Originally from New York, I've spent most of my adult life in California, and now live in beautiful Southern California with my husband Steve, who is also an artist, and our three cats. I've been sewing since I was 13, and many of my various careers have been related to textiles, clothing or fashion.

Growing up in a family of collectors, I spent a fair amount of time poking around in antique shops and lived in a household that revered the past, aesthetically. Surrounded by old advertising art and antique wooden chests, clocks that tick-tocked, windup toys and mechanical penny banks, the patina of age seems normal and desirable to my eye. My inspiration as an artist has always come from old things. This continues with the dolls I'm now making, which stem from my admiration of old papier-mache dolls. One of the things I love about many antique dolls is the clothing: the amount of attention and energy that's been lavished upon those miniature garments! Homemade doll's clothing has a special place in my heart: made for a child's doll by their mother or aunt, who were trained to sew as part of a lady's education.

I have a BFA in Printmaking from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, then studied patternmaking and fashion design in Boston and San Francisco. A floral designer for 17 years, I've worked, in addition, as a graphic artist and a patternmaker in the apparel industry. I've also had my own millinery studio, and a delightful, rewarding career as a teddy bear artist.