How does one describe influences on your own work? I grew up in Washington
state and did a lot of hiking and photography. Does my sense of color
come from those formative years? Does my love for the simple come from
the year I spent in Japan where I taught English and practiced shuji?
Does my current sense of patterning come from more than 8 years of working in
the computer industry? How does one take the experiences of a lifetime and pick the parts that
are "important"? Where and how does my faith influence my
work? I don't journal enough to answer all these questions. I'd rather
spend my time DOING my artistic work.
More recently, I am continually learning from the job of parenting and the wonder of having a young son.
I have no idea how that will influence my art, except that I have been working smaller over the past two years.
I can make the art in a timeframe that generally works better in my life.
There are a number of other quilt artists who have different ways of
working in curved piecing. I have learned from many of them, either
through books or in classes. So, certainly my work has been influenced by
people like Mia Rozmyn, Judy Dales,
Melanie Normann and
Carol Bryer Fallert.
As far as my Asian bent, certainly I've been influenced by Kumiko
Sudo. But, here I've also been influenced by other arts and crafts. I
love the wood blocks of
Hiroshige. I found the work of
Itchiku Kubota to be overwhelmingly beautiful.
My sense of patterning and layout has been influenced by Judy Hooworth,
Margaret Miller,
Judy Hopkins and David Walker.
I've also been influenced here by the early work of
Ruth McDowell and by artists
such as M.C. Escher and
Frank Lloyd
Wright.
Then too, I appreciate the community of artists that I find. I
appreciate the way that Quilt Art
and SAQA can represent this
community. I also enjoyed the Quilt
Surface Design Symposium, both as a forum for learning from an
instructor and from each other.
If you hoped that I'd list other resources here, sorry. If you want a long list of quilt related links, this
isn't the place, you can do that by going to Quilt.net,
a source of quilt related items or to
Yahoo. If you wanted a lot of information on quilting in general,
you might want to try
About.com's resources.
Then, I also have a computer bent, so I am grateful for the community of
computer developers and designers who share their information and expertise too.
Most of this website design is based on materials
Stu Nicholls makes available.