Biography:
Candace is a scientist, artist, storyteller and teacher. However she says she is just a girl that likes to dig in the dirt and climb trees. “Everyone has superhero powers, they just have to find them!” Growing up in the bayous of Louisiana deeply embedded a love of adventure. “Trees that grow their root knees up out of the water to keep from suffocating, snakes that stalk, the graceful pelican fishermen, loud croaking bullfrogs, and awww, lightening bugs, they are my dreamstuff.” When Candace’s son, Kijika, (ki- ee-kah, he that walks quietly) was born she began to see the world changing in a very deep way. Honoring her French-Indian roots and sacred understanding that we are only here to borrow the land, her mission became strong to save the trees so that her son, and all the generations to follow would wonder and ponder the lightening bugs just as she had done. Stirring the jar full of dirt, she grew into a Paleoecologist and Archaeologist. Building pine needle forts led her into two degrees in Architecture and Ecological Design. Inspired by her music professor grandfather she is trained as a classical musician. A voracious reader like her grandmother, she began writing story as a young girl. But the art, was recognized by default of her first grade teacher. Being a creative child, sitting in a desk was boredom. Therefore she spent her whole first year of school sentenced to a desk in the hallway. She was given the task to draw things, and opening a book of geology she fell in love with what the Earth is made of. She drew histories of geology which later won the Science Fair. “I am that same girl, in love with trees, creating things I could never have imagined, taking the path least traveled and always searching curiously to find the connections of life.”