About Me

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 I combine my love of paper and stitching to express my fascination with the natural world and the difficult subjects of illness and grief. I machine quilt paper, then add hand embroidery, beading and sculptural paper elements to create two- and three-dimensional artworks that explore the often unseen world around us. 

I walk and sit often in the woods around my home, photographing the forest, especially the mushrooms, mosses and lichens, native plants and insects that make themselves known to us when we take the time to stop and look. These photos are the basis of the artwork I create, whether I am hand embroidering directly into the photographs or using them to create patterns and designs for my stitched paper artwork.

I hold a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Purdue University, and spent a decade doing research at 3M. I received my MFA in Creative Writing from Hamline University. As a visual artist, I was trained at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts and rely on many traditional techniques from quilting and bookbinding, but I am also constantly inventing new ways of combining paper and stitching in her studio. 

My poetry and woods journaling are the inspiration for, or find their way into, my visual artwork.

My work is a juried part of Indiana Artisan. I was the recipient of two individual artist grants from the Indiana Arts Commission. I have participated in numerous juried art fairs and exhibitions. I have published two books, Field Guide to the Art of Looking and Fallen-log-ology, which feature my forest floor photography alongside original poetry and essays.  

Since 2008 I have worked out of Lost Lake Studio, my home studio in the woods of Brown County, Indiana.

 My artwork has always been based in paper and stitching. For years I created two-dimensional applique quilted paper artwork of natural and whimsical subjects, some large-scale, some small functional artworks. 

My work is constantly evolving as I experiment with new techniques for stitching into paper. Over the years, I've added hand-embroidered elements to my work.  This might mean embroidering into a machine stitched artwork.  It might mean hand-embroidering directly into one of my original nature photographs.

As chronic illness has made machine stitching for lengths of time difficult, I have moved back toward hand stitching and hand embroidery even more.

Recently, I've been focused on buying less materials, instead using what I already have on hand, recycling, salvaging materials and using found objects, as well as foraging materials (especially invasive species) from my woods.  I've learned to eco-dye leftover papers and recycled fabrics, and have begun to gel pate print junk mail rather than purchasing papers new.

I'm largely self-taught, and work intuitively, excited by working through challenges posed by sewing into a variety of papers, and inspired by trying to recreate bits of nature in the studio.

  Since moving to a home and studio in the woods in 2008, I have become increasingly fascinated by the forest, especially the forest floor. Walking in the woods, taking photographs of the tiny treasures I find, and journaling are now essential parts of my artistic process. 

I pay attention to, and try to translate for others, the often unseen things that live their lives parallel to ours.

My practice, like any – religious or not –  requires only showing up &  doing what I can. I walk each day, along  our gravel lake road, I offer my attention &  look.  Like any practice, it’s imperfect. I miss days, I rush through,  my body shows up without my mind.  Enough times, though, the world reveals itself to me :  the wheel bug with its strange shape & terrible bite,  the seedbox plant, with its little box of seeds.  Some days I step on soggy ground,  the air smelling of yesterday’s rain  or woodsmoke from our fire.  Others I kick up clouds as I walk, stoop  to examine dusty mushrooms, broken to pieces.  A luna moth, newly born from her cocoon,  dried her wings against mossy bark &  the next day a cicada whirred a last song on the ground.  Moving to these woods has surprised me.  I’ve sunk into this life, this place, slowly,  collected fallen branches, listened  to barred owls call each other in the night,  watched leaves curl & brown & fall,  came to all fours on the ground to  marvel at the speed of mushrooms,  hardly believing the woman who knelt  for mushrooms is me.