Why I Create: From Postcards to Portals

A postcard I colored to reach out to someone.

This is a piece called "Self Portrait." There's a lot of me here and in all my collages. I have come to learn that we reflect each other. I hope you see yourself somewhere in my art.

At the beginning of the pandemic, after thyroid cancer surgery, I felt fragile in every way. My body was healing, but the world around me was unraveling. To stay connected, I began coloring postcards — one a day — and sending them out. A small act of presence. A way to say, “I’m here, and I’m thinking of you.”

Then came the year that broke me open. Within months, I lost my mother, my father, and my sister. Grief felt endless, and everywhere I looked the world seemed to echo that same chaos. My worst political fears were becoming reality. It was a time of separation, lies, and loss layered on loss.

In the middle of it all, I was called — unexpectedly — to create. Not with markers or clay or traditional tools, but with PowerPoint of all things. I started layering fragments of images: some my own, some gathered, all reshaped. What began as survival quickly became something more. Collage became my way of carrying what I could not hold alone.

I create because it is how I share myself with the world. It is how I offer something when nothing feels like enough. My art doesn’t claim to fix the fractures around us — but it holds them. It doesn’t shy away from death, separation, or lies, but it also insists on love, light, and wonder.

My work has never been about perfection. It is alive, breathing, changing. What you see here today may look different a month or a year from now. I return to pieces, alter them, let them evolve. To me, that isn’t inconsistency — it’s honesty. None of us are final versions of ourselves. Why should art be?

I don’t fear sharing my work. Just as I borrow fragments from others, I welcome the idea that someone might take what I’ve made and reimagine it. Creativity is not about ownership; it’s about offering. It's about bout saying, “Here is what I see. What do you see?”

Technology has been my ally, not my enemy. PowerPoint is my canvas. ChatGPT has become my conversation partner. The digital world is my studio. These tools don’t replace imagination — they surprise me into new directions I could never have reached alone.

This blog will be a space where I share more of the journey: the process of layering fragments into something whole, the personal stories behind individual collages, and the shadows that inevitably shape the light.

I create not to escape life, but to face it. To find beauty in shadow, love in loss, light in the cracks.

Every collage is an offering and doorway. Thank you for walking through this one.”