Beyond the Creative Work
Outside of my professional creative work, I’m a gardener and urban farming enthusiast with a growing passion for native plants and sustainable growing practices. My interests include permaculture, edible gardening, seed saving, ecological restoration, and creating productive spaces that support both people and wildlife.
For the past six years, I’ve had the privilege of living next to and learning from Atlanta’s Browns Mill Urban Food Forest. That experience has deepened my appreciation for urban agriculture, community-centered growing, and the important role native plants play in healthy ecosystems.
I enjoy getting my hands dirty, experimenting and finding practical ways to make gardening more accessible and rewarding. This work complements my creative practice by keeping me curious, observant, resourceful, and connected to the world around me.
My connection to nature and animals further deepened through my volunteer work with Lifeline Animal Project, where I created marketing materials to help pets find loving homes and fostered dogs awaiting adoption. In 2020 I experienced a “foster fail” and fell in love with a brindle pit-bull mix. Adopting my dog Bee through that program changed my life. Together, we explored state parks across the Southeast, and those adventures sparked a deeper curiosity about the native plants, ecosystems, and wildlife around me.
When I began my home garden, it was a blank slate. I spent countless hours planning, planting, tending, and learning, often with Bee by my side. June 2026, I lost him suddenly to metastatic liver cancer, a devastating loss. Today, I continue to garden and care for living things as a way of honoring our relationship. I see working alongside the natural world as an ongoing act of love, stewardship, and remembrance.
My relationship to nature has greatly influenced my experience in the human-made world. I believe in collaboration, the value in seasons of change and the way hierarchy fluctuates in productive systems.
I have spent 22 years as a nanny and babysitter, work I have found to be as important as it is satisfying. I cherish being a guide to children and villager to parents. Through childcare, I feel I have become an amateur anthropologist, a skill that greatly informs my creative work.
I’m also a lifelong learner and avid reader, already surpassing my 2026 goal of reading 75 new titles. My passion for stories, broadening my perspective and my constant curiosity about how things are made means I’ll read just about anything once and anything I love dozens of times.
I enjoy picking up new skills and working with my hands, whether I’m embroidering, sewing, crafting, or cooking.
I grew up working in my family’s restaurant, making hospitality part of my life long before I understood it as a job. Fun fact: our first restaurant was a drive-thru for boats on the Chain O’ Lakes in Northern Illinois!
Since then, I’ve worked in several corners of the service industry, and I still love the choreography, problem-solving and teamwork of a busy kitchen.
I’m fascinated by cooking for the same reason I’m drawn to making things in general: there’s a little bit of science, a little bit of craft, and a lot of experimentation involved.
At the heart of all of these interests is the same desire: to stay curious, make things, and find meaning in the process.
I bring my sense of curiosity and stewardship to everything I do.
