What I do:

I make art about what provokes me as I travel. Every city and landscape is a shift of perspective, new languages, and the dissonance between old assumptions and new realities.

I explore the tensions between evolving cultures in my life and work, and was invited to talk about it at TEDx in Bangkok

Making paper in Thailand

I make Cyanotypes, one of the earliest forms of photography. Also called Blueprints, Cyanotypes were once how Architects once reproduced their drawings. 

I make books – see some of them here. 

I connect people with art through my projects.

I tailored my artwork to suit the nomadic life I wanted, and developed a unique way of making Cyanotype photo prints – all I need to make them are sunlight and nontoxic chemicals. Sometimes I don't even need a camera.

How I got here:

Zipping through the jungle in Laos

My first taste of solo travel was the hardest: after working a year of 40-to 60-hour weeks during my painting degree, I saved up enough to embark on an independent study abroad art and language program in France.

After graduation I stumbled onto an accidental internship at the Liverpool Biennial Fringe festival, and worked as a sculpture apprentice in Tuscany, then did what every American artist is supposed to do: I moved to New York. There I worked with artists' and photographers' portfolios, but NYC wasn't the city for me, and the aftermath of 09/11/01 propelled me to Boston to work with a travel company, a way to subsidize my growing addiction to travel – and learn more about the industry I wanted to write about. It was the most enjoyable job I'd ever had, but restlessness drove me onward: I wanted to be challenged every day by what I saw and experienced on the streets around me. So I decided to satisfy my curiosity about a part of the world I'd never seen: Asia.

I crash-landed in Korea to teach Art and English, and was soon convinced to forsake my ban on boyfriends when I met a handsome Englishman I later married on a Thai beach.

Then I moved to Cambodia to teach photography to children and ended up working with the Angkor Photo Festival.

Still on the move, I relocated to Hong Kong, where I founded a community gallery and once I met the publisher of ThingsAsian Press, fulfilled a dream: to illustrate a children's book.

What's next:

I work on Cyanotypes every day at a studio in Bangkok, and am polishing my illustrated travel book of stories about paper in Southeast Asia, and the people who make it. The book will be released by ThingsAsian press sometime in 2012.

Another dream I'm working on is the transformation of an old Sicilian warehouse into a creative papermaking studio, and will invite selected creatives who work with paper to spend time working in the small Sicilian town of Cianciana.

Entrance to Studio Sicilia

While Italy has stolen my heart along with my savings, Asia's changing so fast it gives me whiplash, and keeps me coming back for more.

Stay in touch

Keep up with me here on the blog by email or RSS, and you can write me anytime here.

 

Ready for anything after a shot of coffee in Bali