I received my first Kodak point-and-shoot camera when I was 8-years-old, and I’ve been using photography to record a visual journal of my life ever since. But beyond the snapshots that chronicle the people I’ve known, the places I’ve been, and the many delicious things I’ve had the pleasure of eating and drinking, I am also interested in photography as an artistic medium.

Being able to instantaneously capture a moment is exciting to me, and so is sharing the particular way that I see beauty and temptation, the carnivalesque, and sometimes cruelty, in the world. Much of the collage work I do is also built around a single photo.

Gondola – Venice, Italy

Medusa – Tremiti Islands, Italy

Volleyball – Nice, France

Village – Civita, Italy

Eraldo Viberti’s Grapes – La Morra, Italy

Autumn in the Vineyard – Barolo, Italy

Antipasti di Mare – Tremiti Islands, Italy

Pommes – Lourmarin, France

Scarves – Kaş, Turkey

Bambi & Babycakes – Berlin, Germany

Raspberry Beret – Berlin, Germany

Dolce – Glass Hostaria, Rome, Italy

Scarlett Fever & Her Victorian Death Puppet Theatre – Paris, France

Roadside Hot Dog – Berlin, Germany

Carnevale Abruzzese – Guardiagrele, Italy

Carnivalesque – Mardi Gras, New Orleans, LA

Spinning – Salento, Italy

Kitten

Longing

Valentine

Rosy

Blog Posts from Frugaltopia
Do-It-Yourself Aperitivo
My LIC CSA ROCKS!
La Cucina Povera – An Autumn Pasta with Acorn Squash and Anchovy Sauce
Blackberry Lavender Gelato with Bittersweet Chocolate Chips
Sit Out City Brunch and Bake Scones Instead
A Frugal Freelancer’s Vino Cheapo Trial

Excerpt from Fire Eater

I prefer to think of Nina ascending away, up and out of the burning Hope Street apartment the way Remedios the Beauty was lifted right out of A Hundred Years of Solitude one day while she was hanging her white sheets.

Nina wouldn’t be hanging sheets, though; she’d be smiling and juggling two flaming batons. Her army pant cut-offs and oversized black T-shirt would be magically replaced with a red and yellow sequined acrobat’s costume. She’d rise slowly at first, hovering just a few feet above the roof. A golden glow would cling to her as she twirled and tossed the batons back and forth, then up and around herself.

The flames below would lick at her dangling feet; she’d rise up a little higher, a little faster. She’d start doing magnificent tricks with the batons. On the ground, we’d be awe-struck by her skill with this foreign talent we’d never known her to have. Maybe twenty feet up, she’d start a new combination, and we’d admire her as she waved both sticks around in a figure eight. Over and over, the flames would chase each other until the symbol was branded into the sky. Down below, we’d bite our nails hoping she wouldn’t get burned, but her performance would be divine.

For the finale, when she was way up high, just barely still in our gaze, she’d poise herself dramatically, arching her back and bending her head up toward the moon. Then she’d draw the first baton up toward her mouth. We’d feel the suspense as the head of it lingered there before her casting its vicious light. She’d take a breath and blow, and fire would spray from her mouth torching the night. We’d gasp. Some of us would clap. Then she’d tip her head back, open her mouth and thrust the fire into her throat, thus extinguishing baton number one.

After repeating the death-defying feat with her second baton, Nina would behold her audience gathered around the inferno below, (she’d hated that apartment anyway) and then she would bow. She’d be very small by this point, lit only by the dull white glare of the moon. The audience would thunder with applause, and she’d curtsey a few times before being swallowed, waving, by the night.

107 Hope

Fifty-three firefighters didn’t notice you
on the bathroom floor until the second
sweep, and by then you were already
blackened from the inside with smoke and soot.

We couldn’t get the sting out. Each breath,
a gag, a gasp for air. You, the puff
of peppered ash scattering with a sneeze
like stray flecks of burnt snow.

The ocean in the morning. Because the house
is only a pile of charred lumber. Your body,
a shell with three tattoos, in a refrigerator. And I
need to be near something louder than this,
something that does not burn.

Previously published in Silo