By my 35th birthday I had built my first charity, the Open Museum of Los Angeles (which worked with community members to organize two exhibits: a city-wide anniversary exhibit on the LA Riots and on the photography of location scouts); had completed the Coro Fellowship in Public Affairs; and put together a concept/strategic plan for an arts think tank for the the non- and for-profit arts sectors working together. But I was discouraged by what I was finding in the public sector. A conversation with a successful and happy girlfriend was the prompt I needed to go back into the studio. Just to try again….Only there wasn’t a studio. My studio was sold off years ago. So I turned a colander upside down, placed a cutting board on top as a bat and turned the silverware in my kitchen into scoring tools.
It was like riding a bike. My fingers took to it as if 7 years had never passed. I sunk back into that space, that refuge of creative happiness which made time disappear and kept me lost in my own imagination. I decided I wanted to build a studio again–only this time I would open the doors one day a week to at-risk girls in respect for my own journey. Like many Los Angelinos I believed that at-risk youth meant I’d be working with young Latinas…
(*and yes, I snuck in a picture of my cat, Pheadra, when she was a kitten!)
