphor to give an image one fixed meaning. Instead, I use it to create space for the viewer’s memories and experiences to enter the work. A fallen tree can speak of loss or survival. A rusted fence can suggest separation, protection, or the passage of time. Light breaking through darkness can represent hope, but it can also expose what was previously hidden. The meaning develops slowly through the relationship between what is shown, what is absent, and what the viewer brings with them.
That same patience and attention continue in my graphite drawings. Working in graphite slows the creative process down even further. Each drawing is built gradually through layers of marks, subtle changes in value, and close observation. Where photography allows me to recognize and preserve a fleeting moment, graphite asks me to remain with a subject for hours sometimes weeks until it emerges from the paper. Both practices are rooted in the same desire: to reveal meaning within something that might otherwise be passed by.
Whether I am working with a camera or a pencil, I am interested in more than creating a beautiful image. I want to make work that rewards stillness work that invites someone to pause, look again, and recognize that transformation is often happening in the quietest places.