Statement: This film is an exploration in universal gestures within our natural environment and discovering peace, humor, and awe during these uncertain times. Hopefully, a Deaf audience will enjoy and appreciate the film’s meditative nature – something difficult to do with audio recordings on meditation. And, at the same time, a hearing audience will be inspired by the beauty and ease of creating natural gestures, which is the foundation of most sign languages around the world. 

Synopsis: Filmed during a period of civic unrest and the Covid-19 pandemic, a Deaf woman takes a meditative journey through North America and discovers universal gestures within the natural environment that brings her peace, humor, and awe.

These are my published books that also include my photographs on the front covers.

This book is a collection of twelve plays (monologues, one-acts, and full-lengths) of mine written over a span of 20 years. The plays were written about various characteristics of the Deaf invidual, all written from the authentic viewpoint of a Deaf writer.

This nonverbal play is an exploration in gestures, masquerade, movement, and visual effects, including phantasmagoria, to discover the onslaught of Goya's deafness, and the impact it had on his life. It was written and directed by Willy Conley. This production won top honors in the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, Region II, at Carnegie Mellon University in 2008.

Being profoundly Deaf, I need to use American Sign Language (ASL) to communicate in my daily life.  ASL is a three-dimensional, mobile, visual language, which cannot be written or spoken.  During my travels in America, it is seldom that I meet other people who know ASL, so communication with people who can hear is often inaccessible or difficult, unless I write back and forth with them in English on paper.  What I have come to appreciate are symbols or written English language on signs in the American landscape.  Handwritten, manufactured, or printed text are little windows of access where I understand the language of a particular environment, no matter how coherent, incoherent, congruous or incongruous it may be. 

Watergraph was a term I invented that came from taking photographs of water reflections that have been turned upside-down. Depending on environmental factors like the wind, debris in the water, and the color of the sky, each inverted reflection created a painting in its own right framed by whatever was surrounding the water. This is part of my serendipitous quest of water reflections that range from little puddles to large bodies of water. To see how the images were originally discovered, turn your head (or your laptop, tablet, smartphone) upside-down.

I've always been intrigued by shacks and shanties set in various locales. I become obsessed over how the human spirit lived and/or worked in such unique, tiny spaces.

My training towards certification as a Registered Biological Photographer in 1981 began with getting accepted into the Biomedical Photographic Communications program at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Since I was (and still am) profoundly deaf, I needed sign language interpreters and notetakers to succeed in getting my B.S. degree in the program. I was required to do two photo internships during the summer. I did one at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine's pathology photography department and one at Yale School of Medicine's department of medical illustration and Photography. I did further bio-photography studies in the pathology photography department at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. After passing the written, practical, and oral exams, I became the first Deaf person to become a Registered Biological Photograher (RBP). There are many aspects of biomedical photography involving botany, entomology, documenting clinical patients, veterinary medicine, ophthalmology, surgery, pathology, histology, infrared imaging, public relations, photo lab work, macroscopy, and microscopy.

The following photo projects reflects some aspects of biomedical photography that I was involved with during my early years as an RBP. Although I have not worked in the medical field for many years, the techniques that I have learned still stay with me as I continue to explore photography in a serendipitous way. It is always a fun bonus to be able to publish and exhibit my work here and there.

These are photographs taken through a light microscope. Some of the specimens were lit using polarized lighting. Others were enhanced with the use of histology stains.