Natasha at work in her studio.

Statement of Purpose
My work is part of a continual process of discovery.

Working with fabric to create my work seems to be so natural to me: I don't even question it. It is an extension of my being and the education I received from the women in my family. Having developed a collage construction process, I can focus now more deeply on the concepts, the beliefs, the images, the interplay of shapes that energize the work.

There are three themes that interact and appear in most of my work: a reverence for nature, positive human spirit, and the concept of house and home (the house or shrine shape that occurs in most of my work) as safety and love and strength.

The processes involved in my work include painting and printing on fabrics with fiber reactive dyes and textile paints, cutting, piecing, appliqué, collage, quilting, and embellishing. Intuition plays a strong part in the process of building my art quilts. Painting, collage, and embellishing are equally important: together they form a unified whole. Visual or actual references to traditional quiltmaking appear in my work to honor the women and the history of this medium.

Biography
I have been devoting my time to creating art quilts and mixed media environments since 1987, after sixteen years as an art teacher in the public schools.

My work has appeared in many juried exhibitions, including Quilted Constructions: the Spirit of Design (at the American Folk Art Museum, New York City), Quilt National and Visions (Quilt San Diego). I have also shown works in a number of invitational exhibitions throughout the nation and overseas, including the Full Deck Art Quilts project and Women of Taste: Artists and Chefs Collaborative.

My commissioned work includes both private and public projects, notably several One Percent for Art commissions in Maine.

I continue to teach in my home studio, at quilt conferences and at art schools including Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Deer Isle, Maine and Arrowmont School of Arts and Craft, Gatlinburg, Tennessee.

A number of my works have received awards and various pieces have been published in books and magazines. One of my pieces is in the permanent collection of the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, and another is in the collection of the Museum of Arts and Design, New York City.

I don't think I shall ever retire!