Back in the high school days, decorating the walls of my bedroom meant plastering them floor to ceiling with glossy magazine cut-outs of cute celebrity heartthrobs (nothing like waking up to Keanu – in his Bill-and-Ted stage of life – goofily smiling down at you) and mammoth-sized posters promoting my favorite bands (Depeche Mode made way for R.E.M. + U2, made way for the Pixies). Maximum wall coverage was the goal, and the more crap I could tack up to declare my loves and obsessions, the better. I used my walls to express me … and whether the outcome was attractive or not was completely irrelevant. In college, I had an epiphany: wall decorations could serve an aesthetic function! Up went the stereotypical college standards – Klimt’s Kiss, Van Gogh’s Starry Night, a whole slew of Matisse cut-out prints – and into the closet and trash went any hint of real personality. Clearly I’d moved to the other extreme … all looks and no substance, insta-style that made my room look like every other college freshman girl’s dorm room.

These days, I’d like to think I’ve finally learned to achieve the proper balance: creating walls that are both nice to look at, and are uniquely, undeniably representative of me. Admittedly, the fact that I was a visual arts major in college has helped – final projects for photo classes, drawing classes, printmaking classes and the like, have provided a wide body of original artwork from which to choose for display. I’m no Picasso or Cartier-Bresson, to be sure, but there’s something nice about the fact that the vast majority of what’s on my walls are my creations – images with stories behind them, pictures that connect to my past, objects that provide a starting point for discussion with guests that come to visit.