This past summer I’ve focused on making wholecloth painted art quilts. These are not quilts for beds, but textile art to display on the wall. Each piece starts with plain white fabric, which I paint with acrylic textile paint. I then layer the piece with batting and a backing fabric before free-motion machine quilting it. I love both the process…
Covid has been a very challenging yet interesting time for me. Since I typically work alone in my studio each day, the isolation has not been as difficult and it has given me the time and permission to paint again! I love to paint, and it comes easy to me after working with the metals and stones of my jewelry.…
Woodturners are always on the lookout for beautiful pieces of wood: those with interesting colors, grain patterns and voids. In recent years, I have augmented my wood collecting to include species and other samples that provide an opportunity to combine the wood with epoxy resin. Manzanita, a western woody shrub, is an excellent example of a wood that combines well…
The first art book I ever bought was Betty Edward’s Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. The book’s premise was that any beginner could learn to draw, and I was a beginner. Although I had zero formal training as an artist, I had a very big urge to create something. I had studied creative writing and had a…
It was a normal paint-a-thon on a sunny day at my house in Chapel Hill. A couple talented friends, loyal neighbors, and artists from the Orange County Artists Guild (OCAG) came together to paint a variety of pieces to display during the upcoming Independent Animal Rescue (IAR) online auction. We worked under my carport to enliven chairs and other donated…
I was lucky enough to complete the fifth firing of my wood kiln here in Hillsborough before the COVID-19 restrictions were put in place. It included work from five different potters. I’m starting to get the hang of this, my third wood kiln. It’s much easier to fire than my first two as it’s significantly smaller and I’ve now been…
During this time of quarantine, we are most lucky as artists to be able to continue the work of making. It may be that if we are forced to stay with our work, and are less distracted by things beckoning us from the outside world, we might find that we can go deeper than we expected.This may take a variety…
Since I began teaching abstract painting and collage a few years ago (through a joint appointment with the Durham Arts Council and OLLI program at Duke) I have looked for ways to both stretch myself and give my students some new ways of starting their paintings. Last year, dealing with the trauma of a flooded and destroyed art studio, I…
One of the ways that I like to paint is to simply allow my hand to create colorful shapes in a seemingly random pattern, until a coherent painting forms and begins to look ‘finished’. This can be done using any 2D or 3D medium. I often listen to music that matches whatever mood I’m in when I start to paint.…
Finishing up a yearlong art project left me drained and at loss of creative energy. I became mired in emptiness and fear crept in that I would never have another idea that excited me enough to create again. I had been fumbling around using a new technique and got caught up in generating a lot of work for an upcoming…