Most of you know at this point that my son has been deployed to a place in the middle east that is challenging. My goal this year was to stay so busy I wouldn’t have time to think about that challenge. And so far that has been my life saver. The exhibit was one of the greatest things to happen to me professionally. It is down now, or rather the 41 dress forms have been moved to a smaller gallery, the Titan Gallery, around the corner from the main gallery. That leaves the main gallery for their end of semester student show. I had wanted to get there to see it. At the beginning of May, the full ..read more

My heart is full, and my gratitude endless at all who came out last night to celebrate my retrospective, and share with me a lifetime’s work. It was a fantastic party, magical, and probably one of the top ten nights of my career. So many of you have asked for more pictures, and specifically my mom, who at 92 can’t really travel to actually see the exhibit, I promised to do a lengthy blog post for those that feel like they missed out. The show runs to the end of the month, when the college needs the gallery for their final student shows, and then it returns the beginning of May, and runs throug ..read more

With apologies to Hilary Mantel… I wish I could have taken a picture of me following a County College of Morris Dodge Caravan heading west on Rt. 10, loaded with 20 dress forms, all stacked like bodies, on the way to the college gallery with the second load for the exhibition. It was pretty hilarious. This has been one of the most intense but awesome assignments of my life, to organize a retrospective of my work, and all the moving piece parts, assign labels, write 15 artist statements for the 15 categories of work, some 90 pieces, including wall/art pieces. Enormous. My best friend in High Sc ..read more

It’s what I do… There have been some pretty dark times in my life. We all have them. And we all have different ways of getting through them. My way, is to stay so freaking busy I don’t have time to dwell on anything I have no control over. And so that will be my solution to the darkness that has set over my small family, with my son’s deployment to Syria. NJ is sending 1500 troops from the 44th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, their largest deployment since 2008, to bases in Iraq and Syria. I am heartsick of course, and will worry constantly for all 1500 of them, because right now, that part of t ..read more

So now it is 2024. All of those things that I didn’t have to think about, because they were so next year, well they are closing in upon me! Lots of remote lectures and teaching. Seems guilds, including mine, are taking advantage of knowledge gained via Zoom, and booking their dark winter guild meetings, with potential hazardous weather, with things that can be done remotely. I have already given a couple of lectures, and have a number of upcoming workshops to teach, all remotely, but alas, prepping for them, even though they are remote, is still at times onerous. Getting the contracts out, the ..read more

For much of my career in textiles, I’ve focused on handwoven garments, and that has been a wonderful and challenging path to explore. I’m pretty good at it. But at this point in my life, I’m pretty well stocked with clothing from my hands. Closet is full, and honestly, almost no where to wear any of it. I have my favorite go to’s, and as I write, I’m wrapped up in my handwoven sweater jacket I wear every day and wrote about for an article in Handwoven Magazine, but honestly, the longing to create more clothing just isn’t there. However… I want to weave, I like long warps, and I mentioned last ..read more

This has been one crazy month, just like old times. Which I would have been happy just leaving in the past. But I have no one to blame but myself, adding so much to the calendar, I felt like I was running on five cylinders for a month straight. It was all good stuff, but oddly enough, bad social media influencer that I am, I took almost no pictures. I had a pair of students in for the week just prior to my guild sale. They made lovely jackets. I took no pictures. My guild sale the first weekend in November was a smashing success. Record sales. I was there for the Friday night opening and all d ..read more

This is going to be a long one… Sorry… With lots of pictures… Not sorry… I went to a concert today, called a cabin concert, popular with singer songwriters, in someone’s house, way out in the woods, where people gather, to listen to invited artists play. It is intimate, and entertaining, and I usually enjoy myself when I go. One of the artists featured today is a good friend. She is a wonderful song writer, her songs are based on things that happen to her in every day life. I sat next to a woman, who is also friends with this artist, though we didn’t know each other. When in musical settings s ..read more

I’m continuing on my attic cleaning and making more stuff for the guild sale with my mother lode of scraps of handwoven fabrics from the archives. I made two more squirrels, from leftover bits of mohair, and while I was working on the second one, I plopped the other one on the ironing board. Mulder the studio cat of course had to check out something that looked suspiciously like what he hunts in the middle of the night… And typically had to check out the back end. Satisfied said squirrel did not pose a threat, and being of a soft mohair and cuddly surface, Mulder decided to curl up next to ..read more

This has been a wild week in the studio. First, a little back story… If you have been following this blog over the past year or so, you know that I set out on a quest to warp all of the 64 looms in the studio, many of them table looms, Structos, or inkle looms. I blogged about them all over a few blog posts. I’ve set out on a different quest to clear those looms, and rethink my life as to what I want to really hold on to moving forward… The floor looms, at least those that are mine and not my daughter’s, are all cleared. I am a yardage weaver and like nothing better than to sit and weave like ..read more