Artist’s Statement

Intuitively, I know that a river draws from the very heart of the earth, a medicine that for me has restorative and healing powers.

The Menomonee River has been my “spirit place” for the past sixteen years.

I come to the river, dragging my roots behind me: My family of origin,
the imprint of my hometown; my formal education (B.A. from Ohio Wesleyan University and M.A. from Northwestern University); my lifework as a psychotherapist; my experiences as wife and mother and grandmother; my wrestlings with illness that involves a great deal of loss… all of the experiences and relationships that have made me who I am, I bring with me, to the river, where I meet its life giving force

The river has been circling and washing our world ever since time began. I come daily into its presence. It is out of the daily intimacy of seventeen years, that the river gives me its gifts.

All of my sophistications are swallowed up by river creatures. “Civilization” evaporates. I am a primitive in a netherworld of gods and goddesses and their attendant beings. In the presence of this primal energy I am dumb. Answers are far less significant than are the questions that drive every journey of the spirit.

The visual and sensual language that the river speaks is beyond words. It is my hope that some of the gifts given to me will speak to others.

As a photographer, I might claim to be “self-taught,” but a deeper truth is that I am “river-taught.”