For fourteen years I have made Muse Boards one at a time, always in collaboration with another woman. She selects the images. I shape what she has chosen into something whole. Her inner critic doesn't get to play.

I have used this same process on myself many times, to work through my own healing, to find the essence of my business, around ritual, and even while writing a book. This is the first time that work is being shown in a gallery.

For this series, I let one of the five elements, fire, earth, air, water, and ether, guide each piece. Several boards grew out of beauty itself, the thread that runs through everything I make.

I collect the images the same way I always have, without forcing a story onto them first. I wait to see what rises, then work by hand to bring the images into a visual whole. What you see in each board is not something I planned in advance. It's what showed up when I stopped deciding and started listening.

The collage work itself is done entirely by my hand. I explore each image and the juxtaposition of each image to the relationship of the entire piece, as it is created. The finished pieces are printed on metal and hang unframed, ranging from 16 inches to 36 inches across.

Muse Boards are meant to be lived with. For years. My clients still find something new in theirs every day, even a decade later.