My earliest fiber memories are of spending many happy hours with my paternal grandmother (Villa Thompson Gay) on her sun porch in Lake Helen, Florida, fascinated by the colorful and detailed wool rugs that she created on her loom overlooking her backyard orange and grapefruit trees.  I know now that it was very important that she not only allowed but and encouraged me to work directly on her loom, without supervision, and that she had no worries that that I would ruin her designs or her fine craft work.

I have memories of my mother sewing many of my clothes when I was in grade school.  She had her sewing machine set up in the spare bedroom and somehow found the time, when she wasn’t working as a pharmacist, leading her Girl Scout troop, playing tennis, or taking care of the household for my father and me, to sew.

Probably the two most empowering things my parents ever did for me, during junior high and high school,  were to buy me a typewriter, and next, a Singer Stylist sewing machine. I used that sewing machine for more than 27 years.  I wasn’t interested in the clothes you could buy off the shelf back in the late 60’s and early 70’s (other than blue jeans), and preferred to make my own skirts and shirts with fabric that was my choice.  I didn’t make any quilts until I was in college in Vermont.  I made my first one for a close friend’s wedding, and I recall being very frustrated by the finishing of it.  I don’t remember if I tied it or hand quilted it.

I also started knitting when I was small, first as play with a neighbor (or maybe it was Girl Scouts), progressing later in college to patterned sweaters and the discovery of many wonderful natural wools.  These days, I knit for stress release, and even more for the tactile feel of the fiber, which is calming, and the pure joy of the ‘making’ activity for myself, friends and family, which I cannot seem to stop.

I spent nearly a decade in Wisconsin early in my public health nursing career, where during an emotionally dry and empty period, I enrolled in an intensive 7 week evening course in Seminole Piecing at the local community college.  This was around the birth of the rotary cutter, and I have been quilting by machine since then. I also work full time in pharmaceutical project management, which seems (every day) to be an opposing force to my fiber creativity   I am now committed to find a balance in my life, and to define a reasonable and exciting way forward. 

I am indebted to a number of excellent and sensitive teachers who have allowed me to “begin to let go” over the years, in particular:  

• Nancy Crow: By her ever intuitive questioning, Nancy has allowed me to explore myself and the influences around me,  with her honesty and the giving of herself.  Emphasizing a total commitment to the art that matters. Just doing the work. Over and over.
• David Walker: How could I have known that the meditation and thoughtful time spent in a Mandala class with him in 1999 would resonate even so much more in me nearly a decade later?

Current  Influences

• The textures of hand weaving; layers and illusion
• “Inner” vs “Outer” boundaries
• Rock Art and canyon wall colors of the Southwest US
• The capturing of a moment, the practice of hovering there for a while…
• Zen garden spaces

Goals

• To fully embrace what has informed my work up until now, to finish what is important to finish, and to pursue other ways of cutting line and shape that are as satisfying to me as the Waves Series
• To collect new ideas, document them, and act on them
• To become truly awake, and to put this presence into a textural  fabric form
• To define a moment and to stay there
  

WEB LINKS

Charlotte Bell Photography
Stitzlein's Art Grange
Studio Art Quilt Associates
Nancy Crow
Rick Foris Pottery
Sharon Fujimoto Glass
David Walker
Laurie Brainerd
Women and Their Work Art Gallery
Lisa Chipetine
Ruthie Powers
WholeBodyView