I have a lifetime of experience viewing and appreciating art. As a child, my mother would often take me to the art museum and galleries in Chicago. While rehabbing two houses, I developed basic carpentry skills. After retiring from work in 2007, I began my art initiative with the idea that I wanted to make “boxes” out of wood. I had no idea what they would be like. I started with the simplest design of three rows of three long strips of wood encased in a frame. My initial pieces were monotone. Eventually, I moved on to color and my designs became more varied and complex.

I do not know where all of this came from but it is something inside of me that has probably always been there and I feel blessed to be able to express myself in this medium. At one point, the process of making boxes became a metaphor for my retirement or stepping out of the “box”. The life that I had before left me little time to explore my creativity or who I was outside of my professional work self. May the quest never end.