I truly love my collection of original artwork. Some of the pieces just caught my eye, some were purchased on trips, and some were created by talented friends and acquaintances. As a hobby artist myself, I also have a bunch of my own work (mostly in boxes and folders). It’s more fun to display the work of others!

Prompted by recently buying a couple of small prints to support a Santa Cruz artist during the COVID-19 pandemic, I was reminded of how much I enjoy all the art I am so lucky to have, so I decided to write about it. I realized that I had never made a record of my art and when and where I got it. Also, I wanted to give some recognition to the artists who created the works I own–I know some of them are struggling right now because creating or teaching art was an important (or in some cases, a primary) source of income. I also wanted to give props to some of my art teachers over the years (apologies to a couple I may have neglected to include here).

Early Art Teachers: Tunkhannock, PA

My first private art teacher was Charlotte Ciccone. I took classes with Charlotte in the early 1980s, where I mainly did work in acrylic and watercolor. These classes were held in my hometown, Tunkhannock, a small, historic town in the mountains along the Susquehanna River in northeastern Pennsylvania.

Another early art teacher was Sue Hand. I studied with her during my high school days, in the mid-1980s. Sue is a prolific and very talented artist who lives in Dallas, PA, not far from my hometown. Sue and her husband, Joe, own Sue Hand’s Imagery, a shop and studio that offers art supplies, custom framing, and classes by Sue. We students often called her “Auntie Sue” because of her warm and supportive style.

First Artworks

Below is probably the first piece of original artwork I acquired. I got it from a coworker, Sam Erickson, in a holiday gift exchange (I think in 1990) when we were both working at a medical journal publishing company in Philadelphia called Current Science. It was my first job after college, and I worked there from the summer of 1990 to September 1993. The very talented Sam went on to become a successful rock photographer and filmmaker in New York. Sam is the Vice President and Head of Production at Arcade Productions, a subsidiary of Sony Entertainment. See Sam’s work at the Morrison Hotel Gallery.

Below is a home blessing done in Japanese calligraphy by Laurie DeMarco Alagha, one of my best childhood friends, in 1993. The characters from left to right are “zuiki” (good omen), “shu” (come together), and “mon” (gate or house), so it means “May good fortune gather in your home.” Laurie made it for me as a wedding gift during the time she was living in Japan. Although my marriage didn’t last, my friendship with Laurie goes on across the miles and through many years, and this calligraphy piece brings back good memories. It’s also so special to have artwork made by a friend.

The print below is another wedding gift given to me in 1993. It was created with a photocopier. I don’t know who the artist is, but I love its graphic qualities and the repeating thorn motif. My close friend Cathy Connor gave it to me. Cathy and I remain friends, despite living across the country from each other, and it’s wonderful to have a piece that reminds me of her. (Pardon the reflection on the glass!)

I bought this simple tapa painting in Tahiti in 1996. Unfortunately, I don’t know the artist’s name, as it is not signed. Tapa is a type of fabric made from tree bark; typically, a design or pattern is painted on it. I really like this piece, and buying it (as well as doing research for this blog post) allowed me to learn more about Tahitian art and history. What’s more, having this tapa painting brings back wonderful memories of the trip to the main island of Tahiti and to the islands of Bora Bora and Moorea that I took with my friends Laurie and Cathy in 1996. Cathy and I were both going through tough times in our life then, so the trip was really special for us. Read more about tapa at Welcome Tahiti.

Here is a piece for which I have only a vague memory of how and when I got it: It’s a greeting card with a print of a (well-endowed) monkey. Unfortunately, it is not signed by an artist. I am pretty sure my friend Vicky Maxon gave me this card either for my 30th birthday in 1998 or when I bought my house in Philadelphia in 1999. I wish I knew more about who created the image! I wish I had a better memory in general!!!!

Moving to California: My Collection Grows

“Las Vegas Series II” is a painting by a friend of a friend and was done in 2005. I think it is acrylic or gouache on panel. My friend Rachel Delp gave this to me (I think as a gift to commemorate my moving from Philadelphia to the San Francisco Bay Area to start graduate school? Again, I wish I’d kept better track of exactly when I got some of my artwork and/or that I had a better memory!). Rachel was living in Cómpeta, a quaint village in the mountains of southeastern Spain, at that time. The artist, Scott Lidgett, was a British expatriate also living in Cómpeta. Sadly, he died of cancer a couple of years after this work was completed. I love all the textures and tones of this painting. I am a big fan of desert landscapes.

