Recent Public Art project:

Do Trees Have Nationality?
The Olive Oil Tasting / Gift Exchange Picnic was presented on Jesse Square in San Francisco, CA, on Sunday, June 3, 2012.

Joining us on Jesse Square, invited participants – friends, museum goers, and passersby – were given the opportunity to taste several varieties of olive oil produced in different regions of Palestine and engage in a symbolic gift exchange. 

For receiving an olive branch, participants were asked to consider the olive trees in Palestine and offer their reflections on one of several questions that address the rights of trees, how their identity impacts their survival, and what our responsibility is toward them. Documentation of the project can be viewed at: DoTreesHaveNationality.org


Recent publications

“The Shape of Sound,” a sonic meditation composition, was recently published in Deep Listening Anthology Two (Deep Listening Institute, 2011).

“Arts-Making and the Creative Process: How Cultivating Sensory Connections Across Disciplines Impacts Learning and Discovery” (May 2011, Mills graduate thesis), focused on expanding the relationships between listening, observation, and improvisation to the creative process. She presented a paper at NAEA (National Art Education Association) Convention in March 2011, synthesizing aspects of this research with her recently published chapter, “What is Art?”. 

“What is Art?” (Artful Teaching: Integrating the Arts for Understanding Across the Curriculum, K-8, ed. by David Donahue and Jennifer Stuart, Teachers College Press, 2010, now in second printing) expands the notion across artistic fields of what is considered arts-making, and explores the kinds of thinking and processes that artists, musicians, writers and performers engage in when creating works of art.