Alison,

Just looked at your page and of course I see you are from the UK!  Lucky you!!!  Living here in the US the stuff we were taught just does not seem to take off.  Everybody wants things cheap!  My work is akin to Tanya Berlin, of Canada.  And my art quilts are, well, just mine. 

Only recently have I begun to find "my voice" art quilt wise.  It is becomming rather political and makes statements about our politics and the environment.

My embroidery is more "friendly" and I use it as a way to get away from this crazy world we live in now a days.  You will see that in my "Green Man".

I have recently been given the name of a gallery in Chicago, Illinois, that might be interested in representing me.  I've sent him some of my work via e-mail and hope to eventually hear from him.  If not I will continue to try to find someone to represent me since I know that I have the talent.

I was trained at a fine artist from middle school through university and now look back and am thankful for the fine art training.  It helps to do things like Green Man - but working with Opus really loosened me up and taught me to have joy in creating vs. worrying that I was not doing things in the manner of the old masters.

I am in my early 60's so going into art school after highschool made it difficult since that was the time of abstract expressionism.  For a while I was doing pottery and of course - as is normal for a tactile art I ended up in fiber. 

I too love anything that deals with fiber.  Wish I had room to do dyeing and etc.  So, insteaad I do painting on fabric and the make it into an art quilt. Works for me.   I am looking forward to beginning another quilt - probably about the Gulf oil spill - have the sketches all done, just need to get moving on it.  Or, something re. our "Ocuipy (sp?) Movement" over here.

So much to do and so little time - and now with winter coming it is very cold in my studio and sewing room - so I will have to get some heat up there.  I live in a rather old - by American standards - house, built in 1890.  Love the place but find it hard to work with semi frozen fingers.

I wonder how Bob Cratchet ever got any work done??? 

You can contact me via my e-mail addy   paetsart1946@att.net and we can maybe "talk" more, if you want.  I would like that.