When I was a child in Brooklyn, N.Y. I loved to draw. In high school, I took after-school art classes at the Brooklyn Museum and the Art Students League. My interest evolved into a passion continued at Oberlin College where I earned a degree in art and art history. I came back to New York and pursued hopes for a career in art.

 

When my husband George and I moved to the Bay Area, I earned my MFA in printmaking at the California College of Arts and Crafts (today, CCA) and we raised our family, but I eventually put aside my art work.

 

In 1970, I began looking for a small community project to become involved in and stumbled into the biggest land protection effort in our region: the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA). For fourteen years I thought of little else except my family and this open space while conservationist Edgar Wayburn and I led People for a Golden Gate National Recreation Area. We took a government idea of 8,000 acres and helped it grow to what is now an 80,000 acre national park.

 

In the 1980s, I found time to make pictures again. Sometimes the pictures merges my two passions. Today my art studio and computer share the same big room where I work on pictures and the Golden Gate National Parks and other conservation projects every day.      

 

Amy W. Meyer