ABOUT ME
My Story
I was born in 1977 in Southern California.
I grew up in the Inland Empire until I moved away to attend college at the University of California Santa Cruz. As an undergrad I majored in cultural anthropology and American literature, earning a double B.A.
I stayed in Santa Cruz after graduation and worked at UCSC for nearly a decade managing the performing arts box office.
In 2004 I decided to return to school, earned my Masters in Education, and became a special education teacher.
After another decade as an education specialist, with some years spent in the classroom and some in administration, I was more than ready for a change and left teaching for a job that would allow me more time to be creative. Currently I am an administrative assistant at our local community college.
I have always considered myself creative, although only recently have I embraced the title of “artist.”
Throughout my life I have always engaged in crafts and fabrication, and my family has supported and helped me expand my creative skills. As a child I like to draw and color, and my dad and I used to play a drawing game with doodles. My mother taught me to cross stitch, and my grandmother taught me how to do make jewelry and work with a beading loom. My older brother took me to my first bead store in Laguna Beach.
One of my first serious craft hobbies was making paper beads from the glossy pages of the L.A. Times Magazine that my dad purchased each Sunday.
I would turn these beads into necklaces and earrings.
In my 20s I embraced the burgeoning scrapbook craze. As a child of the 80s I had always collected stickers and I found working with paper and visual composition fulfilling. Eventually I expanded from making scrapbook pages into designing accordion-style scrapbooks. In 2007 I opened my Etsy shop, selling these scrapbooks, some of my photographs as notecards, and other handmade paper goods.
In 2013 I first discovered Oracle cards at my mother-in-law’s house. I was going through a challenging time in my life and the daily use of these cards (a simple Doreen Virtue angel deck) helped me grow and deepen my spiritual practice.
In 2018, intrigued by the accurate and helpful massages given by these cards, and curious about my increasing awareness of my own intuitive abilities, I decided to purchase my first Tarot deck and begin to learn the art of divination.
Quickly I realized that my innate intuitive abilities, combined with my background in education and anthropology, made card reading a natural fit.
I began to read for friends and family, eventually expanding to professional readings and even exploring other forms of mysticism such as mediumship and contacting past ancestors.
At the same time, I have also explored and gained a deeper understanding of astrology. Together, these influences combine with my political philosophy of social justice and equity to form the foundation of my work. My creative effort focuses on the intersection between visual images and meaning, and how we understand and use symbols in our popular culture.
I now consider myself a practicing mystic and art witch and perform ritual and magic to support my personal growth and the well being of the collective.
As an artist I am energized and passionate, creating sacred objects including oracle and tarot cards, shrines, and altars to support individuals and communities in their spiritual growth.
I believe that we all have a role to play in our collective liberation, and that my part of this work is to create beautiful tools to assist individuals to grow and change within so that we can grow and change without.
As above, so below. So mote it be.