This body of work was created during the summer of 1997. It had its conception when my husband offered his great idea for a vacation. We would go to San Diego in the spring and enroll in a week of sailing lessons with the J-World Sailing School. Five days (8 am to 5 pm) of sailing a 30’ motor-less boat in San Diego Bay amidst passing aircraft carriers and Navy Seal training. There was just Bob, me, and an instructor onboard.

Although this was a great adventure and lots of fun for Sailor-Bob, it was quite stressful for me. I did persevere and received my official J-World Certificate of Completion, but I spent the rest of the summer processing all this new information and calming my psyche. Much of my angst was expressed in a journal / sketchbook. Sailing requires that you understand wind direction and the design of your sailboat. I researched and recorded these concepts obsessively and then put them into practice with our smaller, safer Sunfish on our smaller, safer lake waters.

It just so happened that I had signed up for additional course work at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee that summer. My main concentration was the Monoprint Workshops taught by Professor Vicki Graffentin. I used my sailing experiences as subject matter for the experimentation offered in these workshops. My feelings toward sailing flowed through this monoprint process.