San Francisco Art Institute

I remember this room very well and the room across from it. I spent my happiest hours in those rooms, learning to draw and paint. I'm looking over my transcripts and I didn't get very good grades my first semester. But by my second semester, I was pulling in A's and B+ and I was so proud. The rooms haven't changed much - maybe a new coat of paint and a hell of a lot more noise from various boom boxes around the room. I remember us working in silence which is the way I still work. Autre temps, autre mores.

I would have made a good teacher, instead of a good but rebellious and bored administrator/buyer, whatever. I was fired or on the verge of being fired from almost every job I had in the last XXX years because I was the wrong person in the wrong place. I always did a good job but my supervisors hated me and I returned the hate and didn't have the skill to hide it. But then, I think that I really am an artist and have that kind of temperament which never fits well in the world. It's taken me a lot of years to realize that and to believe myself when I say "I am an artist." For a women of my generation and with my upbringing, that's been no easy task.