Liz's Bio

“ Mom, tell me a story about when you were little”

Driving at night through falling snow is magical. The outside world is dark and black save the tiny white specks illuminated by headlights. As a child, I loved riding in the car at night, especially during a snowfall. The heat hushed from the vents and blew warm air on my face, inducing a calm drowsiness as our old blue GMC van hurtled through a galaxy of stars which blazed past the windshield and melted on the side on the van. My mother, in a wooly purple hat and mismatched gloves, sat at the wheel listening to NPR until my brother and I would begin the familiar chant, ‘mom tell us a story about when you were little.’

Hearing stories about my mother’s past was an integral part of my childhood. Although she mostly shared these during bedtime, they often made appearances on car trips. My earliest memory of her sharing a piece of her history is actually during such a car ride, though I know it was not the first time. My father was driving so my mother twisted around in the passenger seat, trying to see us in the dark. My brother and I were crammed in the back. Our heads nestled in seatbelt slings that stretched from above our shoulders down across our laps. This time she told us about a trip to Ireland. She was eight and my aunt was six. They visited Blarney castle, kissed the famous stone, and on the way home two boys dumped coffee grounds in their hair. Such were the tales that made my bedtime stories. Her accounts were descriptive and she would recall architectural details and sometimes even the clothes she wore. You might think a child would tire of hearing about their parent’s past, but my mother had wonderful stories to tell.

My grandfather worked for the Dow Chemical Company and was transferred in the 1960s from Michigan to Switzerland. Thus my mother spent the majority of elementary school in Zurich and most of high school in the Netherlands. She had fabulous stories about ranging from when her family first sailed to Europe by boat to the moment she realized she could fluently understand Swiss. Skiing in the Alps, visiting castles, moped riding boyfriends, Holland in the 1960s, hitchhiking around Greece, and the list continued. There was travel, romance, adventure, drama, and danger but most importantly it was all true and it all happened to my mom.

Perhaps this was especially fascinating since my mother did not appear to be the adventurous globe trotting sort. She was a registered dietician living in rural NJ. She was overworked, underpaid, had few friends, and rarely socialized let alone travel. I used to tell her stories to my friends at school who were equally enthralled by her international escapades. In my 8th grade year book I listed travel as my favorite activity despite the fact that I had never left the country and only traveled to visit relatives. I constantly compared my life to my mother’s. Not with a desire to relive her experiences or see if my own experiences measured up, but in terms of what stories I had accumulated thus far in my life. What adventures had I added that year?

I can not remember the first time my mother told me a story about her past. I don’t recall how old I was, which story she chose to recount, or where we were at the time. She has told me that when my brother and I were babies and crying, unable to be comforted she would sit with us in her green rocking chair, close her eyes and remember the adventures she had before I was born, before she ever met my father.

My understanding and interactions with these narratives has changed as I have gotten older. Although they certainly served as a form of entertainment for my brother and me, I now see that for my mother they were also a form of escape. Escape from an abusive marriage and oppressive home life and a return to her family whom she had been separated from due to my father’s job, a return to a life that seemed just as unreal to her as it did to me and my brother.

Yet, while for my mother the stories represented a time and person lost and distant, to me they were a promise of things to come. I would escape and have my own adventures and stories to tell. Stories I could call upon someday if someone asked me to tell me as story about when I was little.

Tonya's Bio

Dodge Spirit

My Grandma sold me her old Dodge Spirit for a song. It had been years since something really felt like it was mine. That car was something I could count on, and at the time it was about all I could count on. The man for whom I’d donned the veil and sworn my allegiance had been a continuous series of let-downs during our four-year marriage. I had married the guy who loved to be the center of attention. You know, the really loud guy at parties who’s always willing to do anything that merits an audience (the drunker, the better). Well, I can tell you now that those guys are #1) funnier when you’re drunk and #2) not funny at all when you are matrimonially shackled to them. The truth that I learned pretty quickly, was that his life was all about pleasure.

When he was home, which wasn’t often, we fought. Sometimes these disagreements became physical. I knew that was probably a bad thing, but I figured that I provoked him. He wasn’t the quickest wit, and I have a pretty sharp tongue. There were also the women. He did love the ladies, especially the naked ones. It was maddening, but I stayed. I stayed through the yelling, the belittling, the whole twisted, Jerry Springer/Archie Bunker sitcom. I stayed because…I didn’t want to fail. I didn’t want to someday sing along with Tammy Wynette crooning D-I-V-O-R-C-E. Most of all, I didn’t want my children to have to contend with the stacks of emotional baggage that accompany divorce. Oh yes, I forgot to mention the children. There are two, and they are beautiful. If there’s anything good that man ever did, it was to give life to those two children. We have a 3-year-old boy and a 2-year-old girl.

