Ever since childhood, I have loved materials of all kinds… paints, pens, richly dyed yarns, oil pastels, collage papers, patterns, and textures.  I find beauty everywhere I look, especially in the natural world.

I grew up picking blueberries and painting alongside my mother on the coast of Maine.  Those early experiences grounded me in the natural world and the joy of using materials to play and to represent and make sense of the world.  

My life has been devoted to teaching and learning alongside children. I’ve had the privilege of working in schools in Vermont, Missouri, England, and Italy, and for the past 17 years, I’ve traveled across North America with my husband, Ashley, through our work as Cadwell Collaborative.

We closed our consulting business in the summer of 2025.  I will continue to write blog posts, which gives me joy and a place to share my reflections and photographs. I look forward to sharing my sketchbooks, drawings and paintings in progress as I aspire to become a more skilled graphic artist and painter.  

This site is a place to share the past. Our Cadwell Collaborative site and 13 years of blog posts are archived here. 

It is also a place to embrace the present in words, in photographs, in drawings and paintings…”to be astonished and tell about it.”