New Artist Application

Joan has always been captivated by the visual and tactile textures of fiber; in raw form, in fabric form and in constructed, wearable form. Though she has worked in other media, it is fiber that invites her to self-expression. It is fiber that invites her to create.

In her work, she utilizes all types of fabrics and fibers: natural fibers, such as silks, linens, cottons (but no wool, can you believe, a fiber artist who is allergic to wool); synthetic fibers, metallics, rayons, nylons, polyblends, plastics, brand new right off the bolt fabrics, and the ones she loves best: the pieces cut from a skirt found at the Goodwill store, the trim off her Mom’s jacket that now has moth holes in it, the pleated metallic fabric from that dress her girlfriend’s mom wore to a wedding, the gorgeous silk charmeuse gleaned from a very stained but glamorous 1930s bed jacket found at a flea market. She can’t resist any of it.

Her current body of work is mixed fiber collage scarves and shawls from the many kinds of fibers mentioned above. She has been told that her pieces are works of art. She only knows that she makes them because she simply can’t help herself.