Hello, and thanks for visiting! I am an artist from Venice Beach, California, with a BFA from OTIS College of Art and Design and an MFA degree from UCLA. I’ve had artwork shown in galleries and art shows all over California, and in film festivals across the US.
I started studying art as a child at a school called Mission Renaissance, where I learned and built my foundational skillset, and where I showed work in my first art show. I did art electives in Middle School as well, and in High School I was in AP Art, Photography, and worked in the AV department on Audio/Video and stage productions, with artwork shown in the high school galleries. As a teenager I worked in an Audio/Video lab called Shakticom, took photography and graphic design at Santa Monica College, and I did the Summer of Art Program at OTIS, where I later earned my bachelor degree.
In the early 2000s I worked as an html programmer and graphic designer, did textiles designs for the interior designer Cabana Joes, and worked for 2 different florists doing floral design.
In undergrad at OTIS I studied in an intensive academic program and made video art and installations. My work was shown in galleries and art shows, and some of my videos are in the museum archives at the Museum of Jurassic Technology. I also studied and took film classes on the side at CalArts.
In 2004 I started working at an animation studio called Klasky Csupo, as a digital ink and painter and background designer. I worked on award winning independent film “Milch”, a TV show called “Rugrats”, and a TV pilot. I then went on to work at Fotokem, a Film Post Production facility, where I worked heavily with video technology and was mentored by an Emmy Winning Editor on special effects editing with the Autodesk Flame software. I continued showing work in art shows in and around Los Angeles, and curating art shows myself.
Thereafter I went to the UCLA School of Theatre Film and Television Animation Workshop where I earned my Masters of Fine Arts Degree. At UCLA I did hand-drawn 2D/video hybrid animations, stop motions, and Flash interactive animations and games.
My animations are very much fine art more so than film, intended more for a gallery space than a theatre, suitable for luring my viewers into an other-worldy dreamscape experience. My work has shown in gallery installations and film festivals, while my animated short “Caterpillars” was featured in Spike and Mike’s Sick and Twisted Animation Festival, showing in dozens of screenings across the US.
As a Fine Artist my primary medium is graphite and Photoshop. I draw on paper old-school style, digitize and then digitally color my work. Incidentally this is the same process I tend to use for animations (except for stop motions which involves incremental movements of actual objects and a series of photographs, editing etc). My art installations have ranged from creating a human-sized cocoon that the viewer can crawl inside, to full immersion in video art projections that overtake a space, to tiny peepholes with tiny screens inside looping tiny animations, where the viewer must abandon the physical world and enter into a mental-only space.
I have worked as a graphic designer and in UIUX design within my career, and I have many applicable skills for that, but it’s not my forte and also is not my favorite. I have also taught art to kids and teenagers at three different schools, which I love doing but is not my calling either. Making weird video/animation hybrids and cute/dark drawings is my calling when it comes to art.
Oh, and I like to make stuff. I make crafts and miscellaneous things all the time. Everything from jewelry to tea blends to stuffed animals to candles to candle holders to scarves to cards to lotions to seed bombs. I also write – mainly poetry. Or more specifically the poetry writes itself and I am just the channel through which it arrives into the world. I have written hundreds of poems and dozens of songs. (I was also in choir for 7 years, played violin and piano for 5 years, took ballet for 4 years, was part of a traveling singing theatre group as a teen, and as an adult did vocals on a few songs that were picked up by independent record labels.)
I’m a fine artist at my core and a lot of my art is emotive, but much of my art is also a commentary on art theory, philosophy, and high art. Think conceptual art more-so than Disney. Think surreal dreamscape more-so than mainstream graphics, with some cuteness and a dark edge. A lot of my art is not yet on this website, but over time I will add more and more. Until then, please enjoy!