the snapshot
I was born in Chicago and raised in Athens (Greece) in front of the beach of Glyfada. I moved to Chicago in 1995 to go to college and to work. I spent eight hard but wonderful years in Illinois but the time has come to move on. I have two cats, Damien and Lilith who have been following me around for the past six years. I just completed graduate school in Illinois and after flirting with California for a year, I decided to give it a shot. It feels like home :)

the story
Amidst four larger-than-life video walls, Bill Viola told a group of graduate students that "according to eastern philosophy, the samurai has been defeated when he is able to concentrate on one thing and completely devote his attention to it." It was at that moment in time that I felt I understood that the way I do things as a woman, as an artist, as a student and a teacher is highly regarded. Having being raised in Greece I had often participated in a discourse centered on the generalist and the specialist as issues discussed in sociology and career placement classes for years. My own abilities can be identified as belonging to an entirely different category. I am an interdisciplinarian, therefore I can function in many different modes at the same time.

As a child and adolescent I thrived as an artist and writer while assisting my family with their business. My father taught me how to paint and my mother bought me tons of books and hired a french tutor when I was in fifth grade. I was introduced to technology when my family's business required use of computers to develop databases for inventory and sales purposes. I became an expert with computers as business tools and was involved in solving code glitches, hardware repairs, using the BBS (in the 1980s and 1990s) and learned early desktop publishing tools. In high school I was asked by faculty to help them out with their computer needs whether that was preparing instructional materials or fixing computer equipment all the while engaged in advanced art classes.

When the time came, I decided to apply to art school. Initially, I sought two Bachelor degrees and was accepted into the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) and the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). After three semesters of struggling with my previous training in architectural drafting and formal drawing, I took an indefinite leave of absence from SAIC, continued my studies at UIC and graduated with a BFA in Photo/Film/Electronic Media specializing in Electronic Visualization. My open-mindedness to combining art and technology helped me embrace the web and virtual reality as a medium therefore I decided to continue at UIC where I just completed my MFA in Electronic Visualization at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL). I have divided the last few years between studying, teaching and working as a designer or systems/network administrator. It is not as crazy as it sounds but it sure feels like it!