We live in
a credential-happy world. Grow up, get a degree, become something.
If you want to be a lawyer, go to law school. If you want to be an
artist, go to art school.
I wanted
to be an artist but I had no medium--I couldn't draw, and since art
as I understood it was based on drawing, the best that I could hope
for was to be an educated viewer. So I went to college, got a degree
in art history and went on to law school. I didn't want to be a lawyer
but I became one and spent five unhappy years sitting behind a series
of desks, never finding intellectual stimulation that lasted beyond
a day or two. I quit and went to work in a bookstore, where I learned
more about human interaction and mind expansion than I thought humanly
possible and got up my nerve to do the things that I always wanted
to do. I studied massage and worked as a massage therapist. I learned
about herbs and volunteered on an organic flower farm. Finally, I
took a free quilting class at city college.
I am
an artist who has found her medium. I unearthed my childhood sewing
skills and started combining colors, using fabrics and threads as
my paints. When I sew I create texture by sculpting with thread and
stuffing, create surface by painting and dyeing and stitching, express
myelf by using my American textile mother tongue, patchwork, in as
many permutations as my imagination will allow. Living in Sweden has
isolated me from the latest trends in American patchwork and textile
art and, as a stranger in a strange land, I have learned much about
artistic self-reliance. As a woman in this century, I also use the
computer, both to communicate and to create images that I sometimes
transfer to textile. I have no credential that I can frame and nail
to my wall apart from my art itself.
I
invite you to enter my credential-free world.
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