Statement

It is as easy to be a gamine joculatrix as it is to say it. My work is open source and people variously share that I am magic and a beast. They say, I am feeling 100% better, you are in my way, I have been stalking you, I feel sorry for everyone not present, and you have figured it out. These and other unusual comments guide me through the psychogeography of contemporary society. I specialize in economies of intangible value and rise above personal pain to generate joy from communal sorrow. Your mind is my medium and I access it through performance.

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Two hippies who met at a Vietnam War sign-painting raised me as a Jehovah’s Witness. They connected my heart to reflection and creativity. For 20 years leading up to my daughter Maryam West Cliff Smith’s birth in 2013 my medium was wearable bead sculpture—the topic of my first three books and international workshops. Maryam stopped nursing at 2 when I went back to college. Between 2015 and 2018, luminous minds like those of Beth Stephens and Joel Primack lit my path at the University of California, Santa Cruz as a non-traditional undergrad in Art (studio) and History of Art and Visual Culture (with honors). Five months into the 2020 pandemic I completed the University of California, Davis Master’s of Fine Arts in Art Studio. Davis has yet to execute a thesis exhibition for my 8-person cohort.

 

In 2021 I apprenticed to and mind-melded with my Master eco-artist Newton Harrison pitting billionaires and addressing the Dalai Lama. Newton said I was his student in a highly personalized Eco-art PhD program and tasked me with creating a new genre of music in favor of preserving the Life Web. I was briefly institutionalized for safety reasons. In 2022 I joined the Tuna Can bike club and my 98-week Sunset Bubbles was completed. In 2023 I became the receptionist and joculatrix at the 24/7 skilled nursing business Pacific Coast Manor. Fall 2023 I enter the Performance Studies group at University of California, Davis. My next trick will be controlling the wind.