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I've always seen my life through the prism of story, an ever-growing collection of overlapping circles and rings of adventures each with its own characters, soundtrack, setting and plot. I think that's what attracted me to working in the world of documentary film. I feel at home here, it's my language and viewpoint. When I approach what goes on in the world in the context and perspective of "story" it all seems to make a bit more sense somehow.
Humans have always communicated and related to one another through story. And the very best ones are not made up. The first story in my life is set in the 50s in a rural and mountainous community in New Jersey where as a child I spent almost every possible waking moment outside exploring the surrounding acres of woods and streams. This bucolic life changed dramatically when I was eight years old and my father took a job in London. Suddenly, we found ourselves living just off the King’s Road in Chelsea, in the heart of London's swinging pop scene during the 60s. I learned to live in a city, went to several different British schools and submitted my first poem for publication. (It was rejected.) I tried, but did poorly at ballet classes in Notting Hill and piano lessons with a concert pianist. But a passion was ignited at age ten with the birthday gift of my very first camera. I started photographing the world around me, both in London, and on our family travels to Africa and other countries. I lived in both the US and the UK during the 70s. I graduated from ACS International in Knightsbridge in 1974 and spent two weeks traveling around Russia with classmates. I decapitated thousands of strawberries at the Wimbledon Tennis Tournament, worked as a dj for WGBC, spent a summer in Paris as au pair for the family of a Time magazine foreign correspondent, and then another summer working for a beach photographer before receiving my bachelor’s degree in psychology in 1978 from Gettysburg College. For much of the 80s I made my career in the international furniture and fabrics industry, working with interior designers and architects all over the US and design colleagues in mills throughout Europe. I got married and had two beautiful babies, Zoë & Leif. In the 90s, while raising my kids, I stumbled upon the world of documentary filmmaking and suddenly everything came together. At Journey Films, I learned art research, storyline development and production. We traveled and worked on location in Istanbul, Italy, Germany and London. Working for Journey gave me the a chance to take part in the exploration of thought-provoking topics through the medium of film – mind candy that included the interplay between creativity & spirituality; art, architecture & religion; and the lives and philosophies of Thomas Jefferson, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Madeleine L'Engle, St Francis of Assisi and Desmond Tutu. It was during this decade that I also got unmarried. But, as always, where one story ends, another begins.... In 00 I began working for myself. In 2005, the kids & I left the suburbs of Washington DC and moved to Asheville, a small town in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina, where I now work as a writer, photographer, and broadcast consultant in the world of documentary film and public television – a happy combination of travel, photography and storytelling. In addition to my work for other producers and filmmakers, I am also writing a book, "The Red Moon Letters," a dual narrative, historical non-fiction set in Ethiopia. And whether I am traveling or trying to gently encourage zen-like gardens on our mountainside perch, hiking or relaxing with my kids and dogs, I can often be found behind the lens of my Canon. |