photo: Anthony Maddaloni
THE VIEW FROM HERE...
My mission as a teacher is to inspire and empower my students to believe that making art is like making dinner: the more often you do it, the less frightening it becomes. And, like nutrition, it's necessary. Humans make things, and although our contemporary society is more interested in us as consumers than as makers, that drive is innate.
The creative process is a struggle sometimes. It can be hard to "make time" for making art. The joy of solving creative problems is only part of the overall cycle of inspiration-insight-roadblock-despair-insight-panic-insight-relief! There's some pain there. But learning to sit with those open questions, to puzzle over them without giving up, is so deeply satisfying that the discomfort of not-knowing falls away. This is something that art has taught me, and I'm grateful.
Lately, I am incorporating more and more hand-stitched embroidery into the cloth, as I work on a series inspired by the lost roadside landscape of the American West. This subject matter is deeply meaningful to me, and it's challenging and rewarding to tackle it with stitches, dye, fabric and encaustic. Read more about the series here.
FACTS AND DATES ...
Although I've always drawn, painted and played around with color and design, I started experimenting with textiles more intently in 1994.
In 1999, I began a serious study of art cloth, in the Surface Design program at the Southwest School of Art and Craft in San Antonio, under the mentorship of renowned artist Jane Dunnewold.
Since 2004, I've been privileged to teach surface design, silkscreening, color theory, embroidery and more to students at the Austin Museum of Art School, Dougherty Art Center, Studio 1408, and now The Stitch Lab, in Austin, Texas. Discovering and studying textile art has changed my life for the better, so helping others find their way -- even (especially) when they think they "aren't creative" -- is deeply gratifying.
My textile work has been exhibited in a number of venues, including the Houston International Quilt Show, the Minnesota State Quilt Forum, Rockport Center for the Arts, and Textures Gallery in San Antonio.
In addition to artwork and teaching, I enjoy walking, listening to music, reading voraciously, spending too much time online, looking at art, taking photographs, watching movies, dreaming of the desert, drinking coffee at Cherrywood Coffeehouse, and spending time talking and laughing with my many beloved friends.
I'm a native Texan, with degrees in American Studies and Cultural Anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin. I live with my husband, Luke Torn, our son, Carter, dogs Georgia Hubley and Ruby, and cat Charlotte.
