About Diane

I never doubted myself as an Artist until I got older and less wise.  When young, it startled me to hear friends struggle to know what they were going to 'be' after high school.  It seemed tragic to not already know what they were good at. I felt secret relief and gratitude because art had already shaped me into ‘being.’  There were many other things about myself to doubt, but never about being an Artist.  I was, and still am, good at working with my hands, my head, and my heart, so the only dilemma to decide then was which field of Art to enter: Fashion Design or Mechanical Engineering. 

The creative process of figuring out how to draw an idea dimensionally before taking it into a three-dimensional medium is a wonderful adventure.  For me, it is especially so if the process can also be shared.  I love parallel playing and find that competitions, finite winning and losing against others—whether discussions, careers, parenting, anything—doesn’t produce the excitement that infinite playing does; seeing how one idea can collectively build on another.  For most of my life it has been unimaginable that others might feel differently.  So, until recently, when I finally began to understand where that attitude sprang from, I was baffled and hurt whenever resistance to being creative was encountered. 

All kids draw when little, and, like every girl who continues drawing into adolescence, I drew horses—pages and pages of powerfully muscled horses penciled during classes when diagramming sentences should have been the focus.  Later, deciding to be a Fashion Designer, I stayed up late drawing faceless, elongated women, or cheerfully fat-faced children, wearing swishy, loose clothing of many bright colors.

When I was fifteen, on a Sunday drive through Los Angeles with my grandparents, my dad pointed to a building as we passed and said, “That’s Chouinard Art Institute. They accept only the most talented Artists.”  It was one of those pivotal moments when the immediate world disappears, leaving only an intensely shimmering, glowing image forever lodged in one’s dreams.  Edith Head, a movie fashion designer of the time, had graduated from Chouinard’s…but who, under a hundred except me, would remember that?

In my junior year of high school we moved up to the mountains, to a hick town near Yosemite.  The lack of ‘culture’ was devastating, but I learned humility under the influence of an unusually progressive Art Teacher, Mr. Bob Beecher.  Mr. Beecher demanded we use our eyes to tell us what we saw, not a preconceived idea of what our brain told us.  Then he instilled the concept of connectivity: using his influence with the shop teacher, a small Popsicle stick sculpture was able to segue into a large welded one.  I was the only girl taking Shop, then.  I shouldn't confess this, but because Shop was after Swim Team, and because I hated how drowned-rat I looked, I would put my hair up in curlers so my hair would be dry by the end of class.  I know, I know.  Makes no sense and I cringe every time I think of it, but I've always liked being female just as much as doing things considered 'male'.

I won a design contest for the sign on the Senior Class' hangout.  Was also awarded the commission to weld it.  There were a number of other commissioned metal sculptures in my late teens and early twenties--swooping Eagles with copper feathers, metal Daisies to hang pierced earrings from…even a replica of an amoeba whose name I can't recall but it had a lot of flagella.

There was no money for attending college but Dad managed an Apprentice job for me at a friend’s Advertising Agency in Fresno.  No pay, and I was the only employee, but it gave me the right to call myself a Graphic Artist when I applied for work elsewhere, later.  I discovered photography at the next job, and soon had saved enough money to move back to Los Angeles.  An application to enroll in Chouinard’s night school classes and been accepted. Dad bought and repainted (fire-engine red) a 1950 Triumph TR2 sports car to take me there. Total Bliss.

Short-lived bliss.  Chouinard’s was doing some segueing of it’s own at the time, moving from Seventh St in downtown L.A. to San Fernando Valley to become California Institute of Arts.  Night course classes were lost in the shuffle.

I sold my car and moved to San Francisco…found a job as a receptionist…married a computer analyst…did work as a Freelance Graphic Artist and a builder of Nail Sculpture Lamps…we went to Europe on one-way tickets…came back…divorced.

Enrolled in a double course of bronze casting during the day while working nights as a waitress. Life was filled with fantastic creative zest, until one day me and my dog decided to hitchhike to Mexico, to Guanajuato. There, I found an art school and began learning how to make intaglio etchings.  When the money ran out I returned to San Francisco (Marin County) and moved onto a friend’s 1929 40’-Classic Motorboat that was sinking at the dock.  

As surely as I knew I was an Artist, the first morning I woke up aboard a boat I knew it was where I belonged.  Six months later, on a boat down the dock, I met my husband, Bill Pool.  In May of 1975, a bare hull was delivered and we began building our home, PILAR, a traditional

38' Gaff-ketch. 

Because this bio is getting too long, a short sketch of the next thirty-five years can be found in the sidebar and the blog postings of 1candleschoolhouse.blogspot.com. During all those years I continued to confidently make art in every medium or place possible. 

In 1999 we arrived in the Philippines, and though the past fifteen years have been filled with deeply-satisfying creative work within the rural community of Tambobo, Siaton, Negros Oriental, how I came to doubt myself as an Artist in 2006, as an adult woman of 58, I anticipate will be the first blog posting of this new website.  But I may get side-tracked...be inspired to do something else while in the process...

We Artists are like that.