About Me
Kendra Harness, CEO/Janitor
At my booth at the MATA Expo, Ontario CA November 2007.
I was born in Washington DC two months before JFK was assasinated, grew up watching Vietnam on the nighly news (the news wasn't 24/7 like today!), and lived through Watergate. My early education included the major schooling options for a Deaf child. After becoming Deaf in my preschool years, I was placed in a restrictive oral-only class (luckily I had learned to read befor becoming deaf). After an educationally frustrating few years, I was mainstreamed in a public school closer to home in northern Virginia. The speech teacher I was assigned there taught me to sign (at 11, better late than never) and then sat in class and acted as my interpreter, which opened up a new world for me. I then moved on to a "real" Deaf school, Kendall Demonstration Elementary School in Washington DC (on the Gallaudet University campus), and after that graduated from the Model Secondary School for the Deaf in 1980 (same campus).
In 1980, I moved across the country to attend California State University, Northridge in a San Fernando Valley suburb of Los Angeles. My art training included painting, printmaking, drawing, commercial art, and a heavy emphasis on photography, especially alternative photographic processes. I graduated in 1986 with a BA in Art, cum laude. I returned for a few years and continued my work in alternative photographic processes while also studying psychology.
You can find a bit more biographical information scattered around this site, especially in the sections Art, Comics, and Essays. Also feel free to read what others have written about me/my businesses at the links below..
| Clara's Final Niche, Altered Arts Magazine Nov/Dec 2006 "Lost Angeles Rubber Works: Signs of Creativity" by Clara Stacko Original Article with Photos Text Article with Links |
| SIGNews Newspaper March 2007 "Running A Business Creatively" by David Rosenbaum Original Article with Photos Text Article with Links |