This cabinet of curiosities is filled with treasures gathered over time.
Stories nestle between the nature in my yard and stone masks captured on my travels.
My head is filled with a whimsical scrapbook.
Conversations create themselves among these images, nothing stops to rest.
Imagine, pebbles dropped at the center of images.
Lines of quilted ripples are interrupted when they interact with ripples from other images.
The mask protecting those thoughts exists in a world of reverence for design and history.
Images are preserved; pure and removed from color.
Straight lines of stitched thread reinforce the regimentation of this world.
Juried into Pittsburgh Fiberart Guild’s Member Exhibition, “Behind the Mask”, at the Latrobe Art Center, Latrobe, Pennsylvania, 2022.
Juried into “National Juried Exhibition”, at the Delaplaine Arts Center, 40 South Carroll Street, Frederick, MD 21701, May 4, 2024 through July 7, 2024
In the hierarchy of Geometry:
Two points connected make a line,
Multiple lines make a wall,
Multiple walls create space.
Multiple walls intersecting result in spaces that ebb and flow.
Openings in the walls allow the interaction of spaces that generate intrigue.
In private collection.
Opportunities are abundant, viewed from a safe place.
Shelter from the outside world, yet open to possibilities.
Materials: most are pre-quilted scraps trimmed from previous projects, loose scraps, loose threads from torn fabric.
Technique: collage of quilted strips and scraps, re-quilted and bound to match the art.
Exhibited in “HOME”, The 29th Annual Strathmore Juried Exhibition 2020, at The Mansion at Strathmore in North Bethesda, MD
In private collection.
I wanted to create a piece that played with light and space while suggesting a weightless experience – “Controlling the Spiral.”
This quilt is composed of eight 5” by 78” quilted panels that spiral away from the top horizontal panel and descend to touch the following panel. I searched my studio for a thin but strong material that would play a supporting role in the overall presentation and found torn pieces of eyelet-stitched, silk chiffon. These pieces run vertically and are buttoned and stitched to each panel. The whole piece is suspended from an open curved frame above, permitting it to be experienced in 360 degrees.
The quilt is designed to suggest that light is flowing from above – the gradation of the yellow diamonds on top, to the red diamonds on the bottom, is paired with the brown background (broken diamonds) lightening, with their downward progression. The movement from dark to light of the broken diamonds is contrasted on a separate plane by the darkening gray backing fabrics which are cast into the role of a shadowy presence.
Exhibited at 4th Biennial Maryland Regional Juried Art Exhibition, 2019 - 2020, University of Maryland Global Campus at College Park, MD
Shelter: a structure that protects you from the elements and gives you a place to live. We are all “Seeking Shelter”.
When I considered creating a quilt based on the theme; ‘Shelter’, my architectural training took over and that knowledge began to influence the story. Culling through photos, I selected: skyscrapers and midrise buildings from New York City; a colonnaded mansion from Spokane, Washington; a hilltop house from St. Maarten, Dutch West Indies; a Victorian cottage from Moscow, Idaho; an adobe dwelling from Santa Fe, New Mexico; a caravan from Madrid, New Mexico and a brick duplex apartment and 1930’s Art Deco house from Grand Island, Nebraska.
These buildings are presented in black and white, reflecting the fact that “Shelter’ is a basic need. To render them, my thoughts raced back to making drawings with lines of various thicknesses, enabling the viewer to differentiate between surfaces on each building and between buildings.
I traced the buildings onto a piece of white cloth. When the cloth was partially quilted, I cut around the edge of the buildings and slipped collaged blue fabric under the edge. The blue sky represents happiness and the idea that life is better when basic needs are satisfied.
The quilt borders provide a base to the buildings. On the right, a narrow black stripe suggests the edge of the paper these buildings are drawn upon. There is no border across the sky, it is unbroken, and we all exist under the ‘Shelter’ it provides.
Exhibited as part of the “OURstory” Collection
Houston International Quilt Festival, November 2018
National Quilt Museum in Paducah, KY, June 2019
Published in OURstory Quilts: Human Rights Stories in Fabric
Final Exhibition: Virginia Quilt Museum - February 2023
Art Deco frequently displays motion frozen in time. “Urban Deco” is presented with an architectural reference that is broken and left unfinished. It employs hard lines and angles that showcase the dynamic movements of the “Urban Textures” fabrics. Providing peace among the chaos is a semicircular disc suspended above the plane.
When work on this piece began, my goal was to maximize the visual depth of the planes suspended against the two backgrounds which represent the diversity between hot and cold, space and solid. I saw the record of time beginning and at the same time moving forward, establishing a world that is unto itself creating a center around which everything else evolves.
“Urban Deco” uses a traditional language in an unconventional manner.
Creative Crafts Council Biennial 2017, at The Mansion at Strathmore in North Bethesda, MD
Exhibited at 3rd Biennial Maryland Regional Juried Art Exhibition, 2016 - 2017, University of Maryland Global Campus at College Park, MD
Exhibited at Quilt Expo in Madison, WI, 2015
In An Orderly World there would be harmony and a sense of peace.
The idea for this piece grew out of a photograph of an Art Deco column that I found years ago. The surface of the column was a relief with ascending and descending geometric shapes. This image tantalized my mind with its geometric plan and over time the shapes slowly transitioned into architectural shapes suggesting: temples, pagodas, towers, walls and blocks of buildings.
Concurrently, I was introduced to Russian Needle Punch, which became the soft elements that counter the hard edges of the fabric. I also discovered Michael James’ striped fabrics, which were screaming to be stepped, chopped and graded to create the play of light, resulting in the sky for this piece, and the central tower around which this world clusters.
When we are young, we all love fairy tales. As we grow up the fairy tales recede and the real world takes control. I love to create pieces that anyone can fill with stories about the possibilities that happen behind the surface, giving us the sense of harmony and peace we experienced as children.
In An Orderly World, pink rain falls in diamonds and trees drape in blocks of color.
In An Orderly World, possibilities are limited by the whim of the viewer.
In An Orderly World, the borders aren’t the end.
“Tactile Architecture”, special exhibit at IQF in Houston, TX, 2011
Third Place in 45th Annual NQA Show, Columbus, OH, 2014
Every architect learns to lay her thoughts down on paper. This action is frequently viewed as doodling by others, but many designs have grown out of the pages of a sketchbook.
When an architect becomes a quilter, interests flow in many directions. Invariably they return to the things most familiar. This quilt is the result of a sketch that I made then stored with other random thoughts. Upon rediscovery, I tried to make it out of bright circus colored fabrics, but the design did not work. My second attempt employed earth tones, and this attempt lacked a personality. So I bowed to my architectural training and allowed the design to express itself in a manner that was totally familiar, bricks and a free flowing marble floor joined brackets and a floor plan. It came together in much the same way as a design might develop, with each piece being aware of the required end product.
The challenge was to make a flat piece of fabric transform into my version of an architectural language. I approached the paintbrush and fabric paint as a new medium for this purpose. I had learned to paint ink designs onto fabric in school, but this was my first attempt to transform fabric with paint. Many of the pieces are whole cloth that have been painted to suggest depth and shape. As in any sketchbook, not everything touches on reality because sketchbooks capture the ‘what ifs’ that cross a designer’s mind.
These ‘pieces’ are connected visually with buttons that act as my screws, bolts and anchors; as well as antique key escutcheons and a door bell rose held together with silver links.
“Tactile Architecture”, special exhibit at IQF in Houston, TX, 2011
