Memory: My collages are a visual journal of my life, graphic souvenirs of my memories. Each collage serves as a journal entry, marking a moment and containing a story from my life. As I work I am focused on the time and place I am recreating. Some my images are glimpses of places I’ve been and seen only once; others—of places where I’ve lived or revisited a number of different times—are imbued with a stronger personal sense of place. The work in this series has both, ranging from scenes in Oregon—my current home—across North America to New England—where I grew up—and extending to scenes from abroad.

Technique: My materials and tools—paper, glue and scissors—are simple; my technique —cutting and pasting—is simple; my creative process, however, is quite complex.

Creative process: My work is meticulous, time consuming, and emotionally intense. As I work—piecing together a complex arrangement of small bits I have cut from printed or painted papers and then pasting them into a realistic image of an actual place where I have been—I find myself immersed in the sensations and emotions that I experienced in that time and place. I remember the excitement of waking up for the first time in a sun-filled room in the Tuscan countryside with the scent of lavender wafting through the open window; I re-experience the loneliness I felt as a teenager tightly bound to a group of angst-filled city kids at a rural New England boarding school, wondering where they are now; I recall the surprise of arriving in Mantua one late autumn afternoon and finding it warm and sunny in spite of its dank and foggy reputation; and I find comfort in the familiarity of living in one place long enough to be able to walk hand-in-hand across the same meadow with my grandchildren that my mother walked across with hers. Thoughts like these from my own life drift through my mind while I work and are combined with and extended beyond my personal experience through my absorption of the music, lyrics, films, paintings and photos created by others—their sounds, words and pictures now incorporated into mine. The resulting landscapes form a place-based personal narrative of images, a visual reminder of events, memories of moments from my life.