My films are not obvious. I depict the everyday: people in their own environments. I emphasize dignity. I lack a political or narrative agenda. The subjects do not lead to anything beyond themselves. This is life for what it is and not for what it symbolizes. I don’t judge reality. Reality is just “there”; it has its own rules. I like process, to record something that occurs whether or not I am there that day, something that speaks for itself, including a family meal.

I am a one-person crew, and I edit. A bigger camera would change everything. I want to disappear in their space. My films reveal an intimacy, and distance. Mini-DV lowers everyone’s defenses to reveal something of themselves.

I trust in every person I choose to film. I lived in the South and was a Georgian for 15 years. I had known the families and the schools for years before I filmed them.

A student of film, painting, and photography, I am inspired by the domestic realism of Michael Apted’s UP series (England) and the Loud family in the PBS series AN AMERICAN FAMILY (Santa Barbara). Closer to home, I learned from Tom Palazzolo’s RICKY AND ROCKY that a Midwesterner can elevate an ordinary family ritual into a filmed observation. Later, becoming a mother deepened my sight on families, place, and the everyday.