It begins with place.
My work is rooted in the lake lands of the Midwest where I was born, the Southwestern desert where I grew up, my home on the forest-shores in the Pacific Northwest, my family homelands of Italy and Germany, and landscapes—urban, rural, wild—around the world. I am grateful to live on the unceded ancestral lands of the Dxʷdəwʔabš (Duwamish) and Bəqəlšuł (Muckleshoot) peoples.
As an artist, I’m a scavenger, a bricoleur, an alchemist. I’m drawn to sites of fecund (de)composition. My creative methods include pattern work, earthwork, (re)assembly, grafting, transplanting, constraint, and collage.
My essays, interviews, visual art, and short fiction appear in True Story, BOMB Magazine, Orion, Northwest Review, Tahoma Literary Review, X-R-A-Y, Hunger Mountain, Bayou, Baltimore Review, The Normal School, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. As a collective, my creative work explores the intersection of spirituality, science, philosophy, myth, and architectures of faith.
A Jack Straw Writer and alumna of Artist Trust’s EDGE Development program for literary artists, my art practice is supported by grants, residencies, and fellowships from 4Culture, Centrum, the City of Burien, the Civita Institute, Invoking the Pause, Jack Straw, Marble House, Mineral School, Seattle Public Library, Shunpike, Stoveworks, Vermont Studio Center, and Willapa Bay AIR.
An advocate for public art and working artists, I serve as an arts commissioner for the City of Burien, Washington, a youth mentor in creative nonfiction, a manuscript reader for Split Lip Press and Sarabande Books, and creative nonfiction editor of Crab Creek Review. I’m also a passionate champion of full coverage of butters, jams, and spreads on toast.