News

In between

Here are two views of a recent quilted, embroidered project. It feels like too long since I finished this piece and I’m not really working on anything new. I’m busy with some writing, and with getting the garden planted before too much more time passes. I feel unmoored when I don’t have a project to … Read more

An Inordinate Fondness for…Ferns

Bracken, Hayscented fern, Christmas fern, Sword fern, New York Fern, Maidenhair fern, Wood ferns, Oak fern, Interrupted fern, Royal fern, Ostrich fern, Cinnamon fern, Sensitive fern, Virginia Chain fern, Lady fern, Polypody, Rattlesnake fern, Moonwort…I love them all, and there are more yet to learn. I tend to combine brushing up on ferns each season … Read more

Among the Bryophytes

I’m spending a lot of time with my face very close to moist ground. That’s where the mosses and liverworts live. I’m trying not to let the thought of ticks stop me, and while I often end up with wet clothes from getting so close, leaning on wet logs and kneeling in mud, it’s worth … Read more

The Ever-Moving Air

Last summer, I had the pleasure of spending several days on West Ironbound Island with artists Erin Donovan and Susanne Chui, on a pilot residency project created by the Kingsburg Coastal Conservancy. Our time was spent getting to know one another amid the island’s sounds, places, stories, and its more-than-human inhabitants. Although our time on … Read more

Irresolute

This year, I’m side-stepping commitments, at least in my art practice. I won’t hold myself to making something every day or every week, but I will make things if the mood takes me. I’m moving slowly…tidying, thinking, stitching. I have permission to stay the course or change direction as often as I chose, chase hare-brained … Read more

Lunenburg Art Gallery

I’m getting ready for a show and sale at the Lunenburg Art Gallery with Nancy French of Lindenlea Paper. We’ll be at the Gallery December 7-12. I’ll have sculptural paintings, artist’s books and handbound books, letterpress printed broadsides and altered broadsides, eroding alphabets, nests you can wear, mushroom portraits (originals and prints), natural-dyed handspun yarns, … Read more

When Blue = Happy

I’m practicing what I call ‘colour therapy’….wearing and working with bright colours to shift a stubbornly low mood. I found this beautiful blue wool in my fibre stash, a long-ago gift from my sister. Every day for a couple of weeks I had this glowing, deep blue stuff nearby–on my desk, in my hands, in … Read more

Alone at Acadia

I’ve got a textile piece in this exhibition, which runs February 10- April 13th at the Acadia University Art Gallery. I’m working on it over the duration of the show, so please go have a look, and then go back for another look later! Because of the pandemic, everything is online, and the curator has … Read more

Working Backwards

I’m not really convinced there’s ‘forward’ or ‘backwards’ with movement or making, but I do like to joke about working backwards. Setting type unfolds upside-down AND backwards. I’m left-handed, so I often start at the right side of an image and work right to left so I don’t drag my hand across wet media or graphite and make a mess. And then there is unmaking or obscuring; that’s the ‘backwards’ I’m thinking about lately…working from a “something” (text or image) towards a “nothing” that’s not really nothing. This week, I’m working backwords from a failed broadside until it becomes nearly unrecognizable, a process I find much more intriguing than starting with a blank page.