I am an abstract expressionist painter (born 35 yrs too late) rather than a seamstress and clothing designer. I didn’t take up Shibori so much as to create artistic wearable items as I did to find a way to indulge my abstract expressionistic interest in a medium that would still be new and appreciated in the 21st century.

I love color and texture. In third grade, my turkey was the only one with multi-colored tail feathers! My classmates were eager to point out my mistake, but I liked it that way, still do! Every year at Easter, my one ambition was to mix the dyes in a way that would produce a black egg (finally achieved that in my 40's!).

And, in art school I liked to glue rope, twine, pieces of wood, large sequins, etc. onto my canvases and paint over them. My professors suggested I use plywood as my background, but I liked the way the canvas sort of groaned under the array of found objects.

Hand dyeing/hand pleating Shibori silk scarves/items has allowed me to continue this abstract expressionistic exploration of color and visual texture that began in my childhood and art school.

In Arashi Shibori, the item is washed in hot water to remove any remaining silk gum, soaked in vinegar before dyeing so dyes will set, and is first dyed off the pole. This “under dye” can be a single color or multiple colors. The item is then washed, ironed into fourths and wrapped diagonally around a pole. The item is bound in circles to the pole with fishing line to provide a point of resist and the structure to compress it on the pole just like closing an accordion. At this point, the second or “over dye” is applied. Again, this can be a single color or multiple colors. After the over dye sets, scarves are washed and dried on the pole to set up the pleats, while other wearable items are taken off the pole to wash and iron.

In Arashi Shibori, the artist chooses the dyes to use and the order in which to use them. After that, the steps in the Arashi process allow the dye and the silk to select their own dance. The artist never knows what that dance will produce until the item is taken off the pole. This keeps the process challenging and interesting. No two items ever look exactly alike. Dye mixtures are never exact measurements, at least not for me. I am a constant mixer of dyes – a little of this and a tad of that, a procedure that for me underlines the individuality of the dyeing process.

I learned Shibori while working at Gwynn Valley Camp, a children's camp in the North Carolina Mountains. Several mothers worked at camp in exchange for sending their children there. One of the other mothers was a fiber artist from Texas. She would come and set up the arts and crafts program each summer, and one summer I asked her to teach me to tie-dye so I could get rid of 600 adult small T-shirts we had had on the shelves of the camp store for six years. I never want to see another white T-shirt as long as I live, and I protested for two years against her attempts to teach me Shibori. Fortunately, I finally lost that argument because I love Shibori dyeing with silk, just as she knew I would.

I do all of the work myself in my tiny house. A studio would be lovely, but I make do with my kitchen sink and counter (giving thanks for bleach which gets out the occasional errant drop of dye), my living room couch, and my faithful supervisor and companion Lola (see business pics). As I live alone, am technically challenged as is most of my generation, and juries for art shows do not like to see pics of artists in front of their work, there are no pics of me hard at work in my "studio" or my shows, but I did accidentally capture myself in the mirror at an art show when trying to photograph a piece of my work. It's not really a bad picture so I have included it in my business pics as well.

For the past 12 years I have traveled from Florida to Ohio, DC to Louisville to show my work at fine art shows all by myself. I have wholesaled my work to a few shops during that time, but almost all of my sales have come from art shows and my Etsy retail shop. There is nothing so lovely as an outdoor show on a lovely day - I hear they exist, but about 3 years ago I gave up battling rain and high humidity (pleated silk does not like moisture) and having to put up and take down my work each day (that overnight moisture rise) and settled on doing only indoor art shows.

I hope you will enjoy looking at my creations as much as I and Lola have enjoyed creating them here beside the marsh. Oh, right Lola, I'll let them know. Lola says we also hope you will find something you simply can not do without!

Happy Browsing!