was raised in Berkeley in the '40s, '50s and '60s. My dad was a professor at the University, and then dean of the graduate school. My mom helped to organize activities for the International House, so there were foreign students around all the time. She was also involved in university student activities and community work, and had many women friends, some of whom were artists. Although her primary focus was the house, our home was always filled with energy from the community. This played a part in what I came to see as important about how to live life.   

We never had TV, so I drew and read a lot. One of the highlights of dinner was conversation about what was going on at home, in the community and in the world. Talking was very important. And this was the beatnik era, so I would go up to Telegraph Avenue after high school, sit in coffee shops and talk to friends about things we had heard or read.   

I grew up in a rosy haze, believing that if I worked hard I could have anything I wanted. This was probably due to the combination of the times and the influence of my parents. I know it is very important for parents to be encouraging and supportive, to enable children to feel they can develop to their fullest potential.   

When it came time to go to college, I wanted to travel as far away as possible. I went to Laurence University in Wisconsin, where I took some art and general education classes. Wanting to be unique, I decided to major in theater. In my junior year, I switched to UCLA. After graduation, I traveled and worked for five years. In 1970 I went to Sonoma State University for early childhood education and teaching credentials. As I look at my life now, I see the importance of different paths-teaching, creativity, and community. Although I thought there was a single right path for me, the combination has proven to be more workable.   
   
  
I moved to Willits in 1972, taught one year in the public school system and then began a co-op school with a group of parents. I felt a sense of community in Willits, but it was at Mariposa school that I learned what living in community was about-to do what is important individually but also to live, work, teach and play with others with a common goal. I had several different jobs at Trinity school over the years, where I also had a close-knit core of good friends with whom I felt like I was growing up. We stayed up late at night, tried to figure out what to do with the kids, what to make of our lives, and what we were looking forward to.   

I was developing myself artistically during this same time period. Purchasing my first sewing machine was a seminal event since it opened my eyes to many creative possibilities. I made quilts in Willits, and after leaving Mariposa school, I moved briefly to Hawaii where I began experimenting with textile dyes-painting on fabric and manipulating it through applique and trapunto (cutting, piecing and stuffing areas of fabric to form a picture). In the late '70s and early '80s I took many art classes at Mendocino College-jewelry, textiles, painting, and drawing. The instructors were very available and generous. I felt this was my place to be. When the California Arts Council provided a grant to begin an artist's collective called MADE in Mendocino in the early 1980s (as well as Mendocino Woolens and Ukiah Players Theater), I became a founding member. MADE was located in the round stone "gallery" owned by Fetzer Vineyards. I began to do quite a lot of sewing-pillows, quilts, hangings, and strange doll people ranging from three to eight feet tall-and to show my work in Marin County and San Francisco.   

My husband Chris and I were married in 1983. We had our son, Riley. I was working at the college pre-school, and took leave when he was born. Family became my prime focus, but I spent a lot of time at home in Talmage, looking out the window trying to figure out what I was supposed to be doing. I was hooked on the "supposed-to-be" track. I found myself planting flowers and herbs in patterns in the garden, and sewing pillows that were representations of life. When we later moved into town, Chris built me a studio in the back of the house and I began to concentrate on working with silk. Holly Brackman, a teacher at Mendocino College and a very important conduit in my life, had introduced me to silk dyes. The paint or dye used on cotton has the thickness of acrylic so that it more easily stays where you paint it, but the way that silk dye shimmers and moves so quickly really caught me.   

After my daughter Kira was born in 1987, I continued teaching part-time and taking classes. Holly brought a woman named Megreit Seinan, a silk painter from Garberville, to teach a workshop at the college. I learned to work with gutta-a waxy substance like a rubber cement-to make lines on silk. By connecting the line, you could contain the dye. (I now use fine metal tips for lines.) A year later, after I took another class from her and knew-this is it. I had a studio, and was quite free to paint during the day. My dad had given me some money for Christmas, so I bought a lot of dyes. In those days you could get a lot for your money, so I bought every color and a fair amount of silk.   

Then Leila Kazima and I went to the Surface Design Convention in Seattle at the University of Washington campus for fourteen days. This was the longest I had ever been away from home, and I felt like a bird flying in free air. The campus had a textile library where you could see kimonos from the fifteenth century. There were hundreds of booths at the convention where people sold and demonstrated products. It was mind-boggling. So many people were involved with cloth manipulation in every medium you could imagine-from silk screening to tie-dyeing to sewing. I met people there whose names I recognized, saw performances, went to trunk shows at night, and had hundreds of symposia to pick from.   

Before the conference I took a five-day silk-painting class with Peggy Juve, a well-known and well-published silk painter. Her philosophy was, "I'll teach you anything and everything I know. Then you can go off on your own. You can have a hundred techniques, but unless you have your own ideas, you won't be able to produce your own art." She was a very generous teacher. I learned how to work with Procion H dyes, and to make a steamer from a canning pot to fix the dyes. My second workshop, with Betsy Sterling Benjamin, an airbrush artist from the Southwest, took place after the conference. She had studied roketuzome in Japan-an art form that involves wax and brushed-on dye for producing subtle blends from light to dark. By building it up slowly, the overall effect appears as if you had airbrushed the piece. The gradations are so minute that transitions are almost indistinguishable. Although I found the process too labor-intensive, I learned an incredible amount about shading.   

