Location is a big part of my work: a native of Hollywood, California, I graduated from the Art Institute of Chicago with a BFA, moved to New York City, and worked a minimum-wage job at the bookstore of the Metropolitan Museum for many years. At the age of 42, I went back to school and got my MA in studio art and critical theory from New York University. I taught at NYU and later at the Midrasha College of Art in Israel, and in 2005, I recruited some of my graduating students to launch Gallery Alfred, a Jewish/Palestinian artist-run cooperative, which became a trailblazer for fringe art and culture in Israel. I have been living in the Portland area since 2019.

The theme of my work, one way and another, is “look what I saw!” This is where location comes in: in Chicago I painted rusted auto parts that dropped off of cars during the endless winters, in New York I painted subways, in Israel, deserts; today, I paint stuff that falls from the trees, generally objects I pick up off the ground and fall in love with. I enshrine things that have been discarded, have fallen, have passed their function.

Drawing and painting are the same for me, and my work typically contains elements of both. Another defining aspect of my work is evolution: like the Abstract Expressionists I admire, I like a painting to fight back (even if I lose, which often happens), and it makes me proud when I can see the struggle, as well as its resolution, in a completed work.