I’ve worked in the field of design for over 30 years. I studied art, then stencil dyeing in Japan where I also did repair for exhibitions, and later set up a design and hand screening studio for interior design in San Francisco.  I finally returned to New York where I now design and oversee the manufacturing of area rugs and carpets for the residential, hospitality and commercial industries. I also collaborate with designers and architects on their interior design renovation projects.

For a long time I vacillated between the idea of working within the walls of academia or satisfying my gnawing drive to be out in the world on the edge of design. I thought I could continue running a business and at the same time bring the market to university students. I was invited to Chair the Surface Design Department at Syracuse University. But the real word held sway, seemingly more enticing. 

Concurrently with launching my design business, I studied interior design at Rudolph Schaeffer School of Design. 

To set foot through the gate of Mr. Schaeffer’s garden which contained both his school and home, I felt I had landed in another world. The freeway noise, an earshot away, took on an ethereal timbre. Mr. Schaeffer not only taught us the academics of good design, he also taught us a way of being – through his example.

While based in California, I stayed overnight at the then recently opened Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburg to interview Illum 4 - James Turrell for a magazine. I had fallen in love with his mesmerizing and mysterious light sculptures at a Whitney Museum exhibit in New York.

I visited a friend’s family home with a magnificent collection of Basho (the Japanese haiku poet and artist) screens in Carmel, Ca. And I spent a day into dusk with a woman in her 90’s who showed me her 1920’s home tucked away in the hills of Marin. We would watch her home and its antique furniture be transformed by the light on her lonely mountaintop. 

After traveling through Europe I lived in a suburb of Paris, Bois de Boulogne, with my soon to be husband. The town had beautiful curbside appeal flaunting Le Corbusier’s architecture. I would meander through the streets of this suburb as well as Paris - finding my way into museums, visiting with friends and staying in traditional French homes in Lyon and Paris as well as the countryside. I ventured into former French colonies such as Dakkar, visited the former slave holding home of an African woman barrister designed exquisite jewelry on the island of Goree off the coast of Senegal and stayed in Peter Gabriel's French country inspired home on the water.

According to our then neighbors, she made the home her place of design inspiration. The neighbors happily told me how glad they were that another designer would be living there. And design inspiring it was! From the beautifully restful gazebo in the garden to being in the bones of a 1800’s farm house.

Although my mother’s designer friends asked her to help partner with their business endeavors, she repeatedly declined their invitations. These friends ranged from a an interior decorator, (who went on to write a best selling book - for I'm not quite sure why - on interior design – Decorating Rich) to the trail blazing buyer for Henri Bendel, Jeanie Rosenberg VP@ Henri Bendel, who revolutionized the store and the merchandizing industry in the late 60’s, 70’s and into the 80’s. She asked my mother to go into a then untapped fashion catalogue business – the internet of the 80’s. 

bff

students and mentors

I not only studied lighting and textile design at Parsons School of Design, I taught Stencil Design at Pacific Basin School of Textile Design in Berkeley California and then Surface Design at Parsons School of Design in NYC.

For the past 3 decades, my flooring has been showcased in some of the most exclusive homes, hotels and offices in the country and I have had the good fortune and pleasure to be  part of their construction by the architects and designers on the project.

Eileen Gray’s tapis centimetre was imprinted in my mind and I knew that if she could dare to design and produce her rug in the 1920’s then I could launch my ballroom dancing steps in the 80’s. 

I later found Andy Warhol had produced diagrams from the same dancing instructions book – with the direction that when the LA MOCA museum displayed the diagram, it had to be on the floor.  Stepping Out - Male

Since the 90’s I have been renovating spaces that I or other people have lived in. 

During 2005-07, I worked with an architect to commence the gut renovation of a loft and roof garden in Tribeca, NY owned by a movie actor. Of the various great craftsmen I encountered through the job,P.E. Guerin stands out. Walking through their doors - a nondescript townhouse tucked away in the West Village to see how they have been manufacturing the most exquisite hardware and fixtures (solid gold swan shaped faucets) since the 1800’s.

My goal in renovating not only my own studio apartment in the mid 90's but for any project I take on has been to strip back the rooms to their original proportions and to let the spaces breathe as they were originally intended. 

Life came full circle when by happenstance I found there was an upcoming retrospective of my Japanese teacher’s work in New York 30 years after I had studied with him. In Sept 2009 I participated in the event by training the docents and then by being invited to become one.

A clip of my interview at the opening of Serizawa's Retrospective at the Japan Society 2009.