was born in Buffalo, New York the second child of two artists at 12:00 pm on November 4,1957. I know the time exactly because it is on my birth certificate which reminds me my mother missed lunch that day.

round the age of seven when I asked her for details about my birth she joked that my impending arrival that day caused her to miss lunch. I was much too young to see the humour in going hungry and have struggeled with guilt and anxiety ever since.

hen I was one week old we moved to New York City. My mother held me up to the car window to see the Hudson River. My brother who was four years old listened enthralled to her story of the Headless Horseman. She didn't know I was listening too.I believe this was the story, planted like a seed, to grow into a life long battle with things that go bump in the night.

e lived in several apartments over the years before we moved to the twentieth floor of an apartment building on 125th St. and Amsterdam Av. By this time I had two more brothers and a sister and another brother on the way. I now out- shined my siblings in guilt and humility so my parents sent me to Catechism classes. I had my First Communion and Confirmation by the fourth grade. They also noticed a talent for drawing and showed my work to the school at the Museum of Modern Art. I was offered a scholarship to take classes. I loved taking the subway after school to the Museum.

efore the beginning of fifth grade we had moved to Teaneck, New Jersey. I could not go to the Museum School anymore so I spent alot of time in my bedroom writing poetry and drawing. My mother was an Art Teacher in the Bronx so there were still many opportunities to visit the City.

uring the summer of 1972 we moved to Lockport, a small town in Western New York. This had been the Andrews Ancestral home for 100 years. I had to get used to dirt bikes and school buses. I spent alot of time in my bedroom drawing and writing poetry.

n September 1975, my parents eager to make the upstairs of our house into an apartment delivered me to Buffalo State College in Buffalo, New York to study ART. I transferred to the University of Buffalo when I believed I had a calling to be a Medical Illustrator. They did not have a degreed program so I submitted a proposal for independent study. My senior show was in the Medical Library. The medical students liked my drawings but did not know how a forest of kidneys or cave dwellings from histology slides was going to help them. I didn't either so I stuffed my pride and got a job in a department store when I graduated. I spent alot of time drawing, writing short stories and poems in my bedroom and inadvertently learned the business of retail in the Buying Office of the Lingerie Dept. My first daughter was born in l983.

he was the inspiration for a series of antique toy illustratons. Along with portraits of people I met in College and a greeting card line I designed I entered my first outdoor art show in Lewiston, New York. I was given a ribbon for my drawings but sold no artwork. This experience motivated me to stay at my 'real' job. By this time I was working as a manager of a fabric store. My mother's not to subtle gesture of sending me off to college with a sewing machine instead of a typewriter was not in vain. I decided it was time to get married.

n my honeymoon in the Adirondack Mountains I discovered a book of Amish Quilts. Another diversion from my art work and housework. While I was pregnant with my second child I designed a set of birth announcements with little quilts in them. When my second daughter was born I was left with 2 dozen blue quilted note cards. Popular opinion held I should try to market them. I began to sell them at a local gift shop and I soon got orders from the Museum of American Folk Art in New York and The American Museum of Quilts and Textiles in San Jose, CA. This began a decade of designing quilted gifts and accessories and miniature quilts. It became a cottage industry when I found other young mothers eager to sew at home. In a tiny Dodge Omni my daughters and I traveled to outdoor art fairs and dollhouse shows. Skillfully arranged in the hatchback, like a Chinese puzzel box, sat us, the show canopy, display and handcrafted merchandise.

n the summer of 1997, when I too was eager to get back to my hearts true desire , I signed up for an etching class at Buffalo State College. Peter Sowiski was the Professer that summer that gently prodded and inspired us. The magic and mystery behind the intaglio process was the technical complement to all my stories and poems. I had always found pictures, ideas and beginnings in unusual places. Now, a 'false bite', an aquatint bubble, a dry point squiggle or a hard ground smudge could generate its' own tale. I also realized that with all the stories, words and emotions floating through the universe, some were bound to land on a flat surface. I would 'illuminate' them, make them visual and thus make them more 'real'.

eter has graciously permitted me to use the studios at Buffalo State all these years. But last summer I won a large 'Best of Show' Award at ARTSfest in Corning, New York. This permitted me to dream of finally owning my own etching press. I now own a Praga etching press made in Toronto, Canada.

spend alot of time drawing and writing, but now in my studio in an old house not far from my ancestral home. My etching press pays homage to the past. Nostalgia and history blend with the future. I draw and print by hand not far from the kitchen table on 125th Street.

shley, my oldest daughter is now a junior at Boston University studying International Relations. She is at home during the summer teaching Arts and Crafts at a camp in Wilson, New York. My youngest daughter, Linden, is a junior in High School majoring in Art. She takes care of our zoo which consists of a long-haired dachshund named Graham, two cats, Paige and Baby and three fish, Hook, Pearl and Grouper