M i x tu r e
M aga z i ne
How did you get involved with art? I have thought of myself as an artist since I was a child, but it wasn’t until I was in graduate school for religious studies that I began to take myself seriously as an artist. I started out taking night classes at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education, then at Massachusetts College of Art, and then after I got my theology degree, I enrolled in the Diploma program at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts here in Boston. The rest, as they say, is history. What have been the most memorable moments in your art career to date? I had a lot of lucky moments early on, where I was in the right place at the right time, or I entered an art competition that was juried by a curator who saw my work and put it not just in the juried show, but also in other exhibitions. Getting picked up by Allston Skirt Gallery in Boston changed my career, as did signing on with a gallery in New York a year ago. I would also say that perhaps the biggest turning point for me was being invited to do a site-specific wall mural at MassArt for a group show revolving around Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights. That project changed my life as an artist. It introduced me to a whole new way of making and thinking about art. Where do you find your inspiration for your art? I am the mother of a very imaginative five year old, and I like to try to see the world through her eyes, which is a very magical place where surreal, otherworldly things can happen. This is a fantastical place where people have the heads of animals, where sheep and goats can spring forth from magnolia buds, where birds and mushrooms intertwine their parts. I’m also inspired by scientific discoveries and experiments that involve altering nature, such as Dolly the sheep, or the scientist who grew a human ear on the back of a mouse. I have 48