ABOUT ME:

I am a Seattle native, but have spent time in other places. I studied art and design for my undergraduate education at Rhode Island School of Design and at Cooper Union in New York. My primary areas of study were Graphic Design, Film/Video and Fine Art.

After I graduated from Rhode Island School of Design with a BFA, I moved to Los Angeles. I went to Graduate School at University of California, Santa Barbara and received an MFA. At UCSB, I studied photography, video and fine art.

Travel has been a large part of my life. Other cultures have informed my work. I have been to Japan, Malaysia, Egypt, Israel, India, France, Germany, England, Ireland and Italy.

I was a professor of Art and Design for four years. I taught at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle and at Northern Illinois University, in DeKalb IL. At NIU, I advanced my knowledge of video editing on the universities equipment. I loved teaching, but I missed Seattle. So, when I decided to move back to Seattle, I tooled my knowledge of art and video, learned 3/D software Softimage and got a job at Monolith. I worked on game elements and the user interface for the kids title, Gruntz.

After Gruntz shipped, I worked for Microsoft Games on two titles, Flight Sim and Combat Flight Sim. I modeled and textured over 200 unique pieces of architecture for the games. I also was a photographer for the product and I developed a new texture mapping process that greatly increased the realism of the game. The process is still used on simulation games.

My friend the Creative Director at Picture IQ (Adobe off-shoot) thought I would be a good fit for web design. He hired me to help develop photo editing user interface for a Sega game console. At Picture IQ, we also developed photo applications for cell phones and the web. I helped with re-branding and designing the corporate web site.

I found that I loved working in web design and software. I was hired back at Microsoft for WindowsMedia. I did daily site content for windowsmedia.com in Music, Movies and Entertainment. I developed promotional pages and assisted in the sites redesign.

I took some time off from Microsoft to help my husband establish his company, AVA Design Build. Currently, I work with small and large companies in California and Seattle on web design, branding, advertising and photography .

I am passionate about design and technology. I believe in a core design principle that simplicity and elegance are essential to good design.

RESUME