About Me

My mother and father are both very creative people. My dad could make anything in wood or metal and would often putter around in electronics. He taught me to build without fear. If you mess something up, maybe it’ll actually be better than you planned.My mother can draw, paint and sculpt. Her imagination can find the most amazing things where someone else might just see the mundane. She taught me to see the possibilities in acorns and rocks.

 

I started making miniatures when I was very young with them. My first doll’s house was made when I was only about five years old. It didn’t make it past the bare shell until much later. It didn’t matter. I played in that house everyday. It often had many more rooms than the original 6 because I would expand it, in my imagination, out into my room. I would furnish it with a combination of fine miniatures, scraps of fabric and unfinished wooden pieces from the local discount store. There were rarely dolls in my houses. I always imaged myself in them and never agreed on any doll that looked like my vision of myself.

 

As I grew older, fashion dolls became a passion, with many hours spent sending my characters through all sorts of wild and domestic adventures. Playing with them taught me the value of scale and proportion.  Shoe boxes became homes to imaginary mice and sand piles became entire landscapes for Lilliputian communities.

 

Later, I spent less and less time in my imagination and more and more in the large world. Even then, though, I was teaching myself new skills. I learned to sew, quilt, tat, knit and crochet. I learned how to make pictures from stained glass. I developed skills in photography and drawing.

 

When I had a son of my own, I helped him learn to imagine his own worlds with action figures and building bricks. Mud puddles in the backyard would become swamp worlds far, far away.

 

Now I’ve come to realize that I don’t just make miniatures. I make entire worlds with wood and metal. I can draw, paint, sculpt, sew, quilt, tat, knit, crochet, photograph and make stained glass pieces for them. I can spend hours on end sharing my new little worlds with my family. Imagining exactly what I like. Building it just the way I like it. If it doesn’t come out right. Well, maybe it’ll actually be better this way.

 

Now I can do that with you, too.