My grandmother taught me to single-crochet dresses for my troll dolls because we couldn’t have naked troll dolls in her house. My yarn affinity continued and grew. In high school, I took a nine-week independent study on weaving and built my own back-strap loom. Through that project, I discovered that weaving was the perfect combination of math and art — my two favorite subjects. I soon realized that I wanted to learn to weave on a floor loom.

A few years later I spent a week in April in Greensboro, NC, and loved the abundance of blooming color during the spring in North Carolina. When I had left my home in Jonesboro, TN snow was falling, so Greensboro’s explosion of flowers in April was exhilarating. I fell in love with Greensboro and soon moved there. Within six months I had talked my way into a minimum-wage job weaving in a high-end rag rug studio where I learned the basics. Shortly thereafter I began working with Linda Phillips, a nationally recognized weaver and clothing designer. I learned much more from her, and she quickly became my mentor.

I have always been an artist. I have always had an artistic eye for the nuance and power of the colors that surround me. Over my 40 years of weaving and designing, I have translated my love of color into complex color designs that give my weaving both power and depth.

I feel that we each have a moral obligation to increase our capacity for joy and beauty. The way colors interplay is what gives me the greatest joy in my work. My desire as a weaver is to create in woven form the joys inherent in the complexity of the color found in nature. Whether it is the many gradations found in a single vegetable or the cacophony of hues in an entire landscape, color both sets my heart on fire and soothes my soul. Through weaving, I hope to share with others the lightness of heart that colors give to me.