Looking back on my life it is not always easy to see the path that lead to my studio and the work I do today, though my interest in the arts has woven a trail through the years.

As a young girl I painted models of birds, made baskets, designed cards for mother’s day or my father’s birthday, and yearned for my own erector set. I watched my father work in his shop, turning wood on the lathe or building a piece of furniture, and in our house I was surrounded by pieces of my grandmother’s needlework.

As I grew older I traveled in different directions, some exploring the arts (art education, photography, and computer graphics) and some outside of the arts (teaching college mathematics and computer science, owning and running a bed and breakfast) before apprenticing as a bookbinder. After finishing my apprenticeship, I spent 18 years involved in traditional bookbinding, first as Holland Bindery in Portland, Maine; later as Northstar Bookworks in Ferndale, Washington; and for the last 3 years, as Well Made Objects at my house and studio in Ferndale.

Bookbinding introduced me to the world of paper, and I cut it, folded it, glued it, decorated it and used it in every way that I could to make books and boxes. And then I started sewing it… Not just as it is sewn into the binding of a book, but as if it were fabric. (And eventually, I started experimenting with fabric as well.) At first it was just an interesting way to join pieces of paper or fabric, but in time I found that I wanted the sewing to be the focus of a piece and to use the pieces to make objects that were unable to be confined by the limits of a book or a box. The sewn paper objects wanted to be viewed with light behind them, and so I made them into lamps and screens.

In sewing the paper and the fabric, I find that I am building what I think of as familiar landscapes. These are intimately focused landscapes that attempt to evoke a spiritual response in others to places where I find solace and beauty. They may evoke the woods of New England where I grew up, the dense bush of northern Ontario where I spend a few weeks each year, or the landscapes of the Pacific Northwest.

Just a few miles south of the Canadian border and less than a mile from Puget Sound, I live on ten acres with my husband, Tony, our basset hound, Nika, and three chickens. Working in my studio is an experience that is almost always fun. Music plays, Nika snoozes by the woodstove and I get to work. The delight for me in all my work is in the designing and the making. (The two usually happen somewhat simultaneously.) It is my hope that the pleasure I get making the object becomes part of it.

My studio is open by appointment. Since I am a one-woman shop, it is difficult to keep regular hours, so I ask that people call before coming by. But feel free to give me a call or send me an e-mail and come see my work.