Design Statement...Updated 2014

Welcome...I am here for artistic advice and Art counseling. Before you go "off the edge" find the crayons and color with me OUTSIDE the lines!


My history of art & recognition:
Acrylic paints and a little of this and that on… fabric & wood, small-scale furniture, or a combination to form one of a kind decorative mixed media sculpture, or fantasy characters. (Um...you name it?!)

2-D or 3-D? I have chosen to express my imagination in unlimited ways using the "canvasses" that come to me in all shapes and sizes and from vast resources. This is what keeps the uniqueness of my work so much fun in that it is always something different and new. If it is a custom piece I may let the piece "tell" me how it would like to be adorned. Intricate or simplistic with the subject matter being primarily contemporary, surreal, and at times passionately detailed.

Before starting a piece of sculpture, be it a painted shoe, a fabric caricature from a dream, an odd little chair or a simple painted wood box I like to involve what ever request, idea or emotion I am given at the time. sometimes a flaw or scratch will be the starting point of the whole theme. Bits of negative scraps of wood from some other crafter’s creation along with cast off wire and found objects carefully fastened together with wit and wacky make up my imagination creations. I can’t possibly limit the description of my work to just one style. Just like I would hate to say I have one favorite color. (Ok, iridescent is my favorite that should explain a lot!).

Mostly a self-taught artist, my background in formal artistic training is sketchy (no pun intended). I originate from Jacksonville, Florida and have studied Interior design and art off and on for 2 years between Florida and Illinois. I prefer credibility to be that from life skill. I started sewing at an early age and made my first leather Barbie vest and skirt when I was 12 from an old purse my mother gave me. From then I can never remember a time when I wasn’t making something. I painted furniture because I never could find anything I liked. Most of my commercial inspiration comes from cartoons, the great Walt Disney, Jim Henson and his Muppets, and a wide variety of music.

In my teens it was just me & mom. Hardship of life then taught me how to look at something and figure out how to create or design something first, but mostly because we couldn't afford to buy it. You learned, in our house, how to make do with what you are given. If you had a cardboard box to play in, my mother would make sure that it not only had windows, but shutters and a doorbell. I would make curtains out of newspaper. After all it wasn't about keeping up with the Jones it was about making your own mark. Originality, It’s all yours.

 My art work has appeared most recently through Ventriloquist Jeff Dunham on his DVD "Arguing with Myself". I created the costume for his character Sweet Daddy Dee. I have also appeared in Lemon Street Gallery in Kenosha Wisconsin, in the Plain Folk Gallery in Sharon, Wisconsin and also the Art Independent Gallery in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. I have been involved with Capron Lutheran Church and Antioch, Illinois Lutheran Church and helped sew quilts for Lutheran World Relief and Baptisms. I was in a one woman through the Boone County Illinois Arts Council at the Baltic Mill December of 2003. I have done outdoor sign work for the Village of Capron businesses I.E.: Side by Side Bike Shop, Village Café and for Fair Fabrications in Belvidere, Illinois. I have also created signs for Capron Lutheran Church.
For Harvard Milk Days Princess Contest both my Daughter Sydney (2002) and her cousins Amanda and Megan Ustich (2003) were all crowned Princesses winning a competition involving the creation of gowns made out of crepe paper. I can only take credit for the dresses, the girls still had to smile for the judges! Speaking of smiles, I was a regular face painter for events at Capron Elementary and also worked as a stage manager for their Variety Shows.

My creations are meant to amuse, inspire, and to draw interest into that goofy little space in everyone’s heart and mind, and maybe into your home or office.
To those who say to themselves "I am not talented, I could never do that, I can’t draw, I can’t paint…."
JUST DO IT. I have come to realize that the most rewarding emotional release next to a spiritual one or the gift of having children, is to create something from nothing and bring about a smile to someone else. Also once you finally try and get your feet wet, paint between your toes feels really cool.
Welcome to my head , and thank you for visiting!