Located in the premier endcap of Mill Valley’s historic and charming passageway El Paseo, The Studio is a working photography and painting space, as well as a gallery and a community space for teaching and gathering. Originally build in the late 1930s, construction was eventually completed in 1948 and has been a staple of the community for the last 75 years.
The Studio’s architecture remains charming and unusual. It combines multiple original spaces into a single large unit which has an expansive large wall, banks of divided-lite leaded windows which let in expansive afternoon sun, and has three entries, two directly into the charming El Paseo walkway, and one entry onto the main street. The Studio functions as a gallery and also as a creative space where I shoot and paint.
I am a working photographer, painter and poet. My works linker in the quiet intersectional tensions between intimacy, identity, power and vulnerability. Within these archetypes, I focus on exploring my own capacities for grief and tenderness, love and loneliness. At my core, I am always seeking the boundaries of connection and disconnection. I look for liminal spaces where identities are revealed and reshaped and where pockets of gentleness can arise. Everything I make is a love letter of sorts and an invitation for closeness: knowing there is pain everywhere, I hope we can choose to be each other’s holy respite. My visual work ranges from viscerally emotional photographic portraiture to abstract and figurative paintings which often include vibrant kaleidoscopic colors and range from small works on paper to vast works on canvas and wood. My poetry is an ongoing thread that I weave throughout my visual works; sometimes it stands alone and sometimes it is presented in context with visual pieces. Everything is about play and delight, while honoring quiet introspection.