I began making Quilts as art objects using a Singer sewing machine in the early sixties. In the early seventies I progressed to an industrial embroidery machine for assembly and quilting. At the same time, I began staining portions of images with fabric paint and drawing with light fast markers, always taking care to use archival fabrics like cotton and silk. I was strongly influenced by the American quilt tradition, both pieced and appliquéd, as well as the folk art tradition generally. The quilt genre supported my pleasure in making simple, abstracted figurations that carry archetypal or symbolic, nonverbal meanings. It satisfied a playful urge to invent and articulate patterns in borders and across fields of trapunto relief quilting. It is like my more current work making illuminated, calligraphic pages. My resource for ornamental pattern is, of course, Nature; and outcome emerges in an indirect, intuitive way from a sensory databank created by years of routine, devoted observation.
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