Artist Statement

I have had a life long love affair with fabrics and fiber, having learned traditional needle arts from three generations of women in my family, and expanding on these basic skills to express myself as a fiber artist. I specialize in representations of natural scenery and develop my art by incorporating needle art and sewing techniques in different and innovative ways. Inspiration begins with places I've been from girlhood vacations in upper Minnesota to my local forest preserve neighborhood, and expands to places I've seen in  trips around the US and beyond. As a life-long mid-westerner, I am particularly inspired by the land around me and the four distinct seasons of the upper Midwest.

I use a wide variety of fabrics and fibers, manipulating them in any way I can to achieve depth and texture. I work with woven fabrics such as batiks, silks, polyesters, and light-weight upholstery.  To these fabrics, used singly or in combination with each other, I add sheers, netting, yarns and other fibers to manipulate color and incorporate layers into my art. I study photographs and employ continuous experimentation, refining construction techniques to capture details. This allows me to gain the depth of color necessary to paint pictures with fabric. 

I love to explore ways of expanding the scope of my artistic expression, including  installations and 3- dimensional structures from fiber.   I incorporate the use of dye and paint as additional tools to further extend my range of possibilities.

From close-up pieces that show fine detail, to panoramic vistas that display sweeping landscapes, to various sized installations, my art illustrates my passion to take the color and textural elements found in nature and translate them into meaningful expressions of nature's beauty.