Hello and thank you for visiting my site.

The daughter of a field biologist, I was largely shaped by my childhood years in Nakuru, Kenya, where we lived in a small stone house without electricity or running water. Elephant, giraffe and zebra played outside my window and a bat slept over my bed. Thankfully, I was too young to be frightened and was fascinated by the experience.

I went to school with Kikuyu, Samburu and Maasai children who shared their stories and songs with me.  On weekends and holidays I accompanied my father in the field, often riding on the top of the car or standing the bumper while being chased by baboons and Colobus monkeys.

It was an experience that never left me, and I grew up immersing myself in the music, culinary styles, and artistic practices of as many people I could learn about. Being a creative sort myself, but raised by science,  I pursued my studies both academically and artistically blending a degree in Anthropology with training in graphic arts and  media productions; always as hands on as I could get, and traveling the globe whenever I could.

My love of photography began with nature, and nature in its most minute form. I loved finding “stories” or similarities between what I saw in the bracken to what I saw in life around me. Each time I found something that moved me I’d hear a poem in my head, so I’d write it down and include it with the image. That work is now called The Poetry of Nature and represents my most early forays. For many years I spent my time lying on my stomach in the ditch, rarely looking up above the grass.

Then I moved back to Knoxville, Tennessee, and was instantly reminded of how diverse and picturesque this wonderful town is. So full of character! It has forced me to look up and out and view the world around me while standing up. It was an interesting transition for me, especially since it was so obviously what it was, and I had spent so many years making one wonder.

I still like to take an unusual approach to my work, however, providing alternate angles of consideration, closing things off to eliminate context, and finding beauty in the most run down and disheveled of places. And people, well they are fun to photograph too, and for them, I look for the place where I perceive spirit and art meet, and like I did with nature, perhaps capture a little bit of a story in the process.