Swift River Arts Project

As a mixed media, contemporary fiber artist I focus mainly on bringing together wood and wool.  I enjoy creating pieces that look back at me.  That have a meaning deeper than what you first seen on the surface. I create mainly for myself.  For my mental health and well being.  By creating a piece I hope to communicate both feelings and thought in a way I could not do verbally or in print.  I hope to inspire, start conversation, and in part find my own understanding. I will often incorporate found, salvaged and recycle to take what may have ended in a landfill and work it into my creations.

My own background in art is mostly self-taught beyond an initial introduction.  Learning to use my grandmother’s sewing machine when I was 10, being give a embroidery floss at the same age.  Learning a knit and purl stitch from my elementary school principal.  Wanting to be hanging with my dad when he did woodworking projects, take the odd-now-and-then art classes in jewelry making, leaded glass and pottery.  Always I found myself coming back to wood and wool.  I design and knit shawls and sweaters from time to time but my heart and soul have always been in fantasy and more than anything in my work, I like to find myself there.

I spent nearly 40 years raising my children, my art drive was spent there.  Identifying as a mother and not an artist.  As odd as it may seem it was a sudden shock to find myself the mother of adults and not ready to move on in a different role for my life.  All of my art to that point seemed to never really be for me.  I have labeled myself a very late bloomer- realizing it was all there all along and now I had the time and freedom and support of my family to pour all of myself into it.