About
I am a writer, artist and creepy-crawly lover based in Bellingham, Washington. I write about the sensory experience of being alive and enjoy detours to the underworld, inner space and the cosmos. I grew up in Wyoming where the wind, dryness, and desolate landscape made an imprint on me. This punishing environment taught me self-reliance, the beautiful dimensions of solitude, how to push through pain, and that survival is best friends with adaptation and death.
For formal education, I earned three degrees, two in English and one in Community and Regional Planning. My first real job – full-time, salaried with benefits – was as a proposal writer at an art museum. It was also my last real job. Once during an internship as outreach specialist for a regional government, I was asked to wrap a gift. It was my all-time favorite “other duties as assigned” task. My wrap jobs are interactive upcycled collage puzzles that I create through an iterative process of construction and deconstruction. They are acts of love.
Featured Work
Heidi Across America: One Woman's Journey on a Bicycle through the Heartland
In 2010, I pedaled solo across rural America from Eugene, Oregon, to Washington, DC. I didn’t love much about myself except my ability to endure grueling physical undertakings, and I set myself on this journey to fix my failures and insufficiencies. My route to the nation’s capital was established to celebrate America’s Bicentennial, but I wasn’t on a political mission. Along the way, I was surprised by the kindness of strangers and the emotional pinch of traveling through Wyoming where I grew up. Across the Plains and into the Ozarks, the heat intensified as I learned what it meant to love myself and America.
