Once upon a time there was this girl named Gina. She was born in Brooklyn New York at the tail end of the ‘70’s  and spent a chunk of her growing up years in Monroe NY. Her parents bought her lots of techie toys like video cameras and kid versions of PC tablets and stuff when she was a kid. She also loved her crayons and other art supplies like her first real working still camera which took pictures on 110 film... Gina bought her first art supplies in pennies at a Shop Rite in Monroe NY. They were fluorescent crayons, and they cost $2.79...

At the tail end of the ‘80’s she and her family moved to the Tampa Bay area. She grew up there went through school. Always having that urge for creativity. Gina participated in art shows in high school and even did pretty well in a billboard competition sponsored by a local TV station her freshman year in high school... Her other hobbies included teaching and foreign languages

Gina set off to college at the tail end of the ‘90’s and after trying what seemed like a billion majors, her glass slipper was the College of Visual and Performing Arts at  the University of South Florida. In a weird coincidence, as she was transferring from a Pre-Education major to an Fine Arts Major, her high school art teacher ran into Gina on campus, at USF... it was probably a sign or something...

So Gina learned a lot about herself in trying to find the “glass slipper” of majors. She really loved computers so her focus was electronic media, and she even took a few web design classes out of her major (which she passed with straight A’s). All through college she did freelance jobs as a graphic and web designer. Her thesis show was in February of 2003 in USF Centre Gallery, which still lurks in the archives of the USF website. She finally graduated in May, 2003 with a BA in fine arts and got a 3.0 gpa... a month later she got married to her long time boyfriend Christiaan Grové...

The artist has recently returned to the the tampa bay area, after living in rural Maryland for less than a year. Still creating, still rebelling from the rat race :)