Born to a line of seamstresses, quilting as an art form was new to me. I learned by doing and incorporated the other arts that I love to develop my style. I am a textile artist. I use yardage, threads, and dyes to create the fabrics I use to paint my textile art pieces. I specialize in art quilts for the home and commercial commissions.
Where do my ideas come from?
I am often asked where my ideas come from. My family roots are in New Orleans. Jazz was always a part of my life and those around me. Cousins and uncles played jazz. My husband is also an avid jazz fan. I studied classical music from the age of 5 and it too inspires my love of music. Mostly, however I like soft jazz. It is not surprising, then, that I would gravitate to jazz themes when I started my art work, but even when I do works on other themes, people say they can see my heart in my work. My love of textiles as the way I express my art came from a legal career that has taken me around the world. In those travels I collected local fabrics and took lots of pictures. A Fulbright Fellowship in Japan provided me an opportunity to hone my art quilt skills as I worked with a noted art quilter and a circle of Japanese art quilters. Anyone who knows me knows I love textiles and these textiles from around the world often find their way into my work.
I am relatively new to dyeing fabrics for my art. I love to dye my own fabrics! I now dye most of the fabrics in my artwork and benefit from the flexibility it provides me. Each summer I typically have “dye days” where I join with friends to dye yards of fabric that we then use in the succeeding year. I also look forward to the first snow so I can do some snow dyeing as well. Dyeing has opened a whole new process for my art.
What are the steps you go through to produce your art?
People want to know how I go about creating my work. I usually start with an idea in my head. I always have my cell phone with me, and I take hundreds of pictures a week. I look at my surroundings through the lens of an art quilt. I find inspiration everywhere. When I begin a new piece, I often jot down a few sketches and notes about it, but my work is mainly intuitive. I do not draw out the whole plan. I first decide the general nature of the background of the quilt. It might be pieced, it might be fused it might be one complex dyed background. Next, I select the images that will be included in the quilt. I draw the major images and cut them out of fabrics. I then use my eye and experience to determine what will go where as the piece comes together. I photograph my work throughout the process. Sometimes I am unsure whether a design works. Once I see the photograph, I know instantly what it needs. I like big pieces 40 or more inches wide by 72 or more inches long.
Quilting is my new passion. Each piece has a unique quilt design. This is where my creativity soars. I am constantly in search of ideas for the actual quilting. Each quilting stitch is the result of the direction in which I moved the fabric, the motion of my hands as I decide to go this way this time and another way the next. All the quilting is done on my regular sewing machine or on an extended sit-down quilting machine which is essentially a sewing machine with a wider throat. Quilting can take longer than it takes to assemble the entire piece, often more than 20 hours. But it is the quilting that melds the work. It is the last step in a labor of love. Quilting makes my art sing. The quilt then needs only final preparations to be totally completed.
Where can I find your work?
I have displayed my work in juried shows, invitational shows and solo exhibitions in the United States and around the world. My work has been published in three volumes and is in the collection of a major midwestern university, an international foundation and private collections of art lovers throughout the United States.