Snow Tarp
Unlike last year, cold temperatures and snow have been the story for this winter. Always interesting to see how snow changes the balance of color, of white to black, of…
Tarp Series: Undercurrent 2
Tarp Series Portfolio
In this series, I position my expressive textile paintings as tarps. Metaphorically, I see tarps as protective, versatile and adaptive. They embody the best attributes of textile with the potential…
Fields & Fences 3, detail
Recent art quilt portfolio
These are examples of recent quilted, stitched works from 2017. All my work utilizes fabrics that I print and paint myself.
The Studio Day: Creativity & the Great Balancing Act
Last September, I engaged in a much-needed weekend in my studio. Looking upon my upcoming role as Surface Design Association President, I knew I MUST prioritize making time for balance and creative work,…
Natural Dyeing on the Prairie: Botanical Colors + Scattergood School
This weekend I was in my "happy place," attending a two day natural dye workshop conducted by Kathy Hattori of Botanical Colors and held at Scattergood Friends (Quaker) School…
35 years of textile samples, part 4: non-stitched resists
Resists have always fascinated me. A resist is a substance or a mechanism used to prevent dye or colorant from acting upon a surface. My very first experiments with resist…
35 years of textile samples, part 2: stitched & clamped resists
In the previous post, I described needing a storage container and finding myself immersed in sorting through a career's worth of textile samples and explorations. Here is Part 2 of…
35 years of textile samples, part 1: early screen prints
The day began with a search for a larger container to store fabric teaching samples. It ended with a journey through 35 years of creating fabrics. I had already edited…
ICON Gallery Exhibit, plus a night in Fairfield
Contemporary Art Quilts of Astrid Hilger Bennett, Carol Coohey, BJ Parady and Judy Zoelzer Levine is featured exhibition at ICON Gallery in Fairfield, Iowa. What a wonderful installation: clean, light-filled…
Bumping into The Fabric Workshop in Philadelphia
In mid-February, I attended the Buyers' Market of American Craft as a buyer for Iowa Artisans Gallery. As we prepared to leave, we discovered our flight was canceled and rescheduled…