CURRENT MISSION

To share as many stories with as many people as I can while exchanging as little money as possible. To make many drawings, write many micro-stories, and many memories.

ABOUT ME

PHILOSOPHY

Something amazing that I often realize during and after travel is just how beautiful and rich my own homeland is. After returning from a trip, I am all the more passionate about western North Carolina and ready to deepen my roots in the region. I am a spiritual and open-minded person whose perception of the world is always in flux.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

The kindest, most interesting people are a part of couchsurfing- right?! I've done all of my couchsurfing thus far on the west coast- in Portland Oregon, Durango, Colorado, and San Francisco, California. My most memorable stays were in Portland, where my hosts, in exchange for the little I could offer at the time (making drawings and paper lanterns), took me on adventures inside and outside the city- biking to dive bars in the suburbs, swimming in rivers. I am forever grateful for this community based on kindness and curiosity.

Interests

I identify primarily as a creator, an artist. It is this identity that allows me to travel and meet many new people and experience different cultures. Here is more about the work I do, taken from my website.

I'm a visual artist with two main focuses which I work to combine: facilitating creative collaboration and making art you can touch and interact with. I do so by designing spaces for interdisciplinary collaboration between artists and communities of disparate artistic mediums. My creative process often begins with a public space- outdoor or indoor, and personal mythologies that address themes of imbalance and regeneration. These narratives take shape during the collaborative process and fill the space with projections, sculptures, or choreographed movements of the body. Materials used include projected light and living natural materials such as roots, leaves, bark, and soil.

• animals
• insects
• culture
• poetry
• performing arts
• dancing
• backpacking
• swimming
• teaching
• visual arts
• sustainability
• intentional communities
• museums
• bicycling
• organic gardening
• herbal medicine
• creative writing
• healthy cooking
• reading novels

Music, Movies, and Books

music: Gorillaz
movie: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
book: The Wind Up Bird Chronicle

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

I was 19 years old and had just finished my second year of college studying fine art. I was desperate to leave the fast food joint I had been working at the previous summer and during High School. A visiting artist professor, Lisa Clague, encouraged me to apply for work at a goat farm down the road from her in the mountains of Western North Carolina. She said I could sculpt in her clay studio in the evenings all summer. So, I pitched my idea to the nearby OakMoon Farm to allow me to stay on their farm in exchange for room and board. For three months, I fed and watered their grazing goats and slept in a trailer without electricity under pines, poplars, and black locust trees. It was a summer of solitude, simplicity and creativity that would prepare me for my difficult and rewarding life choice to be a professional artist.

Teach, Learn, Share

I am always hungry for people's stories of triumph and failure. I love to move my hands or my feet while sharing these stories. In the kitchen, in the garden dirt, down the street, dancing in the room. Moving is learning and keeps us flexible, fluid, adaptable, ready to take on and work with what we find and the changes we can always count on.

What I Can Share with Hosts

A knowledge of gardening and cooking, drawing games, some handy-woman skills requiring power tools and woodworking.

Countries I’ve Visited

Costa Rica, United States

Countries I’ve Lived In

United States