This week is Osteogenesis Imperfecta Awareness Week, which is a huge mouthful to get out! And you know, I’m not a big fan of Awareness Days and Awareness Weeks, but I thought it would be a good opportunity to teach you a little bit about the disease I have, Osteogenesis Imperfecta, or OI for short. […]
When I was in grade school and high school, I had an art teacher who emphasized the importance of learning the fundamentals of art while also developing your own style and artistic process. Robin didn’t necessarily spark a lot of creative desire in me, but she taught me many invaluable lessons that have allowed me […]
Have you ever made a New Year’s resolution on January 1st only to break it less than 2 weeks later? We’ve all been there. And then what? Do you go back to it and start over, or do you just say, “Oh well, no resolution this year,” and continue on with your life? I’m definitely […]
A couple years ago by a random stroke of luck, I met and later worked for Rod Stewart. He picked me out of the crowd of 80,000 at New Orleans Jazz Fest and invited my friend and me backstage. We met him, his band, and his family over a glass of wine (we turned down […]
It’s no secret that I get stared at A LOT in public, not because of my stunning beauty, but because of my short stature and 400 lb wheelchair. Most of the time it’s by kids, which doesn’t really bother me because they obviously haven’t been taught how to be around someone who is physically different. […]
In a way, art kind of won by default in my life. It was pretty clear that I was not going to be able to live out my life-long dream of becoming a killer whale trainer (I really loved Free Willy as a kid), so I went to plan B – art. I took a […]
For those of you who follow me on social media, you might have noticed that I have not been painting nearly as much as I normally do in the last couple of months. I’ve been working on a new painting project and chose to keep it under wraps until a certain amount of it was […]
Some of the best advice I’ve ever received is “You gotta use what you got, kid.” When you have a disability and your job requires you to effectively market yourself, it’s tricky to find the balance of just how much it should play a role in your marketing strategy. While it’s true that I have […]
One of the most common questions I get asked is “How do you manage to have such a positive attitude when your life is so hard and full of so much physical pain?” Well, there’s a few reasons. The first is that I was raised not to feel sorry for myself. My mother in particular […]
As some of you know, I’m a huge Ellen Degeneres fan. Not only are we both from the same city, but we are both avid animal lovers. It is literally one of my ultimate life goals to meet her one day and work with her on a project or two. Ellen has the reputation as […]
