It all began in 1987…

… on June 10th at 8:32am to be precise. This is the beginning of my personal narrative, my mythology. It was created by my mother and reinforced yearly as she would diligently wake me up at 8:32am to celebrate for much of my life. I was over three weeks late, missing my scheduled due date of May 16th, my father’s birthday, but bringing with me all those taurus traits - determined, practical, stubborn. But I landed squarely in Gemini, with a Moon in Sagittarius, giving me idealistic creative passion, and my rising sign of Cancer, allowing me deep intuitive connections.

Most would define me as a Gemini: of two worlds, of two mind, split between. Endless energy but a slight curse of self-doubt. I have careened through life with enthusiasm, exploring many paths and many fields looking for what drives me. My parents were living in Kirkwood when I was born at Grady Memorial Hospital in downtown Atlanta. I was raised between an organic farm in North Georgia and the in-town neighborhoods of Candler Park and Cabbagetown.

I wouldn’t learn the word “gentrification” until much later in life but I was a part of it, I lived it. Cabbagetown was an old working class neighborhood built for the workers at the Fulton Bags and Cotton Mill. Many had moved down from the mountains to work city jobs at the turn of the century. The Mill closed in 1977 and the neighborhood began to decline. When we moved in the early ‘90s, crack houses were on many corners and packs of feral dogs roamed the streets. We slowly renovated and my mom let me pick the color of our house: bubblegum pink.

Eventually, more artists, members of the gay community, and then a bar+grill moved in, following the typical pattern of gentrification where some marginalized, low-income people displace other marginalized, low-income people, slowly paving the way for the middle class to feel comfortable taking up space in areas previously deemed “unsafe.”

Growing up, I knew the neighborhood was changing but I didn’t understand the implications, the politics, or the systemic forces. I was a teenager who mostly cared about not getting caught while neglecting the private school education that my Grandmother was gifting me. I painted one of the first “legal” murals in the Krog Street Tunnel when I was 14. I grew up taking MARTA, walking to L5P, and, in many ways, despising the place - Atlanta, the South, America - that I was from. I saw it’s inequities, I experienced it’s disdain for women, and I felt it’s disregard.

Sometimes I forget it, but, regardless of sentiment, I am deeply connected to this place. My paternal grandfather’s family immigrated here in _____ and lived in the Sumerhill neighborhood along with other Jewish, Eastern European, and Black families. His father, my great-grandfather, was a used rags salesman who was murdered in ______. My grandfather, Marvin, was an dentist in WW2, an experienced orthodonist, and a businessman. Along with his brother, Irv, they operated several downtown Atlanta hotels including The American. I spent some of my childhood there, helping my dad with the look after the plants or gathering with family on high holidays.

My parents met while protesting the Savannah River Plant and were both Road Busters in opposition to Freedom Parkway. My mother had moved to Atlanta to attend The Atlanta College of Art in the early ‘80s and my father was a community organizer with a young child, my half-sister Alana. They didn’t stay together long and my father eventually had another girl, my half-sister Nica. Thus I grew up raised by a single mother yet with a large extended family. I grew up an only child, yet with two sisters, a non-brother, a step-mom and a pre-stepmom.

My parents also worked at Sevananda, lived at the Lake Claire Land Trust, and were early participants in the farm to table movement. We lived in a tent in Ellijay when I was a baby and have followed unconventional ways of being ever since. My father moved to Colorado when I was young so flying in the air and down a mountain both became second nature. My mother took me abroad to Italy and then Spain when I was a teenager. Both of my parents instilled a deep connection to this Earth in me and encouraged me to enjoy, experience, and protect it.

I was heavily influenced by the world from an early age. I often lived separate, apart in fantasy dinner parties and long road trips. My mother cleaned residential and commercial properties so I was often alone, a voyeur to other people’s interior lives, a front row seat to people’s private dysfunctions. Yet there were expectations placed on me because of something attached to me: Goldstein. I was required, and afforded, a private education. I was expected to complete university and contribute to society.

I slowly made my way. I was often too opinioned, too driect, too sassy. I got in trouble for rolling my eyes, a feature which I still to this day have no idea that I’m consciously doing it - it’s just an ingrained motor function. I stood out for dressing unconventionally and was bullied in school for my alternative ways. Spending most of my time with adults allowed me to develop an extended vocabulary: family legand has me quoted at the age of 3 telling my babysitter, “Give me the f*cking crayons.” My mom was also into practical solutions so when I got lice, she simply shaved both of our heads.

