Glass MosaiX was my personal style of creative expression. It sprang from an active search of finding my "art" but in the end it was just a way to find myself.

Searching is a part of all of us. It's part of what defines our pursuit of goals and sense of time and history. The years where I produced these pieces of whimsical, light catching pieces of art were a part of my personal story where searching for creative expression started with as self-sustaining journey of looking for who I was and how to creatively express it. It intentionally began in a foreign country far from home with strangers and escalated years later through a more daunting experience of hitting the bottom of a emotional hole and having to climb out.

To begin with the later experience, the story took place in a Volvo in which my two year old son and I called home for four months in 1996. I was on a search for myself again, but it didn't come with a bank account. I felt forced into it and I was lacking in hope. Without means and struggling, I learned my greatest lesson to date; TRUST. Slowly, through the discovery of trust that I never knew I had, I built a bridge back to having a roof over our heads and experienced a part of myself that showed just how much strength I possessed.

Slowly, through trusting, I built a bridge back to having a roof over our heads. By making 3D sculpted hearts from recycled electrical wire and pieces of broken glass, while "camping" (aka: living in my car) in Arizona, I found myself challenged with a type of free fall experience of not knowing where I would land. 'What doesn't kill you only makes you stronger' became a type of humorously bittersweet mantra. I had no choice but to persevere with what was available and that became sculpting and assembling symbols of love from the broken and discarded. How's that for metaphor!? By joining in the rhythm of the earth, I entered into a dialogue that engaged my heart in renewal. In the vast display of stars that a desert night offers I began to feel the expansiveness that twinkles the message of infinite possibilities.

In contrast, in 1991 I made my first exodus from Los Angeles. I spent the better part of a year in Portugal. The trip was a different type of self search then the one in my Volvo some five years later and the theme of this part of the journey was istening to my inner voice and mustering up lots of courage. By choice, I reduced my life to a few boxes of personal items and a 1963 AMC Rambler that I stored to await my return. Sporting a new back pack I would take a year to explore a different part of the world and a different me. Different too was the fact that I could explore with money in hand.

With a conscious intention of letting my artistic expression shine through I saw the glimmer amongst the rubble. On one of my walks through a local car dump in Sintra outside of Lisbon I saw a pile of glistening broken car glass amongst the grease and dirt. They seemed like diamonds in the sun. Just like that, gathering up the glass and some wire laying around ended one of my searches of what type of medium would became my 'art'. So I guess you could say that my art was inspired from rubbish.

I didn't have to really think about it, making a heart with my new supplies was like a memory from the future since, as it would turn out years later, it became my vehicle to a new start.

On my return to Los Angeles, I opened a small local art gallery and it was there that I actually worked on my largest piece, a six foot snake that curved around a branch with a sharp red glass apple. I called it the Beguilement. Interesting, perhaps only to me, that the theme of the original sin is what I was inspired to create there in my return life back in LA where things had started out rather easy, as opposed to what I created years later when I was in a more challenged situation. Hearts, faerie, suns, moons, and stars were the menu then. The Glass MosaiX hearts, later, became my signature and were sought after. In fact, I was sometimes introduce as the "heart lady". People had seen my work around and knew it and even better wanted to buy.

From 1996 to 2000 creating Glass MosaiX was a useful and cathartic experience that allowed me the opportunity to assemble the metaphorical idea of putting the broken pieces back together. By experiencing this time where I spent hours reassembling and recycling rubbish into works of art, I recreated my own life and learned to trust my own courage. That lesson has served me well.

HONORARY MENTION
One of the greatest thrills that I had with my Glass MosaiX was the honor to have the city of Phoenix, Arizona present one of my sun sculptures to their sister city of Cheng Du, China. On a personal level that exchange of peace summed up the love and fellowship that I felt each piece I made offered.