Right Here, Right Now

In this series of quilts I was trying for minimal composition and maximal surface design. Shibori dyed for complexity. Metallic acrylic paint adds luminosity. As simple and complex as light itself.

In this series of quilts I was trying for minimal composition and maximal surface design. Shibori dyed for complexity. Metallic acrylic paint adds luminosity. As simple and complex as light itself.

I was going through my stash, and I came across these two intriguing hand-dyed/printed pieces I had made in the past. It’s simple machine-pieced cotton squares with an organza overlay, machine-quilted.

My work is typically an exploration of what is hidden and what is revealed–whether in a visual, emotional or historical sense. Working with layers, both physically and visually, allows me to explore this complexity. Here, I continue this exploration, focusing on color, using the structures of log cabin and bojagi. The color inspiration comes from a forest in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

In the Eye of the Storm is a mono-printed meditation on our turbulent times. Severe weather patterns, political upheavals at home and abroad, and failed reconcilliations to end wars–we are all living in the eye of the storms.

Holding Back the Water is an art quilt inspired by efforts to keep water at bay along lowlands and seashores. It is made with a handmade screen, printed twice (one on top of the other) with an intentional shift and a color change. The resulting double print was then overdyed, cut in strips, and pieced in layers.

Leftovers are valuable and come in many forms: food, building materials, thoughts, and fabric, to name a few. My leftover quilt scraps are often inspirations for another quilt in the reimagining of the scraps, they take on new meaning and new life to create a unique quilt.

I was inspired by a piece of painted cotton (artist unknown) I acquired at a fabric swap. The palette was a new one for me, and I used selected parts of the whole cloth. Covid 19 undoubtedly influenced the mood of the image, which changed over a long period of time. Like many artists, I found it was impossible to ignore the effect of Covid 19 while putting this together. It is a marker for a significant time in all our lives.

A mind map can be described as thinking made visible. By pulling a threaded needle through cloth, each stitch helps me organize my own thoughts, see connections and try to make sense of the world.

Stamped linen, cotton, hand embroidered and stitched.

A mind map can be described as thinking made visible. By pulling a threaded needle through cloth, each stitch helps me organize my own thoughts, see connections and try to make sense of the world.

Stamped linen, cotton, hand embroidered and stitched.

The message in Tanks & Teddy Bears, and my quilts in general, depends on contrast, such as this play between cute little teddy bears with toy tanks. This contrast allows us to see the dangers and contradictions in modern life in a new way. I ponder how the images we surround children with has helped to define who we are or how we are expected to move through adulthood. I do not have answers, but am inviting viewers to take a fresh look at the imagery we surround children with and what part it plays in our adult identity.

Hand-embroidered and quilted vintage baby blanket using cotton thread.

The message in Angry Eagle, and my quilts in general, depends on contrast, such as the play between a sweet quilt with embroidered angels and flowers with a screaming eagle. While eagles have barely gotten off the endangered list, I feel that an angry eagle is an excellent symbol for the dangers faced by the wildlife the world over especially when contrasted with the loving care given to our human babies. My hope is this message helps us look at the wild world in new and more supportive ways.

Hand-embroidered, painted, and quilted vintage baby blanket using cotton thread.

First wind and ember, fierce flame, then ask and char. Loss is everywhere, the irreversibility of the devastation is shocking, trees charred, the grounds denuded of every living thing, the very soil itself is burned, leaving behind sand and rock. Fire cleanses, brings light to dark corners, allows for no demands, a fresh start, new growth, a new beginning.

Handwoven cloth, commercial cloth, raw edge applique, stitching, dyeing, surface design

My studio is a red yurt in my yard. During the pandemic lockdown, a friend set up a zoom call, twice a week with five women. It was a lifeline, twice a week for many months, my red tent was a social sanctuary. But for many women, the lockdown was a hardship, domestic violence increased, women were isolated from help and safe spaces. Just like menstrual huts the world over the red tent can be a place of sanctuary, but also a trap where vulnerable women are targeted.

Handwoven cloth, dyeing, stitching, inks, paint, surface design

Visual Noise is the second quilt in the series Tuning In/Tuning Out, exploring how digital media has affected communication in our daily lives and relationships. In this modern digital era, so much is competing for our attention. Technology follows us everywhere. Advertisements everywhere, tailored to our search history. Technology is tuning in to us, and we are tuning out. Visual Noise represents how we are constantly bombarded with advertising, promising us a better version of ourselves if we just buy what is being offered. Our attention is being pulled away from the real life that is happening around us.

100% whole cloth hand printed cotton, embellished with hand embroidery and beading.

I decided I could best showcase the colorful fabric I love by surrounding it with more color. The work is pieced and layered with faced holes that display the focus fabric.

He meant the world to us, a quiet man, a puzzle solver, a canny farmer and a skillful craftsman. My father’s skill with puzzles and words was cut short by Alzheimer’s years before his body died. He became our “world without words.”

Materials used in No Word include a remnant of Mom’s tea towel, black and white photos of my dad, and a faded image of Dad as he loses definition from Alzheimer’s.

Who owns the land? Deed holders? Memory holders? Original inhabitants? I grew up on a Kansas farm that had been in the family since the mid-1850s. We’ve since sold the land, but my heart still travels there. I cherish Dad’s oil can and Mom’s quilting pins, but I cannot find the arrowheads that Dad collected, evidence of the indigenous People who came before.

A photo of my father’s family of origin and quilting stitches in the shape of arrows give meaning to Sardak.

