My work exists in the intersection of traditional quilt practices, modern art, modern style and design. I work as a quilter making modern, utilitarian quilts for everyday use, but my background and education in art and painting has never gone very far from my thoughts.
 

Over the last ten years, my work has alternated between painting and textile arts with a focus on modern quilting and design. In my research and work I have developed a keen interest in the intersection of traditional quilt practices, modern art, modern style and design.
 
After seeing a red and white New York Beauty quilt at the New England Quilt Museum in Lowell, MA, I was compelled to recreate the complex 1870’s quilt with no useable pattern and using only the tools available at that time. During this period I became interested in Redwork, a style of red embroidery introduced in the United States around 1880 from the Royal School of Art Needlework in Kensington, England. The embroidery typically depicted cute scenes of birds, puppies and little children playing games in very simplistic linear style.
 
Approaching Redwork with modern focus, I became interested in using the medium as a way to reflect our own time and influences on my style from an emotional base. Drawing from my mother’s journal, written just after my father’s death in 2001, and before my mother’s death in 2009, I used her  words and “found” vintage photographs to attempt to illustrate the undercurrent of loss and loneliness I found in her writing. I also drew from a collection of letters from the early 20th Century.