Artist Statement

My work is often inspired by the beauty of the natural world.  In my embroideries I choose one motif-stars, or trees, or a streambed-and seek to convey my own emotional response rather than realistic detail. 

I have used the same approach in my series Ways of Looking at Dodd Creek.  These pieces were inspired by hikes I took along Dodd Creek to Raven Cliffs Falls in north Georgia.  As in Wallace Stevens' poem 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, in the Dodd Creek series I am experimenting with varied ways of interpreting the same subject.  At first I am mesmerized by the flowing water itself.  In later pieces I look at other elements in the Dodd Creek ecosystem and consider how the water eventually flows into our own kitchens.  I stitched the bead embroidery on fabric printed with my digital images of Dodd Creek and its environs. 

Like many of us, my day-to-day life is organized by the items in my to-do list and the schedule in my planner.  I am not the first observer to realize, while watching the flowing water in the creek and the endless rush of water in the falls, that time flows without my help and outside my control.  Weeks, days, hours and minutes are arbitrary divisions that offer us only the illusion of control.  My hope is that I've created work that invites the viewer into a moment in which the ongoing rush of time is suspended, a moment of visual enjoyment and contemplation, much as I experience on my hikes and while stitching. 

My latest series, Six Sketches, leaves behind specific scenes and places and takes the elements of my fiber process--piecing, mark-making and embroidering--as a subject.  Cutting up cloth only to sew it together again, smearing it with ashes and paint, embellishing with beads or gold thread-these are for me acts of meditation.  They embody what many of us seek to do in our daily lives, repairing, brightening, seeking unity amid dirt, chaos and brokenness.