Starting at a home-school daycare, I then attended Horizons and The Atlanta School before being accepted into The Atlanta International School in 7th Grade. My elementary school teacher, Atlanta-poet Theresa Davis, left two distinct marks on my formative years. She taught me to be tough and she showed me how to explore with your imagination. My math and science lagged in middle school, but I was busy making models of Irish stone-houses.

Beginning prep school indefinitely changed my life, as the expectations became much more standardized. I slipped class, overslept, and dismissed myself often. However, I still received an rigorous education, with an emphasis on critical thinking and world perspectives. College was expected but I wanted to see, and experience, the world, so I waited tables, worked odd jobs, and followed my father’s footsteps by backpacking around Europe for four months. I returned, excited to move to the “great liberal North” and embark on a new journey.

I enrolled in a general art program at Northeastern University, known for business, law, and engineering, but felt it was a good fit because of their COOP program which allowed students to integrate time off for work opportunities into their degree. I worked as an assistant to a Boston-based photographer as well as in the Education Department of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. I graduated in May of 2011 with a B.A. in art with a minor in business.

From 2006 to 2012, I spent 6 years in between Boston and Cambridge, working at most of the restaurants operated by local business partners. I was my boyfriend’s self-appointed groupie and would spend my evenings in grungy bars and basements around town. I made some art, not much that I’m proud of, read a lot, practiced creative writing, and saved up money to go travel again. I was offered jobs in my field but I declined as I knew I didn’t want to stay in New England.

I spent a year floating, traveling, looking for what my future would hold. We backpacked around the Black Sea, from Romania and Ukraine to Azerbaijan and Turkey. I returned to that part of the world on a Birthright trip that summer and then stayed in L.A. helping my sister with her wedding. I began staying in Brooklyn the Fall of 2012 as I looked for work and a place to live. We moved into a loft off the Morgan L stop right before Hurricane Sandy shut down the city. I picked up serving jobs in Williamsburg and began looking for a creative community to join.

Arts in Bushwick held an open house at Bathaus that winter and I began volunteering with the organization. Over the next four years, I would manage our blog, build programming, and facilitate several festivals as part of Bushwick Open Studios. I also interned with The Invisible Dog, Blouin Media, and Flatbush Pictures. I had nearly completed my 4-year plan to live in NYC when I decided to move home in the Winter of 2016.

Returning home was as strange/unsettling as I thought it would be. In some ways, Atlanta hadn’t changed at all. In others, it was unrecognizable. I moved back into my mom’s house in Cabbagetown and biked to L5p where I got a job waiting tables. I felt like I was starting from scratch but I also knew that if I was ever doing to “do anything” with my life, it was going to happen here, in this place that I am so deeply connected to. (will helped me think about place and identity a lot). It took me about 6 months to willing decide to “get my life together” but then I woke up one October day, feeling the complete dissatisfaction with my current life, and decided to once again a proactive determinator of my future.

I purchased a fixer-upper in Oakland City with the assistance of invest Atlanta, my restaurant income, and my rent-free living. I applied for “real” jobs, ones where drinking wasn’t baked into the culture, and started managing a co-working facility in West Midtown. I had a basement studio at Mammal Gallery as I had decided to “be an artist” again but quickly began volunteering with eyedrum art & music gallery. I joined the Board in early 2017, acting as secretary while running our social media, pointing music shows, and facilitating gallery installations. This allowed me to become connected with artists diverse range of underground and emerging artists.

I celebrated my 30th birthday with a housewarming party and shortly thereafter, signed a commercial lease on a 23,000SF warehouse in Southwest Atlanta. Thus began The Bakery and the next 3 years of my life became a whirlwind of highs and lows amidst non-stop work. I was living “the dream” ~ running my own business in my field in my home town. Yet I was in way over my head, basically going from zero to nothing overnight. It was an experience unlike any other. I worked and partied and learned. I felt my mind, body, and soul crushed to the bone yet I came out stronger, more prepared, and with new purpose.

It would take me years to understand these connected and intertwined narratives, the ones that pre-date me, the ones I’ve lived, and the ones yet to be seen. Yet I appreciate watching them unfurl themselves, me the active by-stander who pokes and probes to see what they are made of. I had to leave, to see and experience other places, to truly understand the place I was from. I had to be other people along the way to find out who I really am. Now I’m an active participant in the process and I look forward to seeing what’s next…