Sylvia Mueller studied photography at the School of Visual Arts and worked for several years in advertising and magazine production in NYC. It wasn't until her move to the Hudson Valley from her home of many years in Brooklyn that she found the time and space to work creatively again. This time, she enlisted magazines quite differently and art books to create collages. The choice to change mediums was the desire to have a more textural, hands-on art practice. Her love of nature, one of the main reasons for her move to upstate NY, is reflected in the cuts in her collages as she captures the patterns in nature and applies them to printed material.