Ever since I can remember I have loved to create. During my teenage years I taught myself to sew and would make my own clothes. I made my first quilt from clothing fabric for my mother. I then became interested in photography and screen printing. One day in high school I passed by an art class and saw a group screen printing a poster. I had never seen the process before. As I watched, I thought that screen printing was magical.
In college I majored in photography and took numerous screen printing classes – blending the two approaches together in photo screen printing. Photography taught me about composition, color, and light. Hours in the dark room taught me how to manipulate images. When I graduated, my interest in screen printing was only beginning to mature.
After leaving college with a BFA, I worked for different screen printers before opening my own screen printing company. I focused on small run, high quality artistic oriented work. My first major project was the creation of 5’x7’ posters each describing different animals from the Bronx Zoo that were hung in the subway stop of the same name. Later on, I focused more on textile printing. After screen printing for more than 20 years I felt I needed a change. I closed my screen printing business and began artistic quilting.
With artistic quilting I have found that I am now combining all of the creative art skills I have built over the years. I use photographs for inspiration, blending in my graphic skills and knowledge of fabrics from screen printing to help create my art quilts. As with a painting, each quilt has a structure, a message, a meaning, and a beauty all its own.
