Territorial Road was inspired by a diary entry, written by Susan Brackney Clayton in 1890. From a sod house on a homestead near Elton, Nebraska, her words tell of beauty in the expanse of land and sky, the constantly howling wind, loneliness and a deep longing for a life left behind in Indiana. This piece is called Crosses and Losses, after a patchwork pattern dating back to the time of westward expansion, speaking to hardship and the isolation of a woman uprooted.

Words out loud, noisy and insistent. The language of change.

In March of 1911, horrified New Yorkers watched as garment workers, mostly young immigrant women and girls, plunged to their deaths from the burning upper floors of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. The doors to the workroom were locked, the elevator stopped operating and the flimsy fire escape collapsed. I used a delicate shirtwaist blouse from that time to imagine a terrible choice; to perish in the flames or step off the window ledge.

The Standing Amazed series draws on imagery from my many years as a public school art teacher. My youngest students were learning to use scissors for the first time, and I had them work together in groups of three or four, cutting and arranging shapes and pasting them onto a larger piece of paper. Cutting shapes from felted wool was much the same, though I attached my shapes with thousands of stitches, while my kindergartners used glue, with equal abandon.

The connection between women, work and textiles is a recurring theme in my art work. I often use old, repurposed materials and enjoy the idea of working with fibers that have passed through other, sometimes unknown, hands. The quilts in the series, A History of Toil, serve both as a textile record and a tribute to the changing nature of women’s work.

A History of Toil is an ongoing series of medallion quilts created from found household linens and work clothes, with references to well-known quilt patterns. I am exploring connections between work, textiles and the lives of women.

This piece is from a series of four quilts created in the months after my mother fell and broke her hip. Working on these pieces gave me quite some time to reflect on the fragile nature of our steps, mindful that the smallest stumble can set in motion a chain of life-changing events.

In our throw-away world, we are losing the cultural wisdom we need to reclaim and repair the fabric of our lives. Constructed from the domestic textile detritus of the everyday; small pieces that have been saved and repurposed, patched and mended.

The Lost Art of Mending is part of a series that explores a loss of cultural wisdom, and honors the slow process of repair. This quilt is constructed from the domestic textile detritus of the everyday; small pieces that were saved by someone unknown, and now repurposed into a new whole.