My mother raised her children in Lovelady, Tx which is two hours Northeast of Houston.  We lived in a two story house built soon after I was born upon the same land that my mother was raised. There were few neighbors and none of them had children to play with so I spent lots of time hanging out with my Granny Nell who also lived with us.  She taught me the basics of tap dancing and enjoyed entrancing me with embellished stories of her childhood.  The rest of my time was spent alongside my mother. She is a hobbyist and crafting connoisseur with talents that have proven to be limitless.  There were always projects going.  Painting and sewing, ceramics and baking…the boredom of a crawling hot summer in the sticks was escaped by getting lost in projects that spanned weeks and months. It was at a very early age that my mother introduced me to a photography as a result of a devastating fire which destroyed our home in 1984. We lost two generations pictures and family history. All the things my grandmother held onto throughout her life and all the things my mother had saved were now gone. From that point on my mother’s Minolta went with us everywhere.

  I began creating my images in high school and went on to study Photography at Sam Houston State University and moved to Houston in 1999. I worked at a photo lab for a year or so then started working as an assistant to a busy corporate photographer.  I quickly discovered that environment was not the one for me and I moved on while trying to figure out what to do next.  My answer soon found me in the form of a beautiful artist, sculptor and painter, Patrick Medrano.

Before our meeting in 2002, I had not considered the images I was creating art.  It all felt very personal. A unique moment in time captured so that I would not have to rely on my memory alone to tell the story. The thought of selling them or even showing them to the public was not something that terrified me.  Patrick changed that and I began to see that documenting the history of the world in which I live is not only a way to connect with it, but also a powerful way to create a voice for myself.

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