About the Artist

My involvement with textiles began at an early age.  In my family, many of the women, especially my mother had a strong culture of working with fiber.  I began sewing for my dolls using a child's hand-powered sewing machine.  At ten years old, given a choice between a birthday party, or spending the day learning to use my mother's Singer sewing machine, I opted for the instruction.  As a teenager searching for fabric and sewing it into the latest fashions consumed me for days at a time.

While attending the Art School at Virginia Commonwealth University, I found the area of my interest to be fiber.  I was introduced to weaving, batik and the handcraft movement. I came away with a model of a career as a studio artist.  Attracted by their beauty, I chose to live in the Blue Ridge Mountains, where family, raising children, creating a home, and work in the studio became central to my life.

Since 1989, Batik is the medium I have explored.  I produce each piece in my home studio.  I have exhibited at galleries and juried fine arts and crafts shows throughout the Eastern United States.

For more than 2500 years, artists around the world have used wax and dye to create patterns and images on fabric, a technique known universally as Batik. With brushes and a pen-like tool known as a tjanting, and wax, I hand-draw onto pieces sewn from silk.  Then color with fiber reactive dyes.  The designs result from one or more layers of alternately waxing and dyeing.  Finally all of the wax is removed from the fabric.

I approach my work from a playful, experimental place. I am inspired by the mystery and beauty of the world around me.