This iron sculpture of an embracing couple and the rebar and marble pedestal on which it rests were gifts from my friend and then-partner Jamie Vaida in 2005 or 2006. At the time, we were living in Oakland, CA. I had moved to California in 2005 to start a doctoral program in psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. Jamie and I had met at Burning Man in 2004, and after a long-distance relationship, he decided to move to California with me. Originally, the sculpture was powder-coated with a dark blue finish, but as I’ve displayed it outdoors for many years, the weather has replaced the paint with a beautiful rust. Jamie is a talented metal artist who is originally from Massachusetts and lived for many years in Colorado before moving to the San Francisco Bay Area. Jamie designs and fabricates beautiful metal railings, gates, furniture, and other pieces, as well as doing fine art out of his Oakland studio. Find him at Vaida Metals Sculpting.

I love the following print by Oakland artist Fernando Reyes. I’m not sure if it is a linocut, woodcut, or monoprint, but I think it’s a woodcut. As with some of my other artwork, I can’t remember the exact date when I purchased it, but I believe it was around 2006 (although I may have bought it on a later visit to Reyes’ studio in 2016). My then-partner, Jamie, and I had gone to an open studio event in the Jingletown section of Oakland. Reyes works out of Ford Street Studios and does drawing, painting, printmaking, and cutout artworks. Again, I wish that both my records and my memory were better!

I bought this mixed-media work on a wood panel, “Sleepwalker,” by Portland, OR, artist Jesse Reno after Jamie and I took a road trip through northern California and Oregon in 2006. We saw an exhibit of Reno’s work at a cafe in Portland’s Hawthorne District, and I was taken by Reno’s evocative “neo-primitive” works and social commentary. Reno is a self-taught mixed media artist who has seen great success over the years since he began exhibiting his work in 2001. “Sleepwalker” is a statement about information overload in the contemporary world and the fact that people are often sleepwalking through life.

Below is another work by Jesse Reno. I think I got this one in 2007 or 2008. This piece is called “Feel, Not Think” and I like the sentiment, as I tend to be a thinker. I’m glad I bought these two Reno paintings when I did, as I’m not sure I could afford them today!

This fun linoleum block print, or linocut, was done by Christine Weibel, who is a graphic designer and illustrator. Christine and I took linocut and monoprint classes together from 2008 to 2010 in San Francisco from Katie Gilmartin, a wonderful artist and teacher. I was always impressed by Christine’s talent, meticulousness, and patience. And, she is just an awesome person! This print was inspired by a cat named Baumans that would move its mouth like it was talking. I think it was created in 2008 or 2009. A wonderful thing about taking print classes is that it’s common for students to exchange prints with each other. I have some other amazing prints by past classmates and a few teachers, too, that are not currently on display. One of these days, I will get some more of them framed.

Below is a linocut that I made in Katie Gilmartin’s class in 2008 or 2009. I was really into circles for a while and did a lot of prints that had repeating circles as a theme. I liked that they represent ongoing cycles of life. I also really like working with patterns.

My classes with Katie Gilmartin weren’t my first experience with printmaking: I had taken classes at the Fleisher Art Memorial in Philadelphia from 2000 to 2005, first with the amazing Charlotte Yudis and then with the talented Christine Blair. In those classes, I mostly focused on intaglia etching. Those classes were special to me–I learned so much, and I had a great time working with Charlotte, Christine, and the other students. Read more about the Fleisher Art Memorial. Find Christine Blair on Facebook or on Instagram at @christineblairart.

