Eleven schools participated. So eleven of us, with a golden ticket, boarded a plane.
From Brooklyn to Tokyo! Kyoto! I fed the deer wandering freely around the temples and ate special seaweed sauce on my McDonald’s. I spent my money on marbles and had my first crush on one of the counselors.
There I was, without my parents, with kids I hardly knew, waiting for the bullet train in all its silent marvel. I kept a journal and scribbled. I was there because I wrote an essay. I thought it best I keep on writing.
My thoughts were a kaleidoscope, creating patterns from chaos and color. I was a heady observer, and Japan was the springboard to my lifelong love of words and wanderlust.
I went on to attend art schools in high school and college. I sketched nudes, took color theory, learned oil paints, edited their literary magazines, and wrote poems. From Fiorello H. Laguardia at Lincoln Center, and Rhode Island School of Design’s early admissions summer program, to non-matriculated studio courses at the School of Visual Arts and matriculation at New York University, where I studied art history.
I created art and kept writing.
During a semester abroad in Florence, I studied Italian, the panorama of Renaissance architecture, and the iconography of endless gold-gilded paintings. From a shoestring budget, I splurged on Chianti and the best macchiatos in the world and then returned to my native city.
In New York I worked as a writer and editor, doing communications for a television shopping network, then ad copy for products in their Chelsea studios, then freelance proofreading, and copy editing for various businesses.
Throughout my twenties, I worked and traveled intermittently. My wanderlust brought me from East to West Africa, Asia to Polynesia, in a slingshot from countless European cities. I studied German, and Spanish, and rented an art studio in my old neighborhood in Brooklyn. I spent much of my free time with other artists, coordinating and curating art exhibitions.
In our artist collective, we rented out or were invited into Manhattan spaces such as St. John The Divine’s Synod Hall, The Urban Experience Museum, and small downtown shops and galleries. For this, I created large mailing lists, content, marketing strategies, and print collateral, organized fundraisers, and managed up to 17 artists in a single exhibition.
Occasionally, I also exhibited the work I created. My love for art and writing continued to dovetail.
Then one day I got married and traveled back across the ocean. I lived in Western Europe for 16 years. I copyedited for academia, companies, and creatives while raising two wonderful kids. I studied two more languages (Dutch and French) and set up another art studio two doors down from my house.
I made sure my children also had libraries and an art studio to lose themselves in.
Today, I am located in the United States, and devoted full-time to content writing. Range is my greatest asset. I have conceived, curated, managed, collaborated, created, and edited content for numerous, varying projects, and have continually educated myself in the arts—both visual and written.
My interests and experience in art and the written word have always informed each other, and this enables me to think conceptually and pair the visual and the textual organically when telling your story.
