A Bay Area native, Ms. Mueller has worked in ceramics and multi-media art for 25 years. She uses her work to focus on a concept that immediately attracts all viewers, and then engages them longer to explore the piece and its ideas.

Thoughts:

This mask is dedicated to my Grandma who could recall many humorous and poignant scenes of her long life and enjoyed sharing them. However, I often sensed that they were only a fraction of her experiences and now , after her passing, the only surviving memories are those she shared with us. I wonder if those snippets of memories truly represent her life. Some of the themes I explored while creating this mask were 'Who is the richer person - the young person with life yet to live, or the old person with a lifetime of memories? We think of emotions and memories as impermanent, but are they really the only enduring part of a person's life? Do memories have a universal timeliness? Are the most important things in life what we carry with us, inside our heads? How do we process memory and how does the passage of time affect our recall of our life's experiences? Do we mark the passage of time with our eyes? Aren't our own faces like clock faces, recording each event of our lives?'