Beyond the Canvas

I never went to art school—and in a wild way, that became a big part of my education.

One of my high school art teachers gave me advice I never forgot: if I chose snowboarding over going to art school, I should never stop making art. Keep an art journal. Stay curious. Say yes to creative challenges. Let every project teach me something.

So I did.

Over the years, sometimes a spark of an idea would pull me toward a medium I had never tried before. Other times someone would ask me to create something I had absolutely no idea how to make yet. Instead of waiting until I felt “qualified,” I usually said yes, followed my curiosity, and figured it out along the way.

Tattooing, sculpture, silk painting, graphic design, airbrushing, screen printing, murals, and countless creative experiments became my classroom.

But they also taught me something bigger than technique. My favorite work happens when I relax into the project—when curiosity turns into play, the muse shows up, and I become open enough to let inspiration and spirit move through the process. Different mediums have simply given that creative energy different ways to speak.

Beyond the Canvas is a glimpse into some of those adventures.

TATTOOS

Tattooing became one of the most unexpected—and demanding—classrooms in my art education.

During my years as a professional snowboarder, the seasons between competitions brought me back to Lake Tahoe and into the tattoo shop, where I traded snow for skin as my canvas.

Over the years, I worked in four different shops and created thousands of tattoos. Every piece challenged me to listen, interpret someone else’s idea, design for the movement and shape of the body, and create something meaningful for one person to carry with them.

Tattooing sharpened my line work, color instincts, composition, and confidence—and taught me a whole different kind of creative focus. I eventually stepped away from tattooing professionally after becoming a mother, but that chapter left a lasting mark on the artist I have become.

SCULPTURE

  • Arc of Becoming

    Stone Sculpture · 8" x 16" x 5" · 1990
    Artist’s Collection

    Created when I was seventeen during a sculpture course at Lake Tahoe Community College with artist and instructor David Foster, Arc of Becoming was one of my earliest explorations beyond painting. Working with stone and clay opened an entirely different way of creating—less about putting something onto a surface and more about discovering the form already waiting inside the material.

    My touring schedule began before the class ended, so I had to leave early, but this piece came home with me and has stayed in my collection ever since.

SILK PAINTING

  • Mt. Tallac & Lake Tahoe
    Painted Silk · 9" x 10" · 2012
    Artist’s Collection

    I created this piece during a Tahoe Art League studio tour, where an artist had invited visitors to experiment with painting on silk. It was my first time working with the medium, and I immediately loved how freely the color moved and how quickly the landscape came together.

    Silk has a luminosity that photographs never quite capture—the surface catches the light and makes the colors feel almost alive. It was one of those creative experiments that reminded me how much I love stepping into a new medium and seeing where it wants to take me.

Logos, Graphics & Design

Graphic design became another natural extension of what I was already learning through tattooing and professional snowboarding. Tattooing taught me how much information a strong image can communicate quickly—through shape, line, color, balance, and symbolism.

Snowboarding taught me something different: marketing.

As professional athletes, part of our job was helping represent the companies whose products we rode. In a funny way, we were human billboards. 😆 Being immersed in that world gave me an early education in branding, visual identity, and how design helps people recognize, trust, and connect with a company.

That experience changed the way I approached logos and graphics. A logo isn’t just something that looks cool—it communicates personality, style, energy, and credibility before a single word is read. Color, shape, typography, and imagery all become part of that visual psychology.

Creating logos, graphics, and brand imagery gave me another place to combine art with problem-solving—and another language for turning an idea into something people can instantly feel and recognize.

Pro Model Snowboard Design

One of the most exciting creative opportunities of my snowboarding career was getting to help design my own pro-model snowboards.

The process went far beyond choosing graphics. I was involved in shaping how the boards actually rode—working with length, sidecut, camber, flex, and stiffness, then testing blank prototypes on snow before the final models went into production.

And of course, I got to create the graphics too.

There was something incredibly fun about combining the two worlds I loved most: understanding how a snowboard should move beneath my feet and then giving that board its own visual personality. It was art, design, engineering, and riding all meeting in the same place.

I still love the idea that something can be both functional and expressive—made to perform, but also made to carry a little piece of the person who helped create it.

  • Dryve Pro Model

  • Moss Pro Model

Custom Automotive Art

Apparently my appetite for creative risk wasn’t limited to snowboarding.

This Nissan Xterra was only four months old when I decided it would make a wonderful canvas for my first automotive paint project—which meant committing to a brand-new medium on a very new car. Slightly terrifying. Completely irresistible.

I designed the water imagery to move across the body of the vehicle, going down both sides then explored automotive airbrushing, translucent candy colors, pinstriping, highlights, shadows, and layered clear finishes to bring it to life. I especially fell in love with the candy colors—their luminous transparency allowed the metallic silver beneath to shimmer through, giving the blues an incredible depth that photographs never quite captured.

Learning to airbrush on this project became a game changer for my mural work, giving me a new way to create soft sky fades, atmospheric clouds, and seamless transitions across much larger spaces.

What started as another “I’ve never done this before… let’s try it” moment became one of my favorite creative experiments—and the finish held up for more than a decade.

Different canvas. Same curiosity.

OHHHH. 🩵

Apparel & Screen Printing

At one point, saying yes to a new creative challenge turned into owning a six-color screen-printing press that looked a little like a giant mechanical octopus. 😆

What began with designing graphics for clothing grew into learning the entire production side of the process. I learned how to prepare artwork for multiple colors, create the screens, print the designs, and finish the garments—eventually investing in my own dedicated workspace with a large press and conveyor dryer.

It became another unexpected chapter in my self-directed art education, combining illustration, graphic design, color, production, and the very practical challenge of turning an idea into something people could actually wear.

I eventually moved away from screen printing—the production process was messy, chemical-heavy, and not something I wanted to spend my life doing—but I loved designing the clothing itself.

Looking back, it feels less like a chapter that ended and more like an early experiment in wearable art—a thread I may just be picking back up again.