Humboldt County and Santa Cruz

In 2010, I moved from Oakland to McKinleyville, CA, to take a postdoctoral fellowship at Humboldt State University in Arcata doing therapy with students. I wasn’t too happy to move to Humboldt County. Don’t get me wrong–it is an absolutely gorgeous place, with rocky beaches, redwood forests, farms, some quaint little towns, and nice people. But for me, it was just not where I wanted to be. The postdoc paid the worst of all the positions to which I’d applied, and it was FAR away from the San Francisco Bay Area and all my California friends. Also, McKinleyville is a very small, rural town, a far cry from the urban life I’d been used to after 19 years in Philadelphia and 5 years in Oakland! One of the saving graces of my 2 years in McKinleyville was that the area had a lot of artists and an amazing art crawl once a month in the neighboring town of Eureka. At one of these art events with friends, I picked up this adorable ceramic skunk by Diane Sonderegger. I’d seen (and smelled) a lot of skunks around the dirt road where I lived in McKinleyville, so the skunk seemed like a fitting memento of my life there.

I moved to Santa Cruz, CA, in August 2012 to work at University of California, Santa Cruz, as a psychologist; I was there from 2012 to 2019. Santa Cruz is not a big city like Philadelphia or Oakland, but it is busier and less isolated than Humboldt County, just a 75-mile drive to San Francisco and Oakland. I enjoyed the laid-back lifestyle and natural beauty of Santa Cruz, as well as the friends I made there. I also enjoyed all the art!

Although the following piece was done in 1999, I didn’t receive it until 2012 or 2013. It is a monoprint by artist and professor Sharon Bowar Cosgrove, who is based in Wilkes-Barre, PA. My mother, Penny Davis, bought this for me as a gift. Sharon has had an interesting career: Her work has been selected for the Art in Embassies Program sponsored by the U.S. Department of State and was displayed at the U.S. Embassy in Astana, Kazakhstan. She is the recipient of the Medici Award in Painting from the International Biennale Exhibition of Contemporary Art, in Florence, Italy, and has been Visiting Artist in Philadelphia; Umbria, Italy; Rome; and Ireland. Sharon has taught in Florence, Italy and facilitated group painting and mural projects with international artists, students, and victims of domestic violence. I find this piece soothing and peaceful. Don’t mind the reflection on the glass–photographing framed artwork can be challenging!

Here’s a fun piece I bought at a print sale at UC Santa Cruz in 2012 or 2013. At the end of every academic year, the university’s print shop would have a sale of student work. I wish I had the full name of the artist who made this. It’s signed “Jorden,” so that’s all I’ve got. I think it’s a linocut, but it could be a screenprint. Again, there are some unfortunate reflections on the glass.

The whimsical linocut below was done by Jose Pulido, an artist from southern California who is influenced by popular culture and his Mexican heritage. I have a thing for monkeys, so I was searching around on Etsy for monkey-related art and found this print of a fancy chimp some time around 2013. These days, Pulido mainly creates prints of calaveras, decorative skulls that are associated with Mexico’s Día de Muertos, or Day of the Dead. Find his work in his Etsy store, Mis Nopales.

I just love this cat-bat mixed media piece on wood by AJ Sharkstar, a close friend and talented artist based in Oakland. She has worked as an indoor and outdoor muralist, shown in galleries, and done guerrilla street art, among other things. Her trademark is fanciful creatures, often painted on sidewalks, rocks, and driftwood. This piece was a Halloween gift in 2014. Below is a photo of a coffee table that was a collaboration between AJ and her husband, Todd Andrews (another close friend, whom I met in grad school in the mid-2000s). The table was another gift, created in 2014. See more of AJ’s work on her blog and website.

This painted engraving on wood brings back happy memories of a trip I took to Hawaii in July of 2017. I stayed mainly on Oahu, with a quick side-trip to the Big Island. I purchased this print on Oahu’s North Shore, in Haleiwa, at The Beet Box Cafe, a cute place where I had a delicious organic vegetarian lunch. There was an exhibit of local artwork, and this piece caught my eye. The artist, Patrick Parker, is originally from Southern California and now lives on Hawaii.

Below are two fun prints by Hawaiian artist Welzie that I bought on the same Hawaii trip in 2017. I got these on Oahu’s North Shore, in Waialua, at the Sugar Mill, a historic complex that was a functioning sugar mill until 1996 and now houses shops and other businesses. Welzie, who started out as a surfboard artist, creates whimsical paintings and murals. His paintings are shown throughout Hawaii’s fine art galleries, and he has done large-scale murals in California and Mexico. I love the octopus, but the turtle is special to me, because I absolutely fell in love with sea turtles on my two trips to Hawaii (before my 2017 trip, I had visited Maui in 2014).

