“Everything I do is upcycled from trash pile finds. I live differently than most people and make uses of things they toss away. I don’t have air conditioning and haven’t had a TV in six years. I don’t require much and so I can live simply and do art full time. My mother and two sisters are artists. My mother sold earrings and gave us jobs to do with that. Mobile is supportive of the arts and the people have been good to me. If I need something, I post it on Facebook and people drop it on my porch. I trade art for work on my car or ways other people help me. I can’t afford tickets for music shows and sometimes trade artwork with the venue for a ticket. Or I am a sober driver and will drive a group for a ticket. I have been doing that since I was 17 when I was pregnant and couldn’t party like everyone else.  When you are poor you do what you have to do. I have nothing, I am not ashamed or embarrassed. I like the freedom and live this way by choice.

The wings and key tattoos happened when I was a bridesmaid in a friend’s wedding. She made everyone get a tattoo with wings. It was a very permanent request. My kids call them ‘Harry Potter tits’. My kids have recently grown and left. I have an empty nest and asking what now. I had them young and didn’t travel, but that is about to change. I bought an airstream and I am going to sell art along the cost of Florida. I have been in this house for 14 years and am trying to sell it. We have property at Fish River and my sister and I are building two little cabins. You can see my airstream from the river. I just got my first kayak. Change is scary, but it is doable.  I am going to make an art community there. It will be a simple Airbnb and what that person needs to unplug and escape a busy life. They can sit on the pier and be around a fire and let go. It is a ten-year goal but it doesn’t require a lot. Mobile has a big city mind but small city heart. No one else has trash piles like Mobile. I am going to miss it.”