I did return to the University of Colorado and completed a teaching degree in English, but just as that was complete, I had a serendipitous event, seeing the English teacher who set me on that life path. Because I have no lens on my left eye and partial vision on the right, my paintings oftentimes reflect a very surrealistic quality. Fortunately, some vision was restored in the right eye, which one doctor described to me as being “A Queen amongst the blind.” I now live in a world of soft focus. The process of being injured and sensory deprived of vision, touch, and sound all at the same time seemed to open doors to the etheric world–things that I couldn’t ordinarily perceive about others before the injury became apparent. I was unconscious for quite some time and had a dozen surgeries over the next 2 years. I was blinded by the blast, had shrapnel in many parts of my body, and lost both eardrums and half of my right hand. I later learned that another bomb detonated in a woman’s restroom up the street several minutes before this. It was a pipe bomb that was wired around the edge. I had been there 6 months when I went to pick up the mail from the Director’s mailbox and when I touched the edge of a package it detonated. When I was 20 years old, I moved to southern California to continue my college education and was working as a secretary in the Government Department of Pomona College. She infused our home environment with an artistic talent for beauty and color, which has led me into painting and the arts. She was dependent upon me and this instilled a sense of independence and compassion for those who need care. The Boulder Valley was said to have been cursed by Chief Niwot, the Southern Arapahoe Chief, who said that people who saw the beauty of this valley would want to stay, and if they left, they would return.Ī large part of my desire to advocate for others was borne from taking care of my mother, who was agoraphobic and didn’t leave her home much from the age of 30 until she died at 75. Boulder is oftentimes described as “45 square miles surrounded by reality.” Our city is surrounded by greenbelt, or land owned by the city that cannot be developed, which allows us to keep a more rustic environment with bears, mountain lions, coyotes, deer, foxes, etc. My Father, being much like an Indiana Jones-type character would go into the jungles for long periods, coming out with gems and other geological finds in his pockets.īoulder, CO, on the other hand, is a beautiful little city nestled amongst the Flatirons and the mountain environment couldn’t be more different from the tropical island ambiance of Manila. However, my mother hated to fly so we sailed from Manila and across the Pacific for 42 days to make it back and forth to the US. We always had a house in Boulder, Colorado, and would return to the States to stay intermittently. That seems to have shaped my love of the tropics and the beauty of different cultural lifestyles. I was born in Manila, PI where my Father was a mining engineer and we lived in the mountains and jungles of Bagui0. My life has been very fluid with many wild adventures along the way and I can see how each of those major events and the people I’ve met have contributed to my metamorphosis. Hi Mary, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.

Hidden gems denver