I created this quilt using the technique of neurography, a method originally designed to help relax the mind through the freehand drawing of lines. I applied this technique digitally on my computer screen, integrating segments of photographs from my hikes in the Southwest deserts and adding color to the composition. As I introduced color, the lines unexpectedly began to coalesce into cohesive shapes, transforming my initial randomness into a meaningful design. The spontaneity of this process was deeply satisfying.

I constructed this quilt using the technique of neurography, a medical process used to relax your mind as you randomly draw lines. After drawing the lines, you can add color to your creation. Here I drew the lines freehand on my computer screen, then took segments of photographs I had taken while hiking in deserts of the Southwest to add color to my creation. Almost miraculously, as I added the color, the lines coalesced into shapes and random lines became something cohesive and meaningful. How gratifying that process was.

Fabric paint is taking me back to watercolor techniques on cotton. My compositions usually combine pictorial and design elements as seen in my original Dancing Squares quilt pattern cut from Four Sunsets painted on cotton. For me tropical life is beyond the ordinary and should be reflected in my designs.

Can nature conform to a design pattern? Silks and satins challenged me to use shapes and composition for a pictorial effect of a sunset at the beach with the design of my Dancing Squares pattern. For me, tropical life is beyond the ordinary and should be reflected in my designs.

Silks and satins with beads.

I am inspired by the ancient cultural traditions using Shibori techniques to create patterns on cloth. Working with Indigo is magical, as you watch the color turn from green to blue as it becomes oxygenated. My interpretation of these patterns is a way to honor and connect to past traditions.

I am inspired by the ancient cultural traditions using Shibori techniques to create patterns on cloth. Working with Indigo is magical, as you watch the color turn from green to blue as it becomes oxygenated. My interpretation of these patterns is a way to honor and connect to past traditions.

This whole-cloth painted quilt is about Hope I focused on Biden and Harris, his VP, on many strong women in the administration, the early Covid pandemic.

I added Hillary, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Shirley Chisholm, and at the top, Ida B Wells, adding three strong young girls in my life, at the bottom, giving us hope for the future. In Tarot, 8 represents balance and fairness, and Cups are all about love, caring, and kindness.

My drawing and writing are always done freehand with permanent paint, that I airbrush, write on with paint, and freehand machine sew, with a hand-sewn border.

This whole-cloth painted quilt is about two very strong women, who died within days of each other. They were both advocates for human rights.

Madeleine was a foreign policy genius, our UN ambassador under President Clinton, and then the first US woman Secretary of State. Guenveur was an artist, political activist, and worked to help many troubled people through her social work in Kent, Ohio. The agency she worked for, Townhall II, was formed to help people cope with the trauma of the murders of students at Kent State in 1970, and that’s when Guenveur went to work there.

Aunt Belle had given up trying to maintain a tidy fence between the alley and the yard behind her apartment building. Vigorous cleaning couldn’t remove the graffiti and, to be honest, some of it was pretty. Passersby posted notices of concerts and lost cats. She always put out food for the cats. And whenever someone painted a raunchy image, she pulled out leftover house paint and covered it with flowers. Then some days Belle would wander out back with a can and a brush just to add a new swatch of color to the abstract conversation playing out on her fence.

Opening up the walls of 30 Long Street revealed history. Beneath the paneling of the shuttered auto parts store were layers of paint, posters, child’s drawings, lost menus, and handwritten ledgers. There were swaths of mod wallpaper from a 1960s coffee shop and brickwork laid by turn-of-the-century masons. Decades of shop clerks, bakers, accountants, craftsmen, immigrant entrepreneurs, waiters, rebels, and children had left wisps of their history on the walls of that common, important place.

This fiber piece is inspired by my meditation practice. Using linen fabric, cotton thread, and a needle the idea developed organically one stitch at a time, one breath at a time.

The fabric in this piece served as the inspiration for the embroidery work. I wanted to capture the effect of taking the circle imagery and altering its size, almost as if one is telescoping in and out.

Fabric collage plus wool thread embroider

I’m fascinated by the images that arise through weaving and was interested in trying to capture the “feel” of weaving, using embroidery. The techniques include sashiko, thread weaving, and openwork on linen, with paper woven into the open space.

Cloth, thread (wool, sashiko, cotton), paper

My art most often resides in that place where mistakes become opportunities for growth, and limitations inspire creativity. Joyful Resilience is the consequence of such a fortunate blunder. Initially unhappy with the seam shadows, I lined the white shapes with a vibrant array of highly saturated solid fabrics.

This is me, embracing the unexpected. . . where a flaw becomes a source of richness and complexity.

In this most turbulent and toxic time, I am troubled by the injustice and inhumanity that pervades. Unsilent is my attempt to visually convey a movement to promote truth, acceptance, equality, and our common humanity. The clear blue transcends murky “colors-without-names” and blue’s desaturated complement. Quiet whispers emerge from crowds of complacency. Hope and optimism shine through in this collage of hand-painted and hand-dyed silk organza and the use of color and saturation.

Scribbles for Cy is an exploration of mark-making and my love for the work of fellow Virginian, Cy Twombly. I layered my marks and imagery in Photoshop, which was printed on-demand onto cotton sateen. The print was machine quilted in a pattern inspired by Cy.

Spirals for Cy is an exploration of mark-making and my love for the work of fellow Virginian, Cy Twombly. I layered my marks and imagery in Photoshop, which was printed on-demand onto cotton sateen. The print was machine quilted in a wavy pattern designed to disappear into the print.