Artist Statement

I love the process of making art by creating pieces with layers of dyes, fabric, paints, and stitches. The possibilities for combining techniques, materials and ideas are boundless.

My piece, the Grass Dancers, is an example of one of the processes I use often. I collected unwanted grasses and weeds from an overgrown garden patch and placed it onto the screen and pulled the dye through. As I worked, a “dancer,” appeared. I used the “dancer” image and created a Thermofax screen to dye print onto silk organza. These images were applied to the background surface with a fusible web, known as appliqué. All of the dancers, both those originally printed on the fabric and those added later had a playful quality of movement and were variations of each other. I machine stitched forms and lines throughout the piece to emulate grass. The fiber piece I created was filled with grasses and weeds—things not often thought to be beautiful. However, in this piece, they were indeed stunning.

Another method I often use is to let the silk screen dry with the fauna still intact. The plants are then removed from the screen and broken down by pulling the print paste used to thicken the dyes through with a squeegee. Each progressive pull is a variation of the previous one, where an image may be clearer or abstracted. It can be exciting and serendipitous. The background of my piece, Solitude, was created with this mono print method. I built the tree with commercial, hand dyed and painted fabrics. I used “Wonder Under” fusible web to build the tree onto a piece of parchment paper before adhering it to the background fabric. The branches are done in a similar manner. I individually hand-cut the needles for the tree while being mindful of value and color.

The background of The Wolf Effect was created on raw silk where a complimentary color palette was deposited onto the piece in a random order. It was a piece that sat in my stash unattended. I was inspired by the Yellowstone National Park’s wolf story: how the reintroduction of this cornerstone species has rebalanced the whole natural ecosystem all the way to restoring the complex river system. I had done a very rudimentary watercolor sketch of the Lamar Valley, where one of the packs live, using that as a guideline for the piece. I added rock formations and trees and created highly textured areas with gauze and stitches. The appliquéd wolves are not always easy to see in the piece, just as is the case with the real wolves in the park.

One of my most recent works was created during Covid; The Solace of Trees is a completely new approach to my work—I did not have access to dyes during this time since I was away from my studio, staying instead with my daughter in Portland, Oregon. I tea-dyed a long table runner, 17 inches wide by 52 inches long. I took branches from a red cedar tree in my daughter’s backyard and directly printed them onto the table runner with Golden acrylic paints. I created the trunk in much the same way as I did with Solitude. The piece’s verticality speaks to the height of the magnificent trees in this part of the world. In the foreground, I developed the understory using torn fabric, old lace, commercial batiks, silk and cotton gauze, based on my inspiration of the Northwestern United States. I added textural hand stitching for the finishing touch.

I love the magnificence of trees, their ability to provide support for one another and for so many other species in their environments. The vast variety of grasses, with their shapes, lines and movements are inspiration for continuing work. Birds communicating, gathering, and eating, pique my curiosity. Wolves changing whole ecosystems fascinate me. I made each of these pieces as a tribute to the beauty, fragility and power of nature. Fiber art allows me to create worlds that celebrate the natural world, layer by layer, stitch by stitch until the work itself comes to life.