  
I met a woman in that class who became my next teacher-Susan Moyer. She was a very precise worker. I am a "messy" worker, and a real talker. I love to get to know people and find out what they are doing. In her class, Susan let me know that I was way too loud for her, and that she couldn't work where people were talking. At first this was a blow to my ego. I wanted everyone to be my friend and to like me, and here was someone asking me to work more quietly. As I took that in I realized that everyone works differently, and that people have different ways of teaching. If you want to learn from a teacher, you have to put yourself in the mode of working the way they work. Otherwise, you won't be able to completely benefit from the information they have to share.   

I came home wanting to paint day and night. In the applique process, I had loved designing, cutting, putting pictures together, and figuring out the thread colors, but I was bothered by the repetition of stitching two to three times around every piece. I wanted someone else to do that part. Once the piece was laid out, I wanted to move on. With the silk painting, I felt obsessive; I wanted to do it all the time, but if I made an error I became depressed. My husband would come home from work, and I would talk non-stop about what didn't work. Nothing I did was quite right. All I could see were the mistakes.   Looking back, I think I was actually processing how to fix the problems. I was also fighting with a common dilemma: If you are going to be an artist, don't you have to make money? I felt, If I don't make money, I don't get to do this, and I'll have to do something else. That really infringed on my creativity.   

When I was sewing, I made lists of things I thought would be fun to create. I made things like "Creampuff with a Dream," a creampuff lady who opened up-and inside was her dream. Ideas would come rapidly. With silk painting I tried to think of themes that would sell. I worked alone, and didn't know quite where I was headed. I was split in several directions.  

In 1992 we found a place two blocks away with an acre and a half of land that was wonderful for the kids. This place had an apartment, so it also had the potential for my dad to move in with us (my mom had died in 1989). Our bid was accepted but when it was time to sign the contract, I thought, Oh my God, my studio. I will have no studio! In that moment, I felt, I don't want to move. I was the only person in the family who had second thoughts. I wanted to move for the sake of my family, yet I also wanted to stop it all; I wanted my studio, my outlet. Well of course, we did move, and I began to work in the back room (with the washer and dryer). I still work there.   

  
Students at Mendocino College are a mixed group, coming from all walks of life. Many are working, have families, and are trying to live a rich but fast-paced life. It is difficult for them to concentrate just on studies.   

Culturally, growing up in Berkeley with people from many different countries, I wasn't so conscious of a Euro-centered majority. I realized that in a rural area where there is less cultural diversity, it is very important for students to share traditions and history. By making family background a part of education, everybody can feel honored. I started requiring family history and artist interviews in my class. I wanted people to see artists in every walk of life. A chef is an artist, a gardener is an artist, and a mother is an artist.  An artisan is anyone who goes wholeheartedly into what their craft, and learns and grows in that medium. As I started learning about the people in our community-from piñata makers to basket makers-I began compiling histories that I am hoping to share in a book someday.   

  
In the last few years I have realized that I wasn't really being stopped from doing art; I was just in what my dad called the "Ukiah mom syndrome." When you are in the nesting phase of life, there are so many things to do for your kids that you have to be organized. I had never learned to be an organized person. I learned that I don't necessarily have to paint for sixteen hours a day to call myself a painter or an artist; I just to have to be organized enough to always have something going on-something flowing-that I get to when I can. It's great if I can produce a large number of pieces, but what is most important is that I'm working and involved.   

I always have a lot of ideas, and would like to be working on six pieces at a time even though I don't have room for that. But whatever I am doing, I am enjoying the moment more. As I see the dye flow out across that silk, I am no longer so afraid of making a mistake. I feel comfortable knowing that I can work with mistakes, and if something is not what I originally thought of, I can change it. In the last two years I rejoined MADE in Mendocino. This last season in Ukiah was very successful for me. I have started doing scenes that have something to do with my life and beliefs.   

  
Over the years, I have sat in on Frank Tuttle's art history classes and was amazed to hear about his life, his connection to the Earth and his tribal background. I have wanted to find those rich connections in my life. Although I wasn't aware of Jewish symbols or pictures, I had adopted pictures that were everywhere in my environment. With some Native American petroglyphs, images and symbols in my work, I sometimes wondered, Am I stealing? At the same time I felt like I was making them mine.  I am now exploring, What are my pictures? I have been reading and looking at historical Jewish and Israeli symbols, creating images of women, images related to my connection with the Earth-flowers, movement, sky, weather, light-and images of children.   

  
I am happy to be in a rural area where I can hear the water, see the grass and wildflowers, and perceive things at their source-and also to have grown up in the city with access to museums, libraries, the people and the openness of ideas. I have been lucky to always meet people with common interests to my own. I have many friends who have lasted throughout my life, some twenty and twenty-five years and one almost forty.   

I used to think I had to move to a more perfect place or situation or to do something more. I even used to hear/feel a voice in my right ear saying, "Keep going, keep going, moving up higher." That voice is still with me, but I am finally allowing myself to be content. I have put down roots and am seeing what is around me. I'm happy right now!   

I have learned that you can think about things, accumulate tools, plan, and wait for the perfect time, but none of those things will motivate you like stepping out and putting yourself in front of your work-making yourself do it. Everybody has blocks, but if you don't come to the table, you don't work. Perfection is a great idea, but the process of initiating movement is what gets you going. Once you get that hand moving or that thought on the paper, more follows. Life is involved with the spiraling of ideas-the paint flowing, the seeds growing, the kids running and the word being shared.