I was born and raised in New Mexico.  I left in my late teens to go to college and later graduate school. I’d always been a writer and academically-oriented but at 28,  I had a stroke brought on by a congenital defect.  Three weeks, two hospitals, and two brain surgeries later, my head hurt.  I needed another way to engage with myself so I signed up for a figurative sculpture class and was introduced to clay.  When I was better, I returned to the academic work and finished my Ph.D. in an unrelated field. 

 

Many years later, I signed up for another sculpting class.  The clay felt familiar, and I realized how much I had missed working with my hands.  I wondered what would happen if I committed to a regular art practice.  That was in 2012.  Now I make art and I do research.  Sometimes these endeavors converge but mostly not. The irony that my stroke occurred just above my corpus callosum, the part of the brain that sits between and connects the left and right hemisphere, is not lost on me.