Welcome To My World

Welcome to My World

l hail from Minnesota--it's lakes and rivers, pine forests and rolling hills still play a role in shaping my vision. But my heart has two homes--the rough shore of Lake Superior and the vastness that extends beyond that shore and the luminous light spun out of the thin air in the high desert I now call home.  Though I have loved being with people--in my work as waitress, teacher, and now priest, it's the silence I meet at the edge of the water and the bottom lands of the Rio Grande that sustains me and that provides the ground for me to see beyond and beneath the surface of things.

I work primarily in fiber--cloth, many kinds of paper, and threads--cotton, silk, wire, even fish net.  I work with that which I find on the ground beneath my feet—a spruce branch, a piece of kelp, a shell, a pebble, a knot of wood. I love the feel of fiber--especially old cloth that has passed through many hands—so you’ll see a lot of that in my work.  And I love what fibers do with one another when they make contact—such as the colors that come through on silk organza dyed with the flowers of the turpentine bush or avocado pits and skins.  Through the fiber I find my way to other places, other times, other ways of being in this world we share.

The ragged edge, the uneven line, stitches big and small and in-between express the frayed edges, the ups and downs, the big and little hopes that make up our most human lives.  In my work I seek to bring together the worlds around me, the pressing needs, the deep hopes, the tender moments, the darkness and the light that are all part of being human.  But sometimes my work is just a path to silence and to the holy.