My work is quiet. I take a meditative approach. My desk is cluttered with fractured pieces, but then I’ll take a piece and put it next to another and it begins to tell me something... to tell a story. When I add the next element the story may change. Sometimes, as I add to the story, finding the next element becomes more and more difficult. I’ll put the work aside for days, weeks or months. Then, suddenly, the solution will appear, like an insight that solves a mathematical puzzle. The work contains color and form, but also white space, which plays an equally powerful and important role. I recently started to add thread to collages as a connective tool; a way to help the eye move around the work in a balanced way.
My background is in graphic design. After school, and travel across Africa and Europe, I moved to New York City. There, I took evening classes at The School of Visual Arts; studying with Dale Moyer (mechanicals and graphic design), Ed Benguiat (graphic design and typography) and Roger Ferriter (graphic design). I built a business as a freelance mechanical artist, which involved the precision manual assembly of type and images before the advent of computer-based graphics. I worked for graphic design companies including: Bernhardt/Fudyma Graphic Design; Vignelli & Associates; Nautical Quarterly; Upper & Lower Case; Peckolick & Associates and Sothebys. I then founded my own studio as a graphic designer, working primarily with corporate health care hospitals and service providers in the New York Metropolitan area.
After living in New York for about fifteen years, my family and I moved to Atlanta, Spartanburg, Charlotte, Wichita and finally to Philadelphia. During those years I began to work with hand-dyed cloth, composing abstract pieces using quilting techniques. In 2014 we moved overseas, first spending two years in Shanghai, then two in Tokyo and finally returning to Shanghai for two years. While in Japan, I fell in love with handmade washi paper. The Japanese sense of beauty is evident in everything they do…everything is an art form. I took classes in the construction of Chabako Boxes (Japanese wooden keepsake and tea storage containers) and Japanese paper lanterns. I also began to make small abstract collages incorporating found paper, thread, cloth, other everyday materials such as confectionary wrappers.
My work on those collages continues to this day. I hope my work conveys the quiet, thoughtful beauty of those source materials.
2002 - 2014
SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates)
2010 - 2013
Highwire Gallery (Fishtown, Philadelphia)
2004 - 2008
Gallery 12 (Wichita, Kansas)
2014 Fiber Art Now – ‘Plinth’ accepted for publication as part of ‘Architectural Speaking’ online exhibition
2013
SAQA Journal – ‘Tummo’ accepted for online publication
2012
SAQA Structures in Cloth, ‘Swynke’ accepted as part of traveling exhibition:
The Arvada Center for the Arts, Arvada, CO
The Sangre de Cristo Art Center, Pueblo, CO
The Ft. Collins Museum of Art, Fort Collins, CO
Fiber Philadelphia @ Highwire
Curation of SAQA exhibition dedicated to my mentors in the textile arts. The show included: Natalya Aikens, Sharon Bass, Jette Clover, Rayna Gillman, Patty Hawkins, Susan Webb Lee, Dominic Nash, Jill Rumoshosky Werner and Karen Cooper
2011
3rd Street Gallery, Philadelphia
‘Swynke’ and ‘Adumbration’ accepted for exhibition
2009
The Fiber Studio – Solo Show, Wichita
Pieces included Swynke, Susurrus, Adumbration and others.
2006
Wichita Center for the Arts
Three collages accepted for ‘Abstract Art’ exhibition
