In 1998, at twenty-nine, I began my journey as an artist. It happened through loss — the death of my mother, who was only forty-seven. During the final week of her life, I sat by her bedside, keeping vigil in case she needed anything. She drifted in and out of consciousness, leaving long hours of silence for reflection. I was twenty-eight and painfully aware that I had done very little with my life.

Before that time I had lived like a nomad — hitchhiking up and down the East Coast, taking a train across the country with three hundred dollars in my pocket, and landing for a time in Eugene, Oregon. Eventually, I made my way to San Francisco. After only a few months there, I met a writer from New York who invited me to come east to work on poetry and perform at open mics. I left the city to join him, and together we read our work at poetry slams in New York — small rooms filled with restless language, smoke, and possibility. But after three months, something in me longed to return to San Francisco — the one place that truly felt like home.

It was there, early one morning, that I received the call: my mother had cancer and only three months left to live.

After she passed, I returned to San Francisco determined to make something of myself. I enrolled in a figure-drawing class at City College, and it changed the course of my life. I stayed for six years, studying intensely, until my drawing teacher told me, “You have a lot of potential — you need to go to a more serious art school.” He helped me assemble a portfolio for the San Francisco Art Institute. When the acceptance letter arrived — with scholarships — I was ecstatic.

I majored in painting and studied first with Bruce McGaw, who taught me not to fear the surface: to scrape, reapply, and scrape again until something true appeared. The following semester I needed an elective and thought, why not Photography 101 with Henry Wessel? When a scheduling conflict arose — the school wanted me to take a theory class instead — I told Henry. He went straight to the administration, spoke on my behalf, and got the conflict removed. That was my first impression of him: dedicated, dryly funny, a little imposing, but utterly astute.

I had no idea at the time that taking his class — or meeting him at all — would change the course of my life.