I was born in Northern California.  The 2012 drought - now part of California’s new weather cycle of extreme drought punctuated by extreme rain - forced me to realize I could no longer ignore my relationship to water in California. I received both a Cultural Anthropology and Science Degree from the University of California at Berkeley and have devoted my life to working on environmental issues. But California’s water crisis has always overwhelmed me. . . much of it has to do with knowing too much - the politics, disrespectful cultural relationships to water as well as the massive outdated infrastructure. I have been to the Himalayas, Middle East, Miami and elsewhere learning diverse ways of living with water, yet I couldn’t find a way to do so in my own location on earth.

So in 2015 I began swimabouts in 3 California rivers that sustain me to heal the aching in my desiccating Spirit and to learn from the Water that sustains me.

These swimabouts inspired 3 immersive audio video artworks, snapshots of what I learned in my swimabouts. . . These 3 immersive artworks are being exhibited in distinct locations beginning 2022. Each artwork is accompanied by solutions I learned from magnificent beings along my journey.

The first, Uba Seo premiered at the 2022 Wild and Scenic Film Festival as Official Selection. This immersive audio video artwork tells the story of the Uba Seo - the only river in Nisenan homelands not to receive a colonizer name - via an original Nisenan composition written and sung by Shelly Covert, Nisenan Singer and Culture Bearer. The immersive experience sings of the human and environmental destruction the Gold Rush brought to the Uba Seo including the genesis of many California water laws. With support from the Contemporary Foundation for the Arts, Uba Seo played for free on a custom built 16 foot curved screen for a year in Nevada City located on unceded Nisenan lands. This immersive audio video artwoork with accompanying educational exhibit is now traveling.

The Tuolumne River is the primary source of my drinking water as well as for all those who call San Francisco home, a city built on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone Land.  The multi media Tuolumne River artwork will be premiering in 2024.

The third artwork will be an abstract immersive artwork using the sights and sounds of water to reconnect viewers to our primordial relationship to water also premiering in 2024.