ABOUT
The Boathouse:
Boathouse products are my formulations made in small batches in our San Juan Island studio. I mostly compound everything myself, unless we’re slammed and I pull in a reinforcement (named Steve).
We I met as summer kids and “forgot to leave” (40yrs, three kids and a couple of careers ago). We are deeply rooted here. Steve is an ER nurse, we both volunteer at SJI EMS. We live in a 500sq ft. house. Our three grown children also live on the island.
I’ve always been a maker. It used to be handbags, now fragrance. I paint, and also make memorial jewelry and sculpture from the ashes of pets and loved ones (let’s talk). It’s all a journey towards some “far-away freedom”. Scent is killer because it expresses what cannot be “said” with words. I always want to provoke a feeling of freedom from time, anxiety, ambition – and shifting ideas about how things should be. Scent stimulates a vague memory or far-off idea (a person, smoke, grade school, lemons, dirt) – relics of experience. I create fragrances to capture it. Perfume as art roots us in a moment.
Here’s a bummed out artist’s statement:
“Self absorbed to the core, I paint and perfume because I have fears that stack up but I’m supposed to work constructively so that the world keeps spinning on its axis. Left to my own devices I’ll think about myself until my toenails melt. My house is super small, so I can’t pretend to build a life fussing with my house and possessions. There aren’t many family events, the kids are busy doing their things (wahhhh!). Art is the only way to escape my head. I love abstract art, as long as it’s not dark (like Damien Hirsch’s cross sections of animals, for CRYING OUT LOUD). I’m progressing with my work, I may well be keeping in step with the trajectory of artists in history who lost their minds- progressively improving in their work while declining into the depths of psychosis. I dunno.”
Just kidding, that was one dark day in winter.
ALL GOOD, LOL
let’s talk
I’d love to hear from you and always answer in person.