Alison Marek has been mixing words with images professionally since she was in her late teens. Her two graphic novels, "Desert Streams" and "Sparrow" were published by the groundbreaking DC imprint, Piranha Press. Her comic strip "Fido Kaplan" ran in Brooklyn's "Prospect Press" and the Fairchild publication "Travel Today!" Returning to school after collecting a variety of unusual real-life experiences, Alison was graduated summa cum laude as Valedictorian from Hunter College in 1997. She went on to receive her MFA in film directing from NYU in 2004. Her screenplays won production grants from Showtime Networks, Inc. and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Her short films have played worldwide in festivals, been broadcast on Showtime Networks and other cable stations, and have been nominated for and won several awards, including a Director's Award at the Hearts & Minds Film Festival in 2010.

Always following her own path, Alison's journeys allowed her to meet the legendary Martha Graham and to have studied with and been inspired by trailblazers such as theater great Earle Hyman at HB Studios, acting teacher George Morrison, playwright Tina Howe and the memoirist and Viriginia Woolf expert Louise DeSalvo. During her early itinerant years, she crashed on various couches, including one in an office co-run by the eccentric cartoonist Ben Katchor, who threatened to oust her with boiling oil. Nevertheless, Alison was inspired by Katchor and his peers to write and draw her first "picture story," which was to become "Desert Streams" (Piranha Press, 1989).

Childhood heroines: Lillian Gish and Isadora Duncan

Her colorful experiences, along with the fascinating personalities she's met, have allowed Alison to grow into an artist whose work "plumbs the wantonness of the human condition," according to playwright Tina Howe, allowing "the ridiculous and sublime to move hand-in-hand."

Alison hopes you enjoy the work you see here and welcomes feedback.