Hi, there. I am Tina Coggins: mother, sister, friend, daughter, and girlfriend and lover to a certain Canadian dreamguy I'm involved with. I'm an artist, web designer, graphic designer and film & graphics student who dabbles in writing, when my head's on straight. Generally shy by nature, I'm somewhat reticent to talk about myself, but I've had several emails over time asking me to tell something about myself here. It's taken a while, but bit by bit I've been writing and revising this thing.

Some things about me:

My favorite time of day is dusk, and my favorite scent is the smell of fresh lilacs. My favorite foods are generally Italian -- my father's home made Cannoli, using a family recipe from relatives in Sicily, is unparalleled -- closely followed by Chinese and Thai.

Musically, I like everything from Tito Puente to Massive Attack, and just about everything in-between -- though I'm really not much for Country, Polka (or anything Polka-like, including certain regional Mexican Country music), or yodeling. Likewise, really abstract, progressive Jazz. My tastes in movies and books are just as eclectic, and there just isn't enough space to list all of my top picks in any of those passions, but I have a fondness for foreign film, particularly French and Asian (Chinese, Japanese and Korean are my favorites). Some of my favorite authors are Toni Morrison, Stephen King, Margaret Atwood, Anne Rice and J.R.R. Tolkien.

I grew up reading Mad Magazine and the comics of R. Crumb, as well as being a fan of Warner's Brothers cartoons (gotta love that Bugs Bunny), and admiring superheroes like Thor, when I was quite young, then the X-Men, Superman and the Fantastic Four -- Batman, Spidey, and many others. This is something I enjoyed in my youth -- an enjoyment a special friend has brought back to me like a forgotten treasure, and reminded me of how much I still like it all, and how the values that held up then still hold up now.

My favorite colors would be found in a thick piece of cobalt glass when you hold it up to the light. And I cannot think about color without thinking about art, which is something I've been involved in, in one way or another, since childhood. Due to some injuries, I am no longer able to paint large, so I transferred my creative drive over to the computer, creating digital illustrations, photographic manipulations, and fractal art -- all of which you can view by visiting my Galleries Intersection.

I love plants and used to have a greenhouse, where my favorite plants were (and still are), bromeliads, tillandsia (a genus of the bromeliad family), orchids, and the lesser-seen, rainforest varieties of ferns -- such as the staghorn, rabbit's foot, maidenhair and bird's nest varieties.

The person I find most inspirational is Sojourner Truth, a woman: strong as nails and born a slave, who had the guts to stand up and speak with passion about women's rights and civil rights, amongst other things. The reason she inspires me is because she was a woman who, being a black ex-slave woman, was considered the lowest of the low socially, and yet she was brave enough to stand up and take risks for what she believed in. There are many more people I admire, for various things, and would be hard-pressed to name just one all-around person who is my hero. But Sojourner Truth's story inspires me to give an extra push for the things I believe in.

When it comes to people I admire, I would have to list my mother at the top. She pushed through hardship of the sort many have never known to basically raise herself from childhood, and supported herself financially, though hard work and tenacity. She wasn't a perfect parent by any stretch, but she strove to do better by my sister and me than what was done by her. I think that as parents sometimes that's the best we can do.

Add to the list of people I admire our forefathers and mothers who lived through hard times that my generation has never known. We have been spoiled, because our parents loved us enough to want us never to have to go through the hardships they did. As a result, we're rather a soft lot, and in some ways, not as tolerant of each other's quirks as our ancestors were and are -- no matter how PC we may claim to be. Certainly, there is more tolerance for racial differences and sexual orientation, but less in putting up with typical annoyances and differences in personalities. I think we could learn a lot from our parents and grand parents, and beyond.

I have a thing for 1969 - 1970 muscle cars, particularly Mopars (especially the Charger r/t -- reference the wheelie-popping hunk of fun the lovely Vin Diesel drove in the movie, The Fast & The Furious, or The Dukes of Hazard's General Lee), my old streetracer, a '69 Oldsmobile 442, named Ace (alas, I have no pics of Ace, so this one isn't my 442; mine was metallic forest green with white racing stripes). And let's not forget Pontiac's 1969 The Judge -- rare and fast.

And as you can see, I spend way too much time on the computer. Okay, that's where this self-conscious bit of fluff ends. If you've held on for this long, thanks for reading. :)

-- Tina

For those of you that are interested, here is a list of some of the places you can find my work, as well as some of my personal links:

Some of my writings, here.