I hold a BFA in glassblowing from Washington University in St. Louis and am currently completing my Master’s in Education. I’m an exhibiting oil painter and working artist, and I bring my studio practice directly into my teaching — believing that making art and making meaning are inseparable. During the school year I teach at a Montessori school, where hands-on, inquiry-based learning is a way of life, and that philosophy lives at the heart of everything I do in the art room. For six years I served as Director of The Art Barn at Camp Ballibay, a program I shaped and grew while watching my three children thrive there as campers — and this summer my son Simon joins the Med-o-lark community as a junior counselor. My classes are built around a simple and powerful idea: Beautiful Mistakes. The unexpected mark, the spilled color, the plan that doesn’t go as planned — these are not failures, they are the doorway to discovery. I encourage students to stay connected to themselves throughout their creative process, to breathe, to follow their own thoughts, and to trust what happens when they let go of the end result and fall into the process itself. Working with found materials and open-ended prompts, I create a space that is therapeutic, process-driven, and uniquely responsive to each group, and I have a particular gift for working with kids across all ages and abilities, including children on the spectrum. Frustration is welcomed here — because being human, and being an artist, is all about learning to find the beauty in what we didn’t expect.