STUFF ABOUT ME
I started doing decorative painting about two years ago with the goal of learning to paint my version of the paintings of artists I admire on furniture. Here is a picture of my favorite piece of "copied art" furniture. I found this old wooden adult potty chair and my friend Carol Lands of Chino Valley, Arizona painted her version of four of the paintings of Frida Kahlo on it. Someday I hope to paint furniture using the work of Fernando Botero, Diego Rivera and Alfredo Castenada.
I started knitting while I was in college and for many years I designed and sold machine and hand-knitted garments to stores in the Bay Area. I like to knit single color sweaters in natural fibers with complex patterns. I use up all my leftover yarn by creating extravagant multicolor sweaters.
I grew up in Oklahoma and spent many of my childhood summer days hanging out at Chief Wolf Robe's Trading Post. (I now know that Wolf Robe was not a real chief and that the trading post was but a native American crafts store.) This was the beginning of my love of Indian pottery, baskets and rugs and I have a small collection of each. I also collect brightly colored American dinnerwear from the 1930's and 1940's such as Fiestawear and Mexican serapes from the same era.
Fifteen years ago when I was visiting my sister in Oklahoma, I found a Congo African Grey parrot . I tried and was unable to locate her owner, so I named her Ava and brought her back to Califoirnia with me. She was very quiet for about two weeks and then one day she told me her name was Toby. Toby has quite a large English vocabulary in addition to knowing many human, animal and inanimate sounds. She often speaks with an Oklahoma accent and has learned to call us by our correct names. Below is a picture taken by my friend Karen Streets when we took Toby to meet Lisa Simpson at a Macy's event.
