I've had a bunch of requests to expand the Standard 100 Word Bio, so here goes...   may the Farce be with you!

I had a huge advantage going into beadmaking... I can draw. I’ve been doodling and drawing silly cartoon critters since before I was three, and the designs have always had big bulgy eyes, bellybuttons, and stupid grins. By the time I was twelve they also had bad punny names - none as downright tacky as the ones I do now, but at the time I was pretty proud of ‘The Early Worm Catches The Bird’.  I had a nice business, drawing cartoons on commission for the kids in my 6th grade class (25 cents a shot - paid for my sci-fi paperback habit) and when the boys asked for a cannibalism cartoon, they got cows with white moustaches, holding Oreos and milking themselves. This didn't go down well (so to speak), so I drew the !#$@%&! explorer in a pot, got back the cow drawing, and now it’s one of my Most Pretentious Designs, ‘Recycling At Daisy’s Dairy.’

We lived on Marine bases in North Carolina till the summer before my senior year in high school, so I know all there is to know about the habits of hurricanes, mosquitoes the size of your head, snapping turtles, things that lurk in pine forests, and big fat hungry ticks. Need info? I can fill you in on the two right ways to remove a tick, and the 47 wrong ways. Learned by trial and error. I didn’t learn about the habits of Marines; my father, with knowledge no doubt based on experience, wouldn’t let me near em.

Then the Parental Units, my little brother (he's Normal. Rational. You'd never suspect we were related.... right) and I moved out to California, where I did senior year, and got into the University of California, Irvine as a pre-pharmacy major. That lasted one year... I’m pretty clueless in the higher maths, and landed in an advanced calculus class where the instructor preferred to talk football, so I did the Big Flunk (boy, was I pissed - I’d studied my butt off, but if the teacher doesn’t explain, it’s hard to learn). So I changed my major to Art, and it took 3 years of A’s to get my grade point average up off the floor.

Most of my course load was studio art and art history (heavy on cathedral and monument architecture), and I’ve got that stuff down. Ask me the historical and artistic precedents for my work, and I’ll talk you to death (surprisingly, no-one ever does....)  And we had to memorize EVERYTHING - but that came in handy in the final exam, when the prof put up a slide showing a portion of a Cathedral interior, the spot where the round dome is attached to the square body of the building. He asked us to name the little triangular structures that connect the two. I was one of the few who got it because the name was so odd it went straight into long-term memory: he'd told us they were 'squinches'.  After I heard that I spent 10 weeks tuning out the guy, doodling ‘How The Sqinch Stole Christmas,’ and was saved by the pun. They're really called 'pendentives'... I think he did the squinch thing to find out who was paying attention.  I lucked out.

The studio art classes were a lot more fun. I learned a lot - the favorites were copper plate etching, color and design theory, and stained glass, and I refined my drawing skills. Learning to visualize the underpinnings of form was a hoot! There were lots of buildings going up on campus, and the teacher had us sitting out on the hillside drawing the construction to learn light, shadow, and perspective. 

So for the first 6 weeks, we’re out there 3 days a week sketching walls, girders and cement trucks. And the teacher comes by, looks, and walks on, so I figure I’m doing okay. Then my roommate stomps on my glasses and crunches em to pieces (I’m sure it wasn’t deliberate, it takes at least six months for folks to get to that stage with me). So I’m out on the hillside, no glasses. And I’m seriously nearsighted, with the kind of astigmatism that makes pinstriped shirts do big whoopy loops and headlights at night do huge rotating rays, and I’ve got to draw the damfool buildings. So what can I see? No detail at all, just the big basic forms, a bunch of blocks, cylinders, and stripes, with white where the sun hits, gray for medium shadow, and black for deep shadow. So I draw it exactly as I see it, and the teacher comes strolling by, and has a coronary. He snatches the pad out of my hands, and I think, "Oh crap, he’s gonna kick me out of class for drawing garbage!" 

And he starts waving the pad around and yelling to the class "Look at this! Look at it! This is what you should be doing! This girl has gone beneath the surface! She has artistic vision! She’s gone beyond detail to the building blocks! This is what I live for, when a student makes this breakthru!" I couldn’t tell him that my artistic vision came from a pair of crunched up glasses, it would have broken his heart. But to this day... every drawing, every bead I make... no prescription glasses.  Kinda like cheating, huh?

So after college, unable to get an art-related job, I dived into data processing (the bucks are there!) and eventually ended up at Safeway, where I went from graveyard computer operator to day shift to supervisor to technical support to data security. 