People who make life-changing, difficult decisions often have a blinding moment of clarity when they suddenly are able - just for a split second - to see their situation from a virtually omniscient perspective. I liken it to an out-of-body experience. For me it occurred, as I lie covered in dust on a gravel driveway. I look up at a beautiful blue sky. It was one of those days where the clouds looked so fluffy you think they might be edible. I had an entire set of keys in my mouth and blood was running down my chin. My legs and feet were skinned up and bleeding. I gingerly rolled onto my side and saw two small faces looking back at me through a sliding glass door. It was strange to see their faces twisted and crying in torment, and yet they were mute. I could hear nothing but the ringing in my ears.

That was it. That very instant, the cosmic searchlight of truth shined through all of the layers of doubt, fear, and self-loathing and revealed wisdom in flashing neon splendor. “Get the hell out.”

Ironically, it was Grandma’s Spirit that had spurred my moment of clarity. He had taken the keys to my car with him as he was leaving for work. He didn’t want me going anywhere that day, he had said. I asked for them and he shook his perfectly coiffed head, smoothed his new suit and got in his car. It was my attempt to physically retrieve them that had been the catalyst for his mercurial temper.

Thanks Grandma, for your Spirit.

Penny's Bio

The bed is firm but the mattress gives way to my tired body as I let the weight pull me further down. I have spent year in this very spot watching as the leaves changed color outside my window. I hear their words playing over and over in my mind, “Your scholarly writing needs a LOT of work!” “Don’t go to grad school take some writing courses first.” 

Maybe they were right, maybe not. Either way I walked through the grounds of Ohio State University the very next year head held high, heart full of determination and drive.


Quickly I learned how unique I was filling the seat of a graduate course made up mostly of PhD students and those with 3 or more years of experience under their belts. At 23 years old I was the youngest most inexperienced student in the room and I knew it. Unfortunately so did they. My inexperience did not show in my grades that remained A’s but while my research grew my writing remained incompetent, confusing and unorganized.


As a graduate student I was privileged to spend the summer months abroad in London at London Metropolitan University studying art history. It changed my life. Upon visiting Tate Modern the countries collection of contemporary and modern art, I became lost in wonder and awe. Returning to the states and to my home university my interest grew in the museum and I followed my path of study into the world of academia. Ultimately I hoped to research community engagement in the museum and its impact on education/economy. A grand plan that made everyone very pleased, especially my family of whom I feared failing most.

Confusion and uncertainty consumed me; I had forgotten whom I was and where I was going. So I stopped and looked around taking in my surroundings. There was no one there except myself. I had no support from the department I was studying with, in truth my papers, presentations and ideas were often met with confusion and I was always encouraged to do more research. “The research is done!” I would shout but no one was listening. Not to me, not to my speech lacking all the academic glamour of my seasoned colleagues.


“I give up, there is nothing left in this for me. Nothing no passion, no drive, nothing.” I announced defeated to my parents at the kitchen table. This time there was no objection, no words telling me to do more research or editing. This time my life was in question, not a paper. “I don’t want to fail you,” I mumbled through heavy tears as though the dam I had built years ago were giving way. To my surprise the faces of my loved ones remained the same, filled with the same joy as before. No one was mad, no one disappointed.

“The only one you are disappointing,” she said “is yourself.” The values these loving people instilled in me from the beginning were always to work hard for what I wanted and be happy in it. Why had it taken me so many years to figure that out?

At this point in my life, I do not know if I am a writer. What I do know is this, five years have passed for me and my education still feels incomplete. I came here with good intentions, to help others and provide them with the opportunities that I have had. However, I know now that those goals and achievements do not belong to me, they are someone else’s. I have no pace in them and do not wish to rob others of their chance. Instead I arrive here, hoping for guidance in my own dream. If by the end I find that I am neither writer nor author at least I can be happy with myself knowing that I have overcome fear, objection and disbelief to find passion in life. I tried, that is what matters.

Marissa's Bio About Someone

The dollhouse full of silkworms sits in her studio – a space within a space, salvaged, a coincidental home. “The worms aren’t for silk,” she says. It takes awhile to understand that they aren’t for anything, they don’t exist to serve a purpose than to live out their own lives, evolved without agency, marked by dependency.

“Silkworms have had their instincts bred out of them by the silk industry,” she informs me. I learn that they are, or have evolved into, somewhat stupid creatures. She has to literally drop their food on their heads, or they won’t travel to eat it. She picks one up to move it closer to a potential mate. She knows they have to choose a place to spin, but she monitors and suggests suitable locations in the dollhouse. “They can’t spin on a flat surface, they need some kind of wall.”

They need a lot, it seems.

Home. She has lived in the same house for eighteen years. She has wanted to make art, and finally carved out a space for it by returning to student-hood. School as a job marks out the necessity of her work, legitimizes the space and time needed to create. Witnessing becomes necessary on many levels.

Dependency. Addiction. Intervention?

“Sometimes your interventions backfire. You see them suffering and you try to go in and help, but it ends up causing more suffering. And then they die. Slowly.” All life is finite, and many things go wrong. With silkworms, the better care they get, the shorter their lives are. Is a short life any less meaningful than a long one?

Laura's Bio

Wrong Turn

I believe that every decision you make takes you down a path that another decision
would never have taken you to. It is usually unlikely that one knows what lies ahead on
that path once you have started down it. The adventure of the journey is the unknown.
Decisions made sometimes may seem right at first because of what you envision at the
end. However, as you begin the journey, new choices and decisions present themselves
to further complicate or make your initial decision become more rooted and committed.

I was 17 years old and enrolled as a fine arts major at Alfred University in the valley of
the Allegheny Mountains of New York. My parents just dropped me off with all of my
belongings, which wasn’t very much at my dormitory. While I witnessed other students
cry as their parents drove off, I felt excited and ready to start this new beginning. I was
a runner and joined the cross-country team. I liked how my medium-length brown pony
tail bounced from side to side as I ran around campus and the small town in which it was
located in. Life was exciting at the moment as I was pursuing my dreams of becoming
a painter or a potter someday. I equally liked both art mediums. My parents were also
both very supportive of my career path although they were a little hesitant at first. I was
confident in my abilities because I was given the sole art award from my high school
during my senior year. I liked all my classes although some really challenged my ideas
of art until that one day in my professor’s office.

It was a Wednesday morning at the end of the first semester. I had carried my large,
heavy black portfolio down from my dorm room to present my work to my professor. It
was filled with numerous drawings and paintings from the entire semester. I was eager
for a response of my work from my much admired professor. I proudly unzipped my
portfolio and turned to my first drawing. There was a silent pause. And then, he closed
folded the portfolio shut and looked at me. I will never forget the words he spoke to me
that morning. He said that he didn’t need to look at my work because he can not take me
seriously until I take myself seriously as an artist. He advised me to cut off my ponytail,
dye my hair, get a couple piercings and a few tattoos. I was stunned and mortified. The
meeting was over. I left ashamed, confused, and angry and I didn’t know what to do. I
just took it all in and sadly enough began to believe him.

I never cut off my ponytail or dyed my hair and never got a tattoo. That wasn’t who I
was and I didn’t want to become an imposter. I liked how I looked and I didn’t want
to change because someone told me to. But little did I know, that he did change me in
a different way in that moment whether I liked it or not. I finished my first year as a
fine arts major, but returned the next year as a Ceramic Engineering student. I guess
my appearance fit that mold better. The transition into Engineering wasn’t difficult
academically because I earned strong grades in math and science during high school.
However, emotionally the transition was very difficult as I dropped a pottery class for
Chemistry and painting for Calculus. My decision over the course of the summer forever
changed the direction of my life. I finished my degree in Engineering with honors and
began to work for a manufacturing facility for four years. Throughout my time as a
student and a professional in the engineering world, I felt empty. It didn’t fill me up
and I just didn’t care about it. It wasn’t terrible, but just not right for me. I searched
and searched my soul to figure out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life because I
knew I couldn’t work as an engineer anymore. I thought maybe I would apply to Med-
School or maybe work towards an MBA but none of them felt right for me. I still loved
art, but was afraid of it now.

One morning, I met my sister for breakfast and she told me that she thought I would
be an excellent art teacher. At first, I dismissed the idea because I didn’t think it was
prestigious enough, but then the idea lingered in my mind for days, weeks, and months.
The more I thought about it, the more the idea appealed to me. I went for it. I quit my
job and returned back to school to attain a Masters in Art Education. I would become an
art teacher who inspires students to achieve their dreams no matter what they looked like.