Angel Embroidery
(cover art for Angel Rose)

I really like the fact that my style of embroidery is a combination of several arts that my grandmothers taught me. One grandmother loved to paint, and she was always helping me do that. The other grandmother was a master at sewing, and she was always showing me how to do things with various types of needles and thread. My embroidery style is a result of what they taught me as well as a sort of legacy to them. I design the pictures out on paper in sections. Then as the thread goes on (usually three strands at a time), the idea may shift somewhat, but it will always be guided by the original form.

The Angel Rose embroidery is about 19 inches wide and 23 inches long. This picture took eleven years to complete. That was partly due to the fact that it was continually evolving. I began with the image of the angel. Then, as the other pictures became clear in my mind, I would put them onto the material. Always there would be something that I would learn from the section that I was working on, as well as through the process of putting it on. I had to use a magnifying glass on part of it because the stitches were so small. And so, this picture is, in some ways, really a symbolical map of my own evolution. Many of the places, symbols and animal totems in the picture are also represented in the music.