And in the off hours I was Captain Chaos Glassworks and built stained glass windows & knickknacks, my own designs, mostly commission and consignment work.  I never did the silly cartoony stuff in flat glass, it was all nice artistic birds, art deco ice cream cones, dragons, etc, because that's what the customers wanted.  ack - it made me *hate* unicorns!  I liked creating designs and cutting glass, but putting it together wasn't fun and I was always looking for a new art form.

That I started making glass beads is entirely Connie Klein’s fault. End of March 1996, she came whooping up waving a catalog that had a ‘Make Glass Beads In Your Home’ kit, with a how-to book, a couple mandrels, a hothead torch, and some glass rods, all for less than $100. And we realized that if we ordered the kits, we'd use up all the glass the first weekend, and then where would we be?  

So I started calling around looking for glass suppliers, and found a 2-day Beginning Glass Beadmaking class with Shannon Kindle at Sundance Art Glass in Mountain View, CA. Connie and I both signed up for the Beginning and Intermediate classes, and the moment the torch went on (LOVE that blue flame!) I was hooked. Forever. See the picture up above, with the rancid dotted beads?  Those were my 1st ever, from the class - I really thought they were hot stuff (well they were, really, until they cooled....)

So the first year, I copied every handmade glass bead I could get my mitts on, trying to learn the techniques. I had a pile of the most awful Pati Walton, Kristina Logan, Tom Holland, and Nancy Pilgrim knockoffs... they’d have laughed themselves silly if they’d seen ‘em, just before they killed me.  I didn’t want to rip off other people’s work, and I was going nuts trying to figure out how to develop a personal style.

Then I did my once-every-ten-years household cleanup and found all the old portfolios, cartoons, and doodles in back of the closet, shrieked BINGO!, and raced down to the torch and made my first sculptural bead, from a drawing I'd done when I was about 5.  It was a little gold cat, a compound bead with a separate head and body, white cheeks with 3 dots for whiskers, and I put it together with a rhinestone rondelle collar. I still have it, it’s really awful. 

My first classes had taught me how to make smooth beads with internal designs, but no sculptural techniques, so it took awhile to get a feel for just how far out from the surface of the base bead I could work the glass. But the second I made that first cat, I had the personal style down cold. I’ve been recreating all the old designs from when I was a kid (cows and pigs in party dresses, twisty lizards, banana slugs, big spotted sitting cats, etc) and every time I come up with a really miserable pun, it’s a new bead! The current favorites are a cat doing the usual, titled ‘The Hind-Lick Maneuver’, and a chimp on the toilet, 'Monkey Pee, Monkey Doo'.

And I’m doing the occasional theme necklace, too. It started out with ‘Peter Rabbit Meets The Carnivorous Carrot,’ then the doggy-infested ‘Bad To The Bone,’ then there was ‘Where Tiger Cats Come From,’ the story of how a non-striped cat got its markings by way of a Safeway big-rig, complete with the appropriate (censored) gesture.   These are a hoot to make, but they take forever! There's picture of the dog necklace on the Jewelry/Necklace page (it's the Bad To The Bone version 1), and I'm going to recreate Tiger Cats so we can finally get a decent picture (the originals are on thin cylinders - no way to photograph - if there was, it would have been in the Bead & Button article, darnitall...)

I live in Alameda, California with Jim, the beloved train obsessed husband, webmaster, photographer & chef (I married him for butter or wurst...  (oh that's awful)  who’s too often abandoned while I bond with my torch.  If you come across him at a show, expressions of sympathy and good food are always appreciated. And then there's the pair of increasingly bizarre cats, Velcro and Nicky ‘The Meatball’ Corleone. All four of us are housebroken. 

Note: I always name pets after what they do. Velcro won’t play unless she’s hanging onto a leg, and if cats have a Witness Protection Program, Nicky’s in it. All my black & white cat beads are modeled after The Meatball, so I’ve probably blown his cover. Past cats include Dammit Charley Stoppit and Seymour Exxon (one eye & gas) and Fuzzy Dum Dum -  just as well I don't have children, they would've been Professor Leaky and Banshee. 

You’ve made it this far? Congrats & Thanks, you’re the first to do so! We’ll end this extravaganza with the required quote, to try to fool you into thinking that I’m a Serious Artist:

"Working with glass and flame is so much fun, it should be illegal. I like playing with primary colors and sculptural forms; my favorite beads are the bright silly ones that tell a story and make people laugh. The process of melting and forming the glass is so calm and meditative, and the gratification is so instant, that the finished piece is just an added bonus."

(BRACE YOURSELF - Publication and Exhibit list below.  I've been busy!)