Art is has been a way for me to really examine myself. My ways of growing and my needs and places where I need to grow more. One of the things I've had to deal with is perfectionism. When you work in stone, it just really doesn't exist because you don't know necessarily what's inside underneath there. My art form has taught me a lot about being more accepting. If an arm chips off, then all of a sudden it's a new piece and the piece has told me we're going a different direction. I made a plan to go to Italy because I knew that I could get bigger stones there. I also wanted the experience of what it was like to work in the same area that Michael Angelo and these amazing sculptors had done years and years ago. I spent the summer of 2001 and I went there wanting to use my time the best way that I could so I made a little macaque. I started with a raw stone. When I got to Pietro Santa, we went to quarries where we actually choose our rock. By the time I got back, it was, I had not even cut through any of it. I had been able to shape it out and then I brought it back to my studio in Culver City where it took me probably another, say, about nine months to finish it. It was really a labor of love, very feminine and has the movement. But I love the abstraction too. I'm starting a new piece. Sometimes I'll just start to like clean the piece and then I will find that the stone will start to talk to me really, truly to start every piece with enjoying the process of it and not as opposed to seeing necessarily what the form is and having to know immediately what is the result inside of it. I feel just very grateful that Madame Butterflies here, I really do, is looking at the lab rent and MSIA and John Roger, John Morton, they've been so amazing in my life and in my growth as a human beings. I'm so thrilled to be able to gift her. It's a gift for me.