In 1961, she married artist and singer Terry Allen and moved to Los Angeles, California where she walked away from a BFA degree from the Woodbury College of Design over a disputed sixty dollar fee.
She studied with poets, Philip Levine and Kenneth Rexroth and staged her first poetry performance for an audience of one, mentor, dancer, filmmaker, Yvonne Rainer.
In the 1960s, she was a pioneer of women in radio hosting Los Angeles' Rawhide & Roses, music and talk show, on the early underground rock station, KPPC-FM in Pasadena, California, produced by her husband, artist/songwriter, Terry Allen.
Counter Angel was first performed in truck stops and cafes and based on Allen's book of photographs and interviews titled The Beautiful Waitress (unpublished).
She toured, starred, and co-wrote with Terry Allen and Rinde Eckert the opera, Pioneer (director, Robert Woodruff), (Spoleto, U.S.A.) music by Paul Dresher Ensemble, and starred as, Chippy, in Diaries of a West Texas Hooker co-written with Terry Allen, music co-written by the Allens, Joe Ely, Butch Hancock, and Jo Carol Pierce, (American Music Theater Festival, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Lincoln Center, New York) (CD, Hollywood Records, L.A. Times Pick of the Year).