Mariposa Negra Studio

Welcome to Mariposa Negra Studio, The name means black butterfly.
I am all about altered art, and since the butterfly is the ultimate symbol of transformation, I find it oddly descriptive. As for the black... I have the tiniest bit of a dark sensibility, and it does come out in my work from time to time. So that too is descriptive.
I am a self-taught mixed media artist with an educational background in Philosophy & Social Work. I spent a decade doing victim's advocacy work and then discovered that writing and art were excellent therapy for burnout. I am fascinated by stories and story telling and love the notion of gathering images and other elements into a work that whispers of captivating and mysterious stories.
I have always been a collector... ticket stubs, postcards, gum wrappers. I'm perpetually tearing pages from magazines. My desk is littered with scraps of paper holding provocative quotes or interesting images. It's only in recent years that I've actually started to produce the tangible evidence of my art, but I have been a collage artist my entire life - stockpiling scraps of inspiration that I am always sure I'll get around to using some day. In fact, I'm almost sure I have a few of those little wooden ice cream 'spoons' from kindergarten.
My first efforts were assemblages in the form of shrines, several of which found their way into galleries in Chapel Hill & Durham, NC and New Orleans, LA, as well as fund-raising auctions for NC charities. If you’d like, you can view selected pieces of my early work at Sacred Space.
In recent years, I’ve discovered altered books and am a member of the International Society of Altered Book Artists. The main focus of my current efforts is a mixture of photography and digital collage, with an increasingly heavy emphasis on photography.