Freelance Illustration

For a few years, I worked as a freelance illustrator, until I discovered that I preferred to draw for myself, which I continue to do.

Textile and Fiber Art

I am a self-taught fiber artist, happiest with bimanual craft-based practices. It took me years to find my way (back) to my medium. Fiber and textiles have been magnetic, evocative, and provocative for as long as I can remember. I respond to the “toothiness” of a yarn, the layered color of hand-dyed wool, the feel of a hook or needle in my hand. I enjoy a sense of working with, a feeling that a material is doing what it wants to do.

My primary practice is rug hooking, and I admire the ingenuity of the artist/makers who established it in North America in the 19th century. Many of their pieces can be read as autoethnographic text, featuring images, symbols, and materials that held significance for them. I welcome that opacity and I carry this forward in my own work.

Perhaps in playful resistance to the idea that art depends on an audience, I encode the surface design of my rugs with personal meaning, often rendered as an unintelligible script placed as a motif. Through this authorship, it is my private access to the meaning of the motif that transforms the rug into art. Through it, I (re)claim the object of art and the room.

I celebrate the softness of my practice and of the rugs. As the world gets faster, demanding and rewarding speed, I have intentionally chosen very slow work. The rugs are gentle in their materiality and their function. Through patience, gestures, color, choices, and wool, I enjoy a practice of comfort.

Photography

As an extension of my research, I started to photograph the fibers and textiles that I am drawn to handle and work with. To explore “what my hands see,” I used a digital camera, handheld, and looked at the material through a macro lens (no filter). I discovered landscapes that are, paradoxically, surprising and familiar. I have written about the process here.