Instructor
I teach Nature Journaling and Drawing in Year 1. As a maker of objects, I have kept research journals most of my life. Recently, my journals have formed a substantive part of my work. Other work includes ceramic sculpture, drawing and painting. I have an MA Ceramics from the University of Wales in Cardiff and have studied Fine Art and Education at the Universities of kwaZulu-Natal and Cape Town in South Africa and St. Martins College, Lancaster in England. I was born in South Africa and have lived and worked there and in Botswana, England, Wales and the United States. I have worked at the Maru a Pula School in Gaborone, Botswana; Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts; Atlantic College in Wales; and the Hotchkiss School, where I lived from 2007-2013. I have taught on the Summer Portals program for the last four years.
Place is fundamental to my work; local, community and ecological politics absorb me and I am acutely aware of my immediate natural environment, weather conditions and issues of conservation and sustainability. As a young student in Cape Town, I lived and worked on a communal organic farm and, later, my family and I spent many of our holidays in Botswana camping in the wilds of the Kgalagadi desert and the Okavango Delta, where you have to take with you all your water, food and fuel. Nowadays, I keep bees and protect them from bears. I run and hike and, last summer, I walked Offa’s Dyke—a 200 mile trail that follows the border between England and Wales. I plan to walk parts of the Appalachian Trail this spring. Much of my time is consumed by my work as a director on the board of Women’s Support Services, the local organization that addresses domestic violence. The practice of keeping a journal is a discipline that allows me to thread a daily narrative of enquiry and reflection through the various adventures of my life.
