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My Story... or is it?

I was born in Beirut, Lebanon and left at the age of 5 during the war. One of the few memories I have are of hearing the bombs going off around my home. One night it was so bad that all the homes around me were destroyed. They sent in helicopters to take us all away to a safe place. As our helicopter was about to pull off the door opened and a secret agent told my mom and dad that they and my sister and I had to go with him. They took us to a secret location and informed us that they had been looking for me for a year - that they needed my help to take down a criminal!

It all started in my PreK art class - my eye for art was far above the other 4 yr olds. During an art show a secret service agent, who had a nephew at the school, spotted my work but then lost track of me as the school was bombed the next day. They explained that this criminal, a mob boss who they called the Godfather, was keeping secret plans in his artwork but they could never figure out how he hid them. So they flew my family out to New Jersey so that I can help them with this mission. At age 5 I became their new super spy. 

The next few years were pretty quiet as the Godfather was hiding out in Italy and had stored all of his possessions in a safe house that no one could find. But I knew that I had to be ready. I asked my cousin to take me to the Met so that I could study Roman sculptures - maybe I can get some clues into how he was hiding his secrets. I spent the next few years practicing art and experimenting with different mediums in hopes of cracking this case. 

During college I got a big break and the Godfather moved back to New Jersey. One night I snuck into his house and started analyzing all the pieces in his artwork collection. I found the sculptures were not tampered with, but there was something interesting about the photographs hanging on his wall. I knew I needed more research, so I started studying photography so I could learn how he was using the photographs to hide his secrets. 

I took an internship at a gallery to be able to have some contacts. I created a proposal for a show that would include the photographers whose pieces I saw in the Godfather's home. I was able to meet with the agents and galleries who represented these photographers and learned about the process of shipping, packing and matting the photographs. I realized that this information was being funneled all over the world to various family members of the Godfather who were in hiding. 

I started focusing on documentary photography so that I could visit these places and through my travels I figured it out! The Godfather was super imposing information onto the photographs through workers in the NY art galleries. The galleries were then shipping them to his family members where they used a UV light to read all the messages being sent abroad. The secret service was so impressed with my ability to crack the case that they gave me the super spy medal of honor. I was so happy that all my years of work paid off and next week was my senior thesis! 

The night of my senior thesis I couldn’t wait to exhibit my work! But then I noticed that family members of the Godfather were in the crowd. I became so anxious to speak and I started to pretend that I wasn’t the artist and just an observer trying to overhear the conversations around my pieces to see if I was in danger. It turns out I was being stalked and I had to go into hiding as a High school art teacher. So my spy days are over, for now, but I will always be remembered as the first woman to ever win the super spy medal of honor.

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My Timeline

I was born in Beirut, Lebanon and left at the age of 5 during the war. One of the few memories I have are of hearing the bombs going off around my home. I remember the fear running through me thinking they sounded so loud as if they were about to hit our home. 

I first fell in love with art when my older cousin took me to the Metropolitan Museum of art when I was in middle school. I remember walking in and making a left to see the Greek and Roman sculptures. I was amazed at the beauty of the figure made out of marble. I was in awe at how they were able to express human emotion in a sculpture and how they expressed the tension and beauty of the human figure simply from carving a slab. 

I began to study art in HS but didn’t think that I could make it as an artist. My HS art teacher convinced me to apply to the School of Visual arts in the city. I remember going to the application review and bringing my portfolio to be critiqued. I was so nervous thinking how the interviewer was going to judge me. Was I good enough? As I spoke about my work I became at ease. This was something I was really passionate about and I realized that continuing to be an artist was something I had to pursue. Getting accepted, even though I didn’t study there, solidified to me that I should continue.

During college I studied all mediums but fell in love with photography when I was researching in the library and came upon a book from Henri Cartier-Bresson. His way of capturing the decisive moment, use of contrast and composition was mesmerizing. I couldn’t stop looking at his photographs and studying his technique. 

I focused on photography and spent years studying the human figure, light, nature and documenting worlds that were unlike my own. I studied dark room photography and from the first to the last time that I put the paper in the developer and it appeared - a feeling would come over me. It was amazing to see the image appear slowly and with each different exposure I could get closer and closer to what I had originally seen through the lens. 

Photographing nudes seemed like second nature to me and though I always tried to have my models feel comfortable, I had a peer say to me that I would never understand what they felt until I became one of them. I used the studio and had my sister photograph me and it was an awakening to be so open in front of a camera that would take this moment and cement it onto paper. I felt bare as if the camera could see through to my soul. It was scary and exhilarating at the same time. 

In the spring of 2004 I did an internship at the gallery in college and the curator was so impressed with my proposal for a show “A Woman’s Eye,” an exhibit of photographs by three women artists who create different and distinct images of women, that she had me come back the following semester to curate the show. I got to contact the photographers, their agents and the galleries who represented them. I was able to go to the galleries, to the back rooms where no outsider was allowed to view the prints and choose the ones for my show. I felt special, as if I had transcended from a student studying photography to a curator who had the ability to choose what pieces should be shown. I remember having a hard time hanging the show and the curator showed me the importance of the placement of the art in the room to the viewers. I had to rearrange the pieces 3 times before I had gotten it ‘right’. I learned so much in this experience and it changed how I exhibited my own work. 

Growing up in an Arabic home in America I was very aware of how cultures were different in most aspects of family, tradition and customs. I always felt a need to see the world and study more cultures and their various customs. I started to travel and shoot documentary photographs. I focused on architecture, children, nudes and various workers. My travels changed me with every country I visited. 

It was always great to show my work in college, but being able to get shows in galleries and other venues was exhilarating. I remember showing my work for my Thesis and having so much anxiety about speaking about my process to an audience of strangers. I imagined no one ever knew that I was the artist and would hang around my work to just listen to what people would say not knowing that I was the artist. I felt that people would talk more openly if they didn’t know the artist was next to them and I got to hear honest opinions.

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Started to play around with digital painting.

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I'm starting to combine the washes / figures / ink lines and working with placement / overlapping.

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I started to work with ink and thought about how I would use the line, how expressive did I want to be?

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I went back to basics to work on the form and think about what I wanted the body to do. Did I want a singular form or a mesh of figures?

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I started with some watercolor washes / patterns for backgrounds.

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I moved on to combing the form with landscape to focus on the commonalities between the two.