What I write and make art about is best explained with a biographical fact.
After a secret pregnancy when was 17 years old, I gave up my newborn son for adoption. The baby was given a new name and a new birth certificate. His existence was kept from nearly everyone for two decades. My life became fiction.
My collages, short stories, and essays explore this tangled world of truth and lies and how the world falls apart when we can’t tell the difference between them. In exploring our deceptions, I search for the way misery can turn us toward mercy instead of misunderstanding.
My stories and essays take place at the bedsides of the dying, during desperate road trips, in Hollywood, at storefront clinics where people sell blood plasma, and in fancy suburban houses. I write about getting old, wild teenage girls on motorcycles, and the mountain lions that stalk Angelenos.
My collages reveal a world redeemed by heroines, saints, and seers. They look backwards into history, outward toward the natural world, and inward. I portray what hurts us, heals us, and transports us.
