My appreciation for spare simplicity grew from childhood memories of Sweden where I was born and spent several summers on a windswept sunny island.  More time was spent in my mother’s native Louisiana absorbing the beauty of wrought iron, mellow brick, and carved wooden trim.  I grew up in a colonial whaling village on the north shore of Long Island and inherited an admiration for its small scale and historic detail.  College as a fine arts major, first in New Orleans and then in Williamsburg was full of visual inspiration.  Noting the large scale of my paintings, a perceptive professor encouraged me to take an architectural design course where I discovered my true passion.  A masters program in architecture at the University of Oregon provided an essential education.  A teaching fellowship in structural engineering provided skills to shape a structure with its support system. 

Following my eye for  beautiful scenery, I landed in Seattle with a degree and big ideas in the early 1980s.  I spent a decade as a designer at several architecture firms working on hospitals, department stores, zoos and educational facilities.  During this time, I bought a shabby two-bedroom bungalow with a view and began my education in residential remodeling through my own trials and errors.  Adding a full second story challenged me to retain the house’s historic character while more than doubling its footage and modifying its layout to accommodate contemporary life and a more streamlined aesthetic.  I also learned to shop building salvage, stencil floors, and install trim.  I also opened my architectural practice, Archetype, Inc. in 1990.

Over the past twenty years, I have used my education and experience with art and architecture to enlarge and update houses throughout Seattle’s historic neighborhoods, to design new houses both on tight urban sites and in expansive rural landscapes.  My work has also included law offices, medical clinics, warehouse conversions, retail stores and a well loved teashop.  At the same time, I have continued to create large scale environmental artwork which encompasses earthworks, sculpture,  and mosaics.  Working with excavators, metal-smiths, glassblowers, and tile setters I have made art at Meadowbrook Pond, Miller Community Center, Kent Sound Transit Station, Greenbridge Community Center and Seola Gardens.

There is a tremendous synergy between the architectural and art commissions – both challenge my imagination to create beautiful and unique constructions that can stand the test of time within the limits of fixed budgets.  I believe in designing buildings  and artwork that embrace the surrounding landscape and describe the unique circumstances of each place and its inhabitants.