I am a self-taught artist and physical therapist. I took the first unconscious steps in my creative life when I became a childhood alley picker in my Detroit neighborhood. But it wasn’t until I was nearly 50 that I started making art out of things that other people would consider trash. I grew up in a big Catholic family. I never felt especially religious, but I did associate my church with my home, my neighborhood, my family, and my developing female identity. Home, neighborhood, and family were at the core of how I saw and still see myself. One of the strongest pleasures of my childhood was the time I spent wandering around the alleys of my neighborhood, finding discarded things and bringing them home to a new life. In my art I use mostly things I’ve found in an alley, on the street, in my own trash, or at a thrift shop. I like to think that all broken things can have a renewed expressive life if given a chance. I am always so happy when something, the uglier the better, that I’ve been looking at for years in my boxes and shelves of refuse, finally finds its way into just the right place in a piece of art.