My goal, after High School, was to become a fashion illustrator so I went to the Fashion Institute of Technology. I spent 3 years majoring in general illustration and graphic design and then did my final year at Marymount Manhattan College. I spent my 20’s working for publishers and advertising agencies doing mostly illustration work. Despite the constant struggle, I eventually grew into a decent graphic designer. A highlight of the early 80’s was illustrating and distributing a line of Shakespearean greetings across the country.
The not so highlight of the 1980’s was the AIDS crisis. While watching my friends get sick and die, I volunteered at GMHC as a crisis counsellor, marched, went to meetings, and designed whatever any LGBT group asked. Luckily, I met a wonderful man who saved me. We homesteaded for 9 years in an ugly house in an ugly neighborhood in Brooklyn — think Dante.
In 1988, recognizing an opportunity within the museum world, I founded a design studio that became an advertising agency specializing in museums and cultural clients. My first clients were The Metropolitan Museum, MoMA, The Museum of Natural History, and the Morgan Library. Within a couple years I added The Art Institute of Chicago, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum, The National Gallery, and others. For several years we had an office in Los Angeles for our West Coast clients like the LA Philharmonic, The Norton Simon, and The Getty. It was a fabulous ride.
In 1998 Vincent and I immigrated to Chelsea and became foster parents, eventually adopting two boys. Unfortunately, Vincent succumbed to complications of AIDS in 2002. We built an amazing life in our 14 years together and he will always live in my heart.
Wanting to completely change my life, I left my agency, bought and restored an historic palazzo in a small hill town in Umbria (350 people live within the walls), and moved to Italy in 2008. I founded aWeekinUmria.com and have been renting apartments and giving tours ever since. To complete my conversion to being truly Italian, and since it was apparently required, I gave up a lifelong aversion to coffee and fell in love with cappuccino.
Living in Italy is the fulfillment of a life-long dream of returning to where my grandparents lived. (Kind of the American Dream in reverse.) It’s beautiful here. I have a wonderful orto (garden) just outside the walls with lots of fruit trees and about 50 olive trees. I get to produce my own olive oil — so I’ve fulfilled a dream of my father’s as well. Dogs have always been a part of my life and I currently have two beautiful Italian Greyhounds (Sebastiano and Aurelia) who I could not live without. I spent most of the Covid lockdown in Italy creating artwork — portraits of friends here in Bettona. I’m currently working on an exhibition.
And the best news is that, after almost 20 years of knowing each other, I married my best friend in 2024. Paul and I both have our Italian citizenship so the ceremony was at the Comune building in town. The party was at our house with people who matter the most to us. Living in Italy has many trials but, if you push those aside, it really is La Dolce Vita.