Biography

Like the stills seen through the slits in a zoetrope, Picture this ...

I only took a few art classes, back in junior high school, yet in twelfth grade, in Oakland, CA, I was co-President of the Art Club. I was also co-President of the Environmental and Animal Rights Organization before becoming vegetarian, and sole President of my high school's chapter of Thespians before I had moved from backstage roles to my first acting one. These examples don't just paint a paradoxical portrait of a Renaissance Man; they also show how, when I get deeply involved in something, it often fundamentally changes who I am. More broadly, they speak to my approach to everything: I thrive on discovering back doors and out-of-sight sides to stagnant, traditionally circumscribed settings, whether its the arena of art making, the realm of melding memoir writing with philosophy and cultural critiques, or helping to solve problems out in the wide, real world.

Since graduating from The Evergreen State College in Olympia, in 1997, I have put down deeper and deeper roots here in Washington's capital city, raising a family and volunteering for years at a time for numerous arts groups and community organizations, often in a leadership position. For eight years, I wrote reviews (of films and books, but mostly music) for the feminist magazine Bitch. You can read my long piece on Wes Anderson here. For a while, I also wrote film reviews for Olympia's Sitting Duck newspaper. Mostly, though, I have beavered away on my own insular projects, and this website is a way of dumping them all into the zoetrope's spinning, timelapsed vision of all I've accomplished.