Mixed Media Madness!
Master embroiderer Carrie Noess led our November mini-workshop, and enormous fun was had by all!
Christine Miller and Lu Peters presented their program on UNRAVEL, the fiber art exhibition that was on display at the Barbican Art Centre in London and the Stedeliijk Museum in Amsterdam. The featured artworks were radical in their form and politics, speaking to stories of marginalization and exclusion, as well as emancipatory joy and transcendence.
Christine and Lu were compelled to see this exhibition because both use their fiber art to raise awareness about socio-political, ecological, and justice issues. In UNRAVEL, 45 fiber artists presented more than 100 extraordinary artworks, from large-scale installations to delicate and intimate pieces about love, resilience, power, and resistance. Christine and Lu have been deeply influenced throughout their careers by several of the featured textile artists, including Magