Textile Art & Fine Craft
Commissioned work in progress, February 2024 Studio Three 17 is shifting focus from an art business to an art practice. I have worked with fabric and clients for over five decades. I began with clothing repairs, alterations, and construction. I progressed through crafts, home decor and furnishings, and finally to fabric art. During the pandemic … Continue reading Shift Happens
Fabric artists and quilters often point to a fabric in a piece, naming it as the inspiration, the starting point. My work usually begins in a conversation with a client or in an a dialogue that has a bit of friction to it. I have struggled with getting started on works I want to make … Continue reading Fabric as Inspiration
To make a prairie it take a clover and one bee-- One clover, and a bee, And revery. The revery alone will do If bees are few. --Emily Dickinson "Revery" is woven from strips of fabric and matted on both sides. It is designed to hang in a window of on a french door. This … Continue reading call/respond Week 18
We all carry within us our places of exile, our crimes, our ravages. Our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to transform them in ourselves and others, — Albert Camus Joseph in The Well and the Camus quotation have existed in my repertoire for years but were just put together … Continue reading Call / Respond Week 9
One of the marks of a gift is to have the courage of it. Katherine Anne Porter Heart's Desire began as fun, putting together tumbler patches in a neutral colorway. After I had layered it with batting and backing and quilted through the layers, I added tucks to the bottom of the hanging. The copper … Continue reading Call / Response Week 7
A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. —Annie Dill Dance at Midnight is an early work, completed long before I found this quote. I chose it as an illustration … Continue reading Call / Respond Week 6
On good weather school days, my father Wes often managed to be in the farmyard when the school bus pulled in to drop off the three of us kids. We enjoyed seeing him there. But as we made our way off the bus, we prepared for the certainty of him asking, “What did you learn … Continue reading Wes and Will: More Good Questions
3 layered lectern frontal. Fabric screen printed and stenciled. Work engages and excites me when I explore new techniques but also when I use established process and pattern in a fresh way. A recent commission created a deep satisfaction through stewardship of materials, time, and relationship. My fingers repeated decades old take apart skills I … Continue reading Time for Amendment of Life
I led my first dyeing workshop this month. 10 good women braved a cold night to gather in a pottery studio to put their hands and minds to dyeing silk scarves. After I demonstrated three fold and tie patterns, each participant received a scarf to manipulate and then color. Here are their results. I discovered … Continue reading 3 Patterns, 7 Colors, and 10 Women
In the beginning.......God created.......In the beginning........was the Word...... In the beginning of 2016, I stalled out. In the midst of stacks of fabrics, committed projects, commissioned work, beckoning ideas, and pots of paint, I struggled to create a plan and to write a schedule that would contain and direct all these good things. The elements … Continue reading The Beginning is Not The Starting Point