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I was born in Chicago 1942 into an artistic family where music, the written word and the visual arts were a constant part of our lives. My grandfather was a painter who taught at the Chicago Art Institute, my father studied music and my mother English literature. Both my brothers had a musical bent while, I the youngest bathed my mind in the waters of natural science. By the age of fifteen I had my own natural history museum and was working summers at archaeological sites along Lake Michigan.

Our summer family trips camping across the country in the 1940's and 1950's were fine fodder for my first attempts at photography, not to mention superlative opportunities for the collection of museum specimens. At home, in my museum, I spent many happy weeks identifying objects in addition to helping my brother in his photo lab learning darkroom basics.

Eventually, armed with a degree in archaeology and anthropology I spent several summers excavating sites in the great mid-west. Gradually, my latent yearning for northern adventure took hold of me pointing me towards Alaska.

In, Fairbanks I found my next love - I took a weaving class at the university. (Oh, the subtle influences a mother can have on a daughter - my mother was also a weaver!) I was smitten by the innumerable ways humans have solved the utilitarian problems of clothing and shelter while at the same time creating objects of great beauty and high social status.

Twenty-nine years of my life in Alaska have been spent teaching anthropology and the fiber arts in the Art Department at the Matanuska-Susitna College Campus of the University of Alaska, Anchorage. Of those 29 years I acted as the MatSu College Art Department coordinator for nearly twenty years during which time I and two other fiber instructors designed and implemented the only fully accredited BFA program with an emphasis in the fiber arts in the entire state of Alaska.

Growing up around Lake Michigan it was inevitable that I eventually followed the waters of Alaska beginning with a 400-mile kayak trip down the Yukon River in 1969. In 1985, my husband, Dennis McKenzie and I bought a small sailboat, which we, with our son, sailed in Prince William Sound, across the Gulf of Alaska and down the Inside Passage to Seattle. Our next boat carried us safely to Mexico, Hawaii and back home to Alaska.

Dennis built me two lovely stitch and glue kayaks, the larger of which I use as a photo-shooting platform. Our new boat, not a sailboat this time, a 1977 woody Clipper Craft, nicely carries my larger kayak on the cabin top. More sea going/photographing expeditions are on the horizon.

There is a statewide-juried show here in Alaska called "Earth, Fire and Fiber". These three words sum up for me my approach to the creation of all art. The earth provides the materials, including colorants, metals, plants and all animals including humans. Fire and humans modify these materials in interesting ways and patterns and, finally, fibers bind everything together in beautiful creations. I work in a variety of media, fibers, metals, ferrous and non-ferrous, handmade paper, basketry and clay. I delight in using unlikely combinations of materials such as gut, metals, paper and clay.

Please visit "www.birchgrovestudios.com" for more information.