A couple of weeks ago I posted something on my Instagram that said “I want to write a blog post, ask me a question” and one of the questions was “How did you get started in art?”

I always made art as a kid. My family are very creative, make-things-with-your-hands kind of people. Many many Sunday mornings when I was a kid were spent going out for breakfast (everyone’s favorite) and then going to the hardware store to get the parts for whatever Sunday’s project was going to be. I knew the difference between a phillips and a slot head screwdriver when I was 3 years old.

My first summer job was working at a summer childrens’ theater called Storybook Island. I applied to work in the concession stand at the park, but they instead put me in the acting troupe and said I could make all the costumes. We had a $200 budget for all of the costumes for 5 shows of the season and there was a lot of creative use of t-shirts in various colors paired with an assortment of capes and aprons made from the cheapest fabric I could find. I hated the singing part of the job, loved the costuming, and met my future husband there. I worked for 5 summers at that theater. We were super lucky to be mentored by a fabulous puppeteer & performer named Markie and she taught me a lot about building and performing with puppets. I thought I was going to go to college and be a theater costume designer and write plays.

Things happened. I didn’t love the theater department where I went to college, especially the head of costumes. I swapped to be a theater education major, thinking I would be the fun drama teacher at a highschool somewhere. They cancelled that major when I was mid-way through and gave me the option to be a high school literature teacher (UGH!) or general education. So I scrambled around, picked up some extra credits and ended up with elementary & middle school certification with specialties in math, earth science, and theater.

Not art. That was a question I used to get asked a LOT when I was doing different kinds of shows out in the world. Where did you get your art degree? Do you have an MFA? And the answer is nope to both of those. I did take several art classes for my degree (ie teaching art to kids) and the professor I worked with a lot tried to get me to switch majors several times, but the only media that they offered at my school were painting, drawing, printmaking and metals. I really dislike painting. I didn’t know what printmaking was because I never took an art class in highschool. (I was too busy with band and theater.) There was nothing with fabric or paper or mixed media and it all just seemed too snooty to me at my wise old age of 20.

I made my first website in 1996 after I graduated, while I was waiting for my husband to finish his Masters. I worked as a secretary for a little while for the college’s Gifted and Talented summer camp and substitute taught at the school where I did my student teaching. I was bored. So I taught myself Photoshop and made a website for our puppy, Lucy Thunderpaw. There were games and coloring pages and animated gifs. It’s funny to me now, but this time I spent learning Photoshop and html on my own has been infinitely more valuable to me than most of my college classes.

There were complicated rules about teaching certification between states so when we moved to Minnesota, I wasn’t certified to teach and I wasn’t sure what to do. I worked part time for several years at a local highschool as the assistant theater coach and costumer, which I didn’t have to be certified for. A friend sent me a job posting from a place called the Textile Center to be a teacher for their school residency program called the Textile Mobile. I got a crash course in weaving, dyeing, felting and kumihimo and worked my first residency at an after school program making quilts and embroidered badges with middle school kids.

While I was working all these part-time jobs, I started making things to sell. On the weekends I wasn’t working, I did shows and had a table at a local farmers market, making and selling puppets. I made hundreds of kid-friendly fleece puppets of every animal I could think of. The lions and dinosaurs were the most popular, but I always liked this mallard duck.

Etsy also came on to the scene about this time. I opened my Etsy shop just 2 months after Etsy launched and I have had it ever since. I started on Etsy making tote bags, custom laptop sleeves and hand embroidered business card cases. I made friends with some of the original Etsy staff. I was on Etsy teams, co-captained a new sellers mentorship program, and even travelled to Etsy HQ to be a part of their Sellers Advisory Board. The biggest thing I learned from having an Etsy shop was how to take great photos of my work. It was HARD to figure out and I spent years taking mediocre ones before I finally figured out how to do it right. (I’ll give you a hint: the answer is you need more light.)

I worked kind of insane hours and never took a vacation, but I loved it. The Textile Mobile program was my entire life and identity for about 12 years. I eventually stepped full time into the education manager role for Textile Center and coordinated all ages and flavors of education programs for the center. I worked far more hours than I was ever paid for, learned to be the substitute teacher for everything, cleaned up bathrooms and noxious vats of leftover moldy dye, learned inDesign when a co-worker walked out in the middle of a day, staffed countless demonstration tables, and had some of the best and worst days of my entire career. We eventually came to a point where we needed to part ways. The leadership at the center decided that they wanted to go in a different direction and I decided that was my sign to do something else. Towards the end, things had gotten pretty toxic and I needed to find a new path and some new inspiration.

The following few years are kind of a blur. I applied for and got three different grants from the State Arts Board, Fiber Art Now, and Jerome Foundation to make art and teach workshops out in the community. I co-wrote The Spoonflower Handbook with Steven Fraser and Judi Ketteler. I made my first public art installation: utility box covers for the neighborhood. I got accepted in to the American Craft Council shows (now called American Craft Made) and was interviewed on TV several times about my work in those and other shows. I started teaching everywhere in my community and at national conferences for the Handweavers Guild of America, Surface Design Association, International Lace Society, and Association of Sewing & Design Professionals. I taught several master class workshops at Spoonflower HQ and a workshop at Arrowmont craft school. I served on the board of directors for several arts orgs. I had so much non-profit experience at this point that I felt like I needed to use it to help support the local arts community.

And then the pandemic happened. And every single event, workshop, conference, grant project, or lecture I had scheduled were cancelled for the next two years. I dreaded opening my email to see cancellation after cancellation. I sat at my studio table and watched people walking their dogs past my windows and tried to come up with what to do with all of the unexpected free time. I felt like everything I had worked toward up until this time had just shattered.

I started taking online classes from the MN Center for Book Arts and eventually completed their book arts certificate program. I rearranged and experimented and shot so many hours of video in my studio trying to figure out how to produce online classes before anyone was really doing it or knew about Zoom. It was a lot of learning by doing, deleting, and trying it again.

Fast forward to now and things definitely look different than I thought they would in 2019. I now teach many classes a month online in various formats. I have transitioned my work to much more paper and mixed media than fabric and textiles. I am much less willing to volunteer or say yes to things that I don’t see value in for my art practice. I miss pre-pandemic events I used to do; most of those are gone now. I still post pictures of my dog all over my website.