I live in a town a few miles north of Boston, Massachusetts. I have a BFA from Hartford
Art School of The University Of Hartford. After being laid-off from a job in Hartford
I returned to MA. to ( I thought temporarily! ) help manage 2 family businesses: real estate & a data processing service company. Thirty three years later I was very fortunate to be able to "transition" ( I don't like to say retire ) into pursuing my creativity full time.
I have always loved photography and in college discovered a passion for silkscreening.
A friend in the U.K. wrote me one Christmas ( 1992 or '93 ) about how she had become "quite keen on American patchwork". I had no idea at the time just how that simple statement would send me on a completely different & unexpected creative path! I came across an ad for a travel company in N.H. that specializes in, at that time, quilt & craft tours in the U.S. I decided to take their tour to Amish country which included the Lancaster quilt show where my love affair with fabric started. I really had
no intention of ever trying to make a quilt as I found the size of them so overwhelming. However, my new "hobby" of collecting fabric continued when I returned from my trip,and at some point decided that I either stop buying fabric, or learn how to make something with them. As it turned out, a new quilt shop had recently opened in my town and were offering a hand-pieced sampler lap quilt class.
I couldn't believe how much I loved the process of cutting up the fabric, re-assembling the parts and then stitching them back together. This gave me "permission" to buy
MORE fabric! The next class I took was a machine piecing class: that abruptly ended my hand-piecing. In the late 1990's I took a class from Natasha Kempers-Cullen using thickened fiber reactive dyes to silkscreen, stamp and paint on fabric. That allowed me to combine my ( too long abandoned ) love of silkscreening with quilting.
I still love making traditional bed quilts, but I am mostly interested in "finding my creative voice" through my fiber pieces/art quilts that using fabrics that I have created.