My friend Laurel Bushman, who lives in Santa Cruz, is a super-talented artist who does fine art, murals, teaching, and more. She painted this watercolor of beautiful monarch butterflies in 2017. I bought it from her in 2018. Not only is this painting lovely, but it reminds me of Laurel and her husband, Geoff, because they have raised monarchs in their home to release and help repopulate. I have this piece hanging above my desk, and it’s nice to look up and see it while I am working.

I’m not sure who created these paintings, as they are not signed. The animals were painted on vintage postcards in Rajasthan, India. I think these may be similar to “assembly line hotel art,” where there are perhaps different people working together to mass produce these little paintings for sale. I could be wrong–maybe it is just one artist creating these charming works. In any case, I love them. I’m a big animal person–I already mentioned that I love monkeys, and I also love big cats, so I could not resist these four paintings. I got them through Etsy, I think in 2018.

In October 2018, I went to an open studios event in Santa Cruz with some friends. We all were taken by the amazing prints of Bridget Henry, a friend of a friend who has a charming studio overlooking the ocean. Henry is a printmaker who is inspired by nature and psychology. She manages the print shop and teaches at UC Santa Cruz. I love the following woodblock print of an old, dilapidated church. I find such beauty in things that are weathered, falling apart, and being taken over by nature. It was fun being able to look through several different versions of this print and choose the one I liked the best. In case you’re not familiar with the process of printmaking, each print in a series is often slightly different from the others, since each one is hand-inked. Although an artist typically tries to use the same colors and methods for each print in a series, it’s inevitable that there will be some slight variations in color and tone. After I bought this print, I started following Henry on Facebook and Instagram and recently bought a few more, smaller, prints from her on Etsy (see below).

This shadow box was created by my friend AJ Sharkstar (see above for more info on her fabulousness)! Because it had been created a while back and was a little faded, I got to collaborate on touching it up with her and her husband, Todd, in April 2019. We had a great time–I love that one of the activities we do together is making art. The second picture below shows the box on the wall of my previous apartment in Santa Cruz with the cat-bat by AJ and some other art.

Living in San Francisco

I moved to San Francisco in August 2019 to start a new job as a psychologist at University of San Francisco. Soon after I moved, I was walking around my new neighborhood and happened upon a small art gallery called The Great Highway that was having an opening for several local artists, one of whom was Jeana Hadley, a graphic designer and illustrator and the owner of Sealevel Studio. I fell in love with this octopus by Hadley, and since I live near Ocean Beach, it’s fun to have a print with a nautical theme.

My latest acquisitions are three prints by Bridget Henry, which I got through Henry’s Etsy shop. I purchased two small print collages on wood that were done in 2019 and a linocut print on cardboard created in 2020. I had ordered a print collage of a sparrow, not the bunny seen below (got that one by mistake), but I liked this one so much that I decided to keep it rather than return it and get the one I’d ordered. Henry was kind in offering to exchange them and give me a discount, but I was happy with what I received. The process Henry used to make the print collages is interesting: A woodcut was printed on acid-free paper and cut out to collage on a wood block. The background is hand painted with black tea and ink.

The last work I’ll show is more of my own. These are just some silly paintings I did in acrylic on old barn wood for my garden. I wanted to paint something fun and represent some of the “wildlife” I see in my garden: bees and gophers.

This post was one of the most fun and rewarding ones I’ve written, since it was a chance to look at all my art and reminisce about when and how I got it. As I mentioned a few times in my post, I wish I remembered all the details better–this was one of the reasons I wanted to write this post in the first place, so I would not forget even more about my art collection. Note to self: Keep track of the specifics of any art you acquire in the future!

This was also one of the more challenging posts I’ve written: Once I started, I realized how much work it was going to take to photograph all my art, research the dates and circumstances of acquisition for many of the pieces (by looking through photographs and my social media pages for “clues” and asking friends to refresh my memory), and find websites and other information about many of the artists. I hope you enjoyed seeing and learning about my art!