I was born in Philadelphia and have lived in San Francisco since 1984. On my mother’s side, I come from a long line of progressive Quakers in Philadelphia. My father’s family is Spanish/Indigenous Colombians from Bogotá. The cultural tensions—including immigrant biases toward my father and the fact that my mother wasn’t Catholic—eventually led to their separation.
I grew up in northeastern Pennsylvania, where I spent much of my time playing in the mud, exploring brooks, and engaging in sports. I later returned to Philadelphia for high school and earned a BFA from the Philadelphia College of Art (now the University of the Arts).
After college, I worked in catering, tailoring, ballroom dance dressmaking, and sculpting props for nonprofit theater groups before deciding to pursue sculpture more seriously—and head west to California.
Before moving, I visited my father and his extended family near Bogotá, close to where they had lived for centuries. With his rusty English and my rusty Spanish, the visit raised many unresolved questions. Since then, especially after the passing of both my parents, maintaining ties to this side of my family has taken on deeper significance—even if the connections feel like tangled, twisted threads I’m still working to understand.
In San Francisco, I began showing my work around the Bay Area and earned an MFA in Sculpture, graduating with a Distinguished Graduate Award. My work in theater—creating sets, props, and backdrops—greatly influenced the scale and theatricality of my art throughout the 1980s and ’90s. After the birth of my son, and with smaller studio spaces and full-time work in public schools, my art scaled down in size—but never paused in spirit. My practice became shaped by childhood memories, my students, social and workplace dynamics, and the nonstop flow of information and interactions with the world around me.
Today, I maintain a small studio in San Francisco, continuing to exhibit locally and nationally. When not making art, I tutor students with neurodiverse challenges, teach art, garden, and create handmade books.