ABOUT THE ARTIST

I have been taking photographs since I was a young child growing up in Detroit in the 1940s and 50s. I was always surrounded by art and photography in the way that some people grow up surrounded by music. My father was an early environmentalist whose profession made me acutely aware of the quality of the light and the air. He and my sister were both amateur photographers and my mother had a small art collection and loved to visit museums. One of my cousins, whose father was a professional artist, remembers that when we both lived in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1960s I would arrive late for dinner because I was watching a sunset. 

In 1971 I moved to rural West Virginia with my family. After retiring from my career as a social worker and planner I became serious about photography. I started my own business, West Virginia Homeplace, in 2000. Through an apprenticeship with a master photographer I learned fundamental skills and gained experience in a black and white darkroom. I continue to use film cameras with a combination of chemical and digital processing. 

My photographs have been displayed in solo exhibits and in juried and other group shows. They have received a number of awards. I was given the State Fellowship in Photography and a number of grants for Professional Development for Artists from the West Virginia Commission on the Arts and the WV Division of Culture and History. My photographs have been included in Wonderful West Virginia Magazine and the 2005 WV State Historic Preservation Calendar. One of my photographs, “Ridgetop Farm,” is on the cover of the textbook, Rural Social Work Practice , published by the Columbia University Press.

I am also involved with researching and exhibiting historic West Virginia photographs from the Library of Congress that were taken in the 1930s and 40s through the U.S. Farm Security Administration. The WV Humanities Council has provided support for this work. The first exhibit, “The Omar Project,” may be viewed under online exhibits at www.wvculture.org. A second exhibit, “Molasses and Coal Trains,” is scheduled for completion in the Spring of 2008.