My Creative Space (And a short bio)

When I started this blog a couple of months ago, I posted a little "Hello, I'm new to the neighborhood," thing but I never really introduced myself. I think it might be time to do so.

I have no formal art training. I've never been to art school, though I desperately hope one day to spend a few years in England getting a cities & guilds credit in textiles.

I've always been a crafter, the daughter and granddaughter of crafters, but I didn't start making art full time until my own daughter went off to a private boarding school for her last three years of high school. Looking around at old, beat-up furniture and plain while walls, I decided it was time to get serious and revamp my space.

I refurbished a few furniture pieces, built some new ones, and painted large canvases for the walls. That exercise not only created a preliminary studio space, but it also lit a fire in me to explore paints further than I ever had.

Since that time, years gone by now, I've taken multiple classes online and in person, trying to educate myself about art and in particular, the kind of art I want to create. The gaps in my knowledge were tremendous and I've slowly been whittling away at those gaps over time.

Two years ago, as a passionate paper artist who became sick to death of making beautiful art and then having to encase it frames behind glass, I looked to quilting as a way to not only expand my art, but get me out of the "box" that framing all of my work had gotten me into. I wanted to make textural art pieces that could be handled without damage and could could hang right out there in the open without suffering overly from their environment. And I could finally create pieces of any size and shape without the deep concern of how in the world to frame it!

So that's me, now... learning to create new art, after having already spent years creating art. How lucky can one woman be?