artist-cv

With a B.A. in Psychology and an M.A. in Creative Arts: Experimental and Interdisciplinary Studies, my work has always tapped into the roots of art and medicine, where imagery, creativity and health intertwine. I taught at the university level for fifteen years in the Art Department: Sculpture (San Francisco State), Arts & Consciousness, and Professional Psychology Departments (John K Kennedy University), Art Therapy (Southwestern College, The George Washington University), and Expressive Arts Therapy (California Institute of Integral Studies, Lesley College). Ultimately, regardless of the "art field" titles of the universities, my work focused on the creative process of integration, and the integrative process of creativity. I have always been guided by my own art works and writings, which have taken me into the arenas of poetry, jewelry design, public art installation and commission, and individual artworks. A decade ago, I completed my doctorate from The Union Institute. This required a change from the parallel paths of my artist life and my educator life. I refocused my artistic energies to support my committment to the vocation and practice of expressive arts therapy. I co-founded Create Therapy Institute, which houses my private work as a clinician with individuals and families, and it also houses my training programs, where I teach and supervise others in the use of experiential processes of imagery and sand tray and their relationships to creativty, therapy, and health. Currently, the institute and my art studio are in the same building, allowing more time and space to engage in my own art work and its connections with integration and healing. I am deeply informed by the cycle of seasons, by developmental processes in time, by my own cultural heritage, and by the power of arrangement and ritual.

An installation of works made up of cell/egg drawings and ceramic boat/carriers reflecting the process of medical technology and fertility. Soul Carriers both awaits and carries life as a transportive process, aligning the literal with the imaginal in a relationship of awe and mystery.

Visual and poetic journey through the land of imagery, art, and health based on individual experience with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and clinical experience with medically ill patients; drawings, paintings, sculptures, and a slide and
poetry performance piece of the same title.

Association of Humanistic Psychology , National Association of Artist-Therapists, American Art Therapy Association, International Expressive Arts Therapy Association, American Group Psychotherapy Association, many colleges, universities and community programs throughout the country.

Bedouin inspired necklaces (One of A Kind Series) created to reveal the story of jewelry not as passive adornment, but as a continued story of everything it has gathered to be created and everything it will gather to be worn. Jewelry as tales of grace, tales of quiet playfulness, tales of memory, and tales of intuitive hope.

Sculptural environment as a peace ritual based on a) personal roots as a place of reflection; b) the exploration of commonality through Hebrew and Arabic language; and c) the image of a scroll as evoking lost remains of history

A series of sculptural environments and enactments exploring the relationship between our human gestural stance and the structures which oppress or empower that stance; the emotional still-life of space as either isolation or participation depending on the juxtaposition of human posturing and built environment; a narrative social history in visual and written terms, in which wo/man as we have known her/him is disappearing or undergoing transformation. This work includes the following pieces:

A sculptural piece reflecting wo/man as body/container raw, vulnerable and fragile to the awakening of the nuclear age and its relationship to procreation.

A sculptural installation of charred gestural clay figures showing wo/man as nature in relationship to the linear structure, "the biological to the industrial, the charred crumbling psyche built up, just as that around her."

An outdoor sculptural installation working with natural materials as earth and natural time processes; the idea of separation and fragmentation as commonground in natural structuring.

A sculptural installation as confrontation between two forms of survival: a) linear strategy with concomitant encrustment of personal meaning, and b) communal support with its fragile balance of continuance. Installation includes sound, text , and rocks with clay figures.

Collaborated on a design team with sculptor Wayne Zebzda and landscape architect/artist Martha Schwartz. We designed a courtyard and outdoor environment for The Child Study and Treatment Center at Western State Hospital in Steilacoom Washington - a series of six participatory earth mounds, 90 ft. in diameter, including a dream theater, a covered passageway, a spiral play mound, a labyrinthian courtyard for games and theater and a reflection sitting mound for staff, students and visitors. Models available

Collaborated with media artist Ellison Horne and artist/educator Elisa Gittings in two creative exposes on artist development with elder artists in a convalescing setting, Laguna Honda Hospital.

Performed and co-created a performance based on the issues of women in the art world; played the persona of "Summer Lopez", a feminist artist in dialog with the art gallery and the art business worlds.

Conceived a sculptural enactment with Vote Peace Coalition; collaborated with Bay Area muralist Brian Thiele and other artists painting a visual/cultural banner as (a) a ritual event enacting each speaker's vision for peace and (b) a way to name the relationship of peace to the ills of society.

Collaborated with poet Bonnie Shand and women artists from a psychiatric institution to create a sculptural environment based on (a) collective art images used for empowerment and (b) the creative process as a mythological/archetypal mode of thinking to rebalance the medical model emphasis.

Award of Honor by Mayor Dianne Feinstein as San Francisco Woman for "outstanding service in the continuing effort to improve the status of women in all aspects of their personal and professional lives."

Collaborated with artist/director Helen Richardson to (a) edit and arrange script from poetry of Bay Area writer Evelyn Posamentier, (b) design and build theater set of interchangeable sculptural elements with which actors formed physical space to visually image emotional space. This work is based on the theme of death and regeneration as a psychic process. The environment layers the past and present experiences of a woman writer, child of a survivor from Auschwitz and survivor herself of a psychiatric asylum.

Participation-Collaboration with Juliet Batten, director of Auckland, New Zealand "Feminists for the Environment " to create a sculptural environment of "woman as nature" based on the theme that womens' survival and the survival of the environment are parallel concerns for our harmonious future.

Collaborated with Bay Area sculptor Andrea Hassiba on a sculptural environment based on the exploration of extension -- sculptural materials and ideas inside a studio extended/envisioned in outside space. This piece is a site specific examination of elements and time transported.

Participation-Collaboration with Donna Henes, New York artist/performer in a summer solstice ritual performance based on (a) a reconnection to cycles of time and community, and (b) the reclaiming of reverence to the earth as an image of nurturance.

Collaborated with Bay Area artists Loren Partridge, Helen Richardson, and Barbara Wein on a site specific interdisciplinary sculptural environment and ritual enactment in five rooms of a World War II military bunker. The piece is based on (a) the use of that physical space in a rite of passage to reconnect with the idea of death as cyclical, and (b) personal memory with the physical finality of the site.

Curated and installed group art show with Rebecca Milliken: artworks and writings of clients with medical illnesses and Alzheimer's