Thank you for visiting my website!
I'm a psychotherapist, professional gardener and self-taught multimedia artist based out of Oakland, California.
Simone Weil, a philosopher, mystic and political activist, once wrote, “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” This statement guides my life, my work, and my creative practice.
In my therapy practice I work with folks from all walks of life, with a particular fondness for supporting artists, activists and the environmentally-concerned to find their voices and step more fully into their power within this crucial historical moment.
In my gardening business, I specialize in the creation of ecological, native and/or edible gardens, assisting my clients to shift toward the thriving of wild nature within their yards and within themselves.
I also dabble in various other creative mediums— currently, mainly SLR and medium-format photography and the creation of collage works— which both feed and grow from my garden-based and therapeutic work. Psychoanalytic theory is about realities of being, and the reality of the nature of psyche, human nature; gardens follow their own natural patterns, and plant growth can be experienced as psychological, the psyche as ecological. The garden, and the human heart, are mythic spaces for me. Dreaming is an important part of my process.
I’m interested in moments of grace. I am always listening for bits of inspiration. I practice free association as a way of finding my way, finding meaning in my work and art. Creative practice keeps me alive to myself and the world. Joanna Macy says, “Of all the dangers we face, from the climate crisis to nuclear warfare, none is so great as the deadening of our response.” I agree. And a quote from Susan Sontag adds to my thinking here: “Perhaps there are certain ages which do not need truth as much as they need a deepening of the sense of reality, a widening of the imagination.” When I create, I widen my imagination to allow new thoughts and perspectives to emerge; certain truths exist outside the realm of the concrete, the actual. I like to play in these spaces.
I believe life is a continual process of humbling discovery, and that we have an ethical responsibility toward each other and our planet. In the immortal words of Grace Lee Boggs, “We must transform ourselves to transform the world.” In the more recent words of Elaine Scarry, “An equality of survival does not exist. We have both the responsibility and the ability to protect each other.” John Muir, speaking decades ago, referred to animals as “our horizontal brothers.” I carry each of these folks’ sentiments, and hundreds of others, along with me in my work and in my day-to-day interactions with the world.
I like to allow my work to speak for itself and to speak to you in ways that arise naturally within you.
But if prodded I might say much of it touches, either directly or indirectly, on themes both mundane and philosophical: topics such as aesthetic beauty, and beauty as an essential animating antidote to the deadening despair common to our time; the unfolding climate catastrophe, the crisis of capitalism and the way these collective challenges influence and emerge from psychological realities and vice versa; the paradoxical possibilities for transformation that crises always contain; explorations of (flailings toward?) meaning and purpose amidst the chaos of the Anthropocene; and my own personal grapplings with culture, gender, the phenomenology of growth and emergence, responsibility to self and other, and tensions of connection and disconnection at the wild edges of our vital inner and shared experiences.
In my spare time I read and watch film; hike, bike and immerse myself intimately in California’s varied ecologies; protect my solitude as much as possible while staying connected to community; and grow and cook my own food.
Thank you for your attention here, and please feel free to reach out to me! I’d love to hear from you.