I just never know when ideas for compositions are going to come to me.  My last inspiration grew out of a wonderful conversation about monarch butterflies with one of the Sounds of South parents.  It turns out she’s a biology teacher interested in monarch migrations.  She raises monarchs and commented on my In Transit piece currently hanging at the BPP that features monarchs.  It turns out that Bloomington is on a flight path on their migration to Mexico, and we both wanted to see the monarchs in their overwintering grounds.  I played out the conversation several times in my head, which got me ..read more

It’s been a wonderful week to be home working in my studio.  The weather cooperated by not being too nice, so I was ready to get busy and begin a bunch of new pieces.  I love carrying ideas for weaving compositions around in my head.  There I can modify my designs as I think through technical aspects about which materials might work best and how to achieve the end product.  At some point I’m ready and eager to launch on creating the weaving, and that was certainly true of my piece called Barbershop Quartet. I dug out my big container of barbershop related paraphernalia and began laying out the ..read more

We are finally deep into spring and looking towards summer.  The trees are leafing out into soft greens, the redbuds are on full display and the dogwoods are just about to burst.  The farmer’s market is underway, and I’m looking forward to one of my favorite things about summer:  the fresh fruits and vegetables!  I’m sure that people all over the world feel the same way after eating winter fruits that were picked early and lack the rich flavors of summer.  To celebrate that approaching yumminess just around the corner I just finished a weaving called "Twelve Forks of Summer."  I had a lot of f ..read more

My newest exhibit (Migrations: Where have you been and what have you seen) is hanging at the Bloomington Playwright’s project until June 9th.  The doors are open from 9-5 and longer on performance evenings.  It’s wonderful to have only this new set of fifteen pieces featuring migrating creatures all together, which makes the exhibit feel very cohesive.  In my studio they have to share wall space with the rest of my art pieces.  Nancy Riggert helped me transport the Migration pieces and hang the show, and in the process I realized I never posted an image of the completed ‘Stitch in Time’ weavin ..read more

The great blue heron is done!  And Jim and Tommie got to go fishing, so spring is off to a good start.  I’ve been working on my heron piece for several months, and it’s just so fun to have all of the pieces finally come together.  The hanging willow branches seen in the foreground were made months ago.  Each leaf is attached to the main branch by a thin chartreuse vein.  The technique I used for this takes me back about fifteen years when I was first starting out in fiber art.  I came across a spool of thin wire wrapped with a thread of green that I thought was crazy—I would never do anything ..read more