Personal Bio

I grew up moving from post to post all over the world with my family due to my parents’ foreign service and international development work. As a queer, middle eastern femme I am interested in racial justice, LGBTQIA+ liberation and radical, decolonial social work. My pronouns are she / they.

As a child, my mother and grandmothers introduced me to fiber arts through crochet, lace work and sewing. Soon, I began drawing and writing poetry. In high school, I became involved in the theater and took an interest in film, learning post production in the process. As an undergraduate, I turned my focus back to one of my oldest passions to earn a BA in Literature & Creative Writing. During and for a while after university, I worked in education, with students ranging from preschool through college ages, holding posts at a Montessori school, an Upward Bound program and at the Writing Center at the University of Houston where I was myself studying.

After graduating, I began to long for a creative practice that involved working with my hands. I learned about bookbinding and immediately felt that I had discovered my path. Following the birth of my first child, I sought out a bookbinding instructor and was taken on as an apprentice by Tini Miura. I went on to study under Don Etherington and other private instructors, including attending workshops at the North Bennet Street School. As my interest and skill increased, I found myself drawn not only to the study and recreation of forms, but in the conservation and preservation of books and works on paper.

By this time, I had been managing used bookstores for a while, often acting as an appraiser for rare editions and unusual bindings. I decided that the next step in my career was to pursue another degree. In order to be a viable candidate for an art conservation program, I needed to return to college to take chemistry. In the meantime, an opportunity presented itself for me to relocate overseas. I moved myself and my then-toddler to Manila the fall of 2010.

There, I took chemistry and art history courses at the University of the Philippines Diliman. I sought out and made connections in the arts community by attending local workshops on Chinese calligraphy, papermaking, printmaking and fiber arts. I toured the special collections at several institutions during both formal and informal discussions / lectures regarding the conservation and preservation techniques and protocols employed in their labs.

Ten months later, I returned to the East Coast for the remainder of my preparation for graduate studies. While attending night school, I began working at a small bookbinding factory in Rockville, MD and secured an internship at the Library of Congress. It was at the LOC that my understanding of collections management bloomed. I worked in both the Collections Access, Loan & Management and the Binding & Collections Care Divisions during my tenure there.

I was almost done with the four semesters of chemistry prerequisites and had submitted applications to several conservation programs. Given the low odds of admission at those institutions, I also applied to a museum studies program as another viable route to working within cultural heritage preservation and management. Lo and behold, the museum studies program at Syracuse University was the only one that offered me admission.

At this point, I was a single mom working three jobs and going to night school. I knew I had to make a move in order not to lose momentum. I had an internship at the University of Kansas Spencer Library Conservation Lab that summer so a decision needed to be made. I chose to attend the museum studies program.

During the course of my time there, I worked both as a TA and as the assistant preparator for the art gallery on campus. Instead of taking on another internship, I decided to fulfill the program’s work study requirement by designing an independent research project with the support of the South Asian Studies department. I secured several grants to fund a three month trip to India to survey collections there and to work with the students at the Mithila Art Institute on English comprehension and computer literacy.

By the end of my time at Syracuse, I gave birth to my second child. This prompted me to move to Denver, where me and my growing family would be closer to inlaws. While in Denver, I designed and built escape rooms and worked at a custom frame shop. I also did contract work as a preparator for the DAM, the Clyfford Still, History Colorado and the Powers Center. I worked for the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, teaching fine arts techniques to young patrons of several surrounding county library systems. With the rising cost of living in Denver and few opportunities to advance professionally, I widened my net to search for jobs in neighboring states.

Eventually, I relocated to New Mexico when I was hired at a firm in Corrales to produce custom software and hardware installations for museums and cultural institutions nationwide. The subsequent experience I gained in interaction design led me to the startup experiential art collective / exhibition in Santa Fe known as Meow Wolf. I stayed with that company until spring of 2020.

My path has forked many times, but there is a thread that runs through all of my experience. That thread is a passion for storytelling and collective memory as expressed through experiential design and cultural artifacts. Currently, I am re envisioning my approach to serving the arts community and building an independent arts practice. You can find out more about that, as well as my previous work, by visiting the Projects / Portfolio page.