SOME STUFF ABOUT ME:
I am an artist, a wife, and a mom. My husband and I have been together for 10 years and our son is almost 9. We currently live, with our 2 dogs, on the Mariana’s island of Guam, a Territory of the United States, in Micronesia/ Asia Pacific. Originally, I am from Omaha, Nebraska, USA.
I have my Bachelor’s degree in Fine Art Studio Arts, including a Minor in Religion, from the University of Nebraska (Omaha). I actually have over 185 total university credit hours, since prior, I had also attended pre-Law classes at College of St. Mary (Omaha) and a year at Iowa State University (Ames, IA).
While at UNO, I was graced to be mentored by tenured Prof. Bonnie O’Connell, a lively, well-spoken, genius educator and extremely knowledgeable and talented artist in the Fine Arts Press/Book Arts Department. I believe I took every class she offered. Another ever-present and vital influence during my college years was Prof. Dale Stover, in the Religion Dept, whose guidance and teachings led to my Religion Minor and, ultimately, to my interest in Native American spirituality and a new way ‘to see’.
I have worked diligently for many years honing my artistic abilities and entrepreneurial skills, exploring a variety of mediums and learning new creative ways to express myself.
In 2002, I was honored to be mentored by the extremely experienced and talented tattoo artist, Dick Warsocki, as well as a totally rad custom hot-rod builder and a painter/sculptor. My apprenticeship with Dick gave me the rare opportunity to see a true master at work. Over the next dozen years, I ultimately grew my skills, blossoming into a successful, skilled tattoo artist. I even started my own tattoo shop, Rawhide Tattoo Studio, which I sold a few years later to my apprentice.
I’m also proud to say that I helped to create the Desert Dome at Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo. I was hired on with an Arizona-based company at Artist Level II, to work with a scenic design construction team, where I designed and painted authentic-looking murals of ancient Paleo and Neolithic stone art. Plus, I was part of the ‘rock’ construction crew, helping to build sub-structures, then shoot yards and yards of cement to ‘carve’ into concrete ‘rocks’, sometimes ‘trees’, which I then later faux painted, sometimes in full repelling gear and loaded with sprayers and hoses attached below, yet dragged up with me up to 60′ high! Creating several murals throughout the Dome was my pièce de résistance while there, which even led to a really fun interview with the local news that was documenting the Dome’s construction.
I’ve also worked in a variety of other creative positions: as a scenic artist, painting murals and faux finishes and backdrops, for an assortment of projects: a Powerball Lottery television commercial, a movie (“Full Ride”), theatrical performances, 2 children’s museums, haunted houses, pumpkin patches, the Kearney Archway Monument (briefly working with Robert Evans!), and a plethora of residential faux finish work for private individuals.
I have always been an artist; I am the real deal. I cannot remember a time when I wasn’t imagining or creating something with my hands.
Born on the cusp of Capricorn, I love the earthiness of creation. Yet, the Aquarius side of me seeks the freedom that lives at the edge of the whims of the Air. ~ My freedom makes me also a passionate rebel, as my earthy basis makes me a dedicated creator. ~ A true alchemist of visual symbolic matter.
Ah, the sensory and tactile properties of things, especially anything ancient and organic, fascinate me and, most likely, always will. I have an insatiable urge to touch everything, to explore the sensory experiences, and maneuver my perspective. It often gets me in trouble at galleries, shops, museums, even zoos… hmmm, didn’t I just mention that I have mostly worked in these places?… lol!
I love when art invites people to touch or interact or become intimate with it in some way, like a book that must be held and moved and turned and touched, every sensory nerve in our hands awake to the texture of the paper, the inky or musty smell, the weight and shape, the sound of the rustling pages, the scrawl of letters and lines of text… I love it all!
And when I’m drawing, it’s the feel of the pen, the ink, sliding and scraping against the paper, the smoothly slickery velvet grease of lead, like the shadow of iridescence, building layers up to meet my eye, or painting with buttery smears of colors as I push the paints around and out and back together again, diving, swirling, tapping, stretching, dancing, my canvas making sounds like a sporadically whispering drum to some unsung beat.
“Shamanic Passages” by Tiffany Carman 1995
I have developed a very unique style I think, ‘drawing’ on my many unique experiences: from my college degree in art, to working as a muralist, set designer, and later, tattoo artist, to traveling and experiencing other cultural influences, notably, my deep connection with Native American spirituality and my own Mother Earth-based kind of spirituality, and most especially, to my experience of growing up surrounded by an eclectic and bohemian variety of artists, including my parents especially, in the Old Market district of Omaha during the 1970’s.
I remember taking a summer art class at the Western Heritage Museum that was taught by the sculptor/painter Bill Farmer, and I appeared on the local news, showing one of my creations from the class! I love that the Durham preserves the visual history of collective and individual memories, stories of our experiences, our feelings and perspectives.
My father owned a picture framing shop, where our family lived in the warehouse above. My brother and I were inundated with real-life every-day ‘lessons in art’ from amazingly creative artists, and the genius artworks themselves. I have never met a work of art that does not speak its story; to know it from its perspective, you just have to listen inside of it.
The Old Market area is now a very commercialized, bustling, lively cosmopolitan marketplace, with restaurants, specialty shops, apartments, lofts, galleries, bars and lots of nightlife; it’s very different from the stout, abandoned-looking warehouses whose silent brick facades I remember lining the wide sidewalks and brick-paved streets, with a scattering of bars and odd shops and mostly local traffic during the days.
I remember that one of the walls in my bedroom had our freight elevator on the other side, and the kitchen windows exited onto the fire escape to the alleyway. There really weren’t many people, notably other children, living downtown like us; it made for a very unique upbringing and childhood experiences, like riding my bicycle indoors during the winter, some of the best games of ‘hide and go seek’, playing on one of the 2 old pianos we had, dancing in front of a 20′ mirrored wall or having businesses for neighbors.
When I was very little, my father worked at Joslyn Art Museum, where, on Saturdays, sometimes, I went with him to work. While he worked, I was allowed a bit of free-reign time to roam among the diasporas and play ‘behind the scenes,’ listening to the stories of all of the art and historical artifacts. There were so many practical objects in some of the rooms behind the glass, I could live there quite comfortably. However, what pulled at my attention were the objects that I did not understand their purpose; why were they created? Who made them? How were they used? I would stare at the rows and rows and endless rows of beads, like dark blue seeds marching in crooked, crowded lines, sewn tediously onto tan skins, now worn and curled and stiff at the edges. There were other colors too, in patterns and shapes with symbols I had never seen, stitched one by one, a long-ago hand that picked those reds, whites, ochre-yellows, greens, and even pink!
I was often caught red-handed in the displays, playing with the ‘artifacts’, churning butter, testing a mohawk, trying on a bear claw necklace, adjusting the mannequin’s bonnet and dress, arranging plates and old silverware on a wooden dinner table… My favorites were the Native American and early prairie settlers’ collections. I must have appeared quite obvious, a modern smiley-faced-t-shirt-and-jeans-wearing contrast behind the glass, in the displays of old worn out artifacts, because I always seemed to get caught, no matter how sneaky I was slipping off to my favorite nooks and crannies. Funny… ironic funny… because I did the same thing at the Antiquarium Bookstore too, another favorite childhood playground, which was a bookstore 2 doors west of my father’s frame shop and our home. The Antiquarium Bookstore was owned and lovingly operated by a most amazing human named Thomas Rudloff. The Antiquarium and Thomas had a wild influence upon me and my artistic impulses and drives while I was growing up in the 70’s in the Old Market… but that is another story.
TO BE CONTINUED. . . ♥
