She was born in the US on 10/12/1955 to children’s books author Arnold Lodel – the creator of “Frog and Toad”, which she staged as producer in 2002. She studied at Yale’s Drama School under Ming Cho Lee. She has worked as a set designer for Broadway and regional theater productions, as well as for the Yale Repertory Theater, the Arena Stage Washington and the Guthrie Theater. She designed the set for John Adams’s Nixon in China (Houston Grand Opera, 1987) and its television production, as well as for PBS’s production of The Hard Nut, choreographed by Mark Morris (1991). She worked at the Metropolitan Opera New York in Mark Morris Dance Group’s performance of L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato (1998), the adaptation of Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy (2005), etc. She was nominated for the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Set Design for Stephen Sondheim’s musical Passion and the Tony Award for Best Musical for A Year With Frog and Toad. She was awarded the Obie Award for Set Design (1984) for her contributions to All Night Long and The Vampires, as well as the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Set Design (1998) for Leonard Bernstein’s musical On the Town. She worked with the GNO as set designer in the revival of the production of Nixon in China (Athens Concert Hall, 2006/07).