Artist, sailor, teacher . . . I am terrified by climate change and what it means for our children, grandchildren, and all living things.

Born during WWII, I was raised in a political family, the church of the Democratic Party, going door to door at election time, licking stamps at headquarters. In college I majored in painting and because of Vietnam fell out with party politics and jumped into rock and roll, the Anti-Vietnam War and Civil Rights. In 1970 I was working in Hollywood as a graphic artist, and working at night on personal art when I committed myself totally to the Feminist Movement as a founding member of WomanSpace Gallery and the Women’s Building I was a single mother with two young kids and helped found MOMMA, the first organization for Single Mothers. I designed our newsletter which went national. In the limelight for fifteen minutes, we got lots of PR and a book contract.

The book was successful and led to two more book contracts and a national book tour. I didn’t want to raise my children in Los Angeles. While on the book tour and even before when we traveled the US interviewing single mothers, I’d been looking for somewhere else to live, but hadn’t found it. So, in 1974, with money from the book, I sailed away from LA on a 55 foot sloop. A strange and desperate choice fueled by late nights and lots of cheap white wine. There were four of us crew, three women and a guy. None of us knew how to sail. Bound together by the desire for change, dumb enough to think we were smart enough to learn anything by reading a few books. It was dumb luck that washed us up twenty seven days later on Nuku Hiva, in the Marquesas.

I left that boat a couple months later in Papeete and joined a boat headed eventually to Hawaii. Eight months after leaving LA I had become a passionate sailor living on Maui. In 1978, emboldened by feminism, I bought my first sailboat, a 33 foot wooden sloop, the Pua Kai. The guys at the yacht club told me I’d sink the boat, die, or be killed by a Kodiak bear. I took off anyway heading north to Alaska.

This passage was followed by 3 years of cruising 30,000 miles with a boy friend for awhile and my two teenagers for the long haul. We spent months moving slowly south through the Alaskan and Canadian Inside Passages, wintering in Puget Sound, continuing in spring down the West Coast to San Diego, then the next winter along Mexico, Costa Rica and Panama. We transited the Canal and sailed north to Isla Mujeres, Mexico, the Dry Torgugas, Key West, Florida, up the Inter Coastal Waterway to Cape Hatteras, where the engine broke down and the boy friend left,

After a summer working in North Carolina the kids and I took off for the Caribbean and eventually back to Panama, the Galapagos, and Marquesas. Six months later we arrived home again on Maui. It was empowering in so many ways, a life changing adventure.

Back on Maui in the early 80’s I made a living designing and manufacturing clothing, as well as creating fine art for galleries. I spent a lot of time training: running, biking, swimming and did lots of sailing. I didn’t make much money, but I had a good time. In 2003 I was able to leave the clothing business. At sixty one I sailed my ultimate cruising boat, 40 feet of fast steel, to French Polynesia.

When I returned I found out UH Manoa had admitted me to their first Online Post Bach in Secondary Education Cohort. Going back to school after 45 years was an adventure, and I am grateful to UH for the opportunity. I certified in visual art and language arts and continued online at UH earning a Masters in Educational Technology.

In 2008 I became the Arts and Communication Teacher at Lahainaluna High School. As a CTE teacher all my lessons were project based and included Environmental and Hawaiian cultural themes. My students participated in PBS’s HIKI NO for five years, won awards in Graphics and some went on to art and design careers.

After seven years I retired in 2015 to work on my own art projects while continuing in the classroom as a substitute teacher.

In 2016 I completed SWEET LIGHT CRUDE, 21 episodes in the era of fossil fuels . . . Twenty one 20”x30” ink and colored pencil drawings which connect end to end to tell a sixty some foot long story of a modern day Hi’iaka and her Ganesha pal, Tutu Kane. Their mythic travels unfold: as oil spills, migrants migrate and CO2 grows ever stronger.

Finished with that I wanted to work larger. So I extended my easel, making it ten feet wide and taped ten feet of Strathmore 500 42” roll paper onto it. Working off and on, the first mural took me about a year to complete. Using acrylic inks Into the swamp, run for your life was my reaction the 2016 election.

Sleeping beauty at the dump, the next mural continued the “story”. It took most of another year to complete. While working on it I sketched parts for a third mural, Hands up, deep divide. Get over it. which lead to the fourth : The Dharma trail, a sleeping Buddha, one step forward two steps back finished in March, 2019 ending the series on a peaceful note.

At age seventy five I decided to buy another sailboat, a Corsair 27 trimaran for afternoon outings in the Pailolo Channel and beyond.

I will soon begin a new series of drawings, 4’x4’, ink and shades of grey, The 350 works by Rembrandt on exhibit for his 350th Anniversary at the Rijksmuseum Museum in Amsterdam Spring 2019 inspires me to look for light in dark corners.

I feel the need to do more to help others bend the future in a positive direction. Giving teachers encouragement and some money when they inspire students to become activists seems like a plan. I’m calling it Reach Rise Achieve Hawaii - RRAH

into the swamp, run for your life mural 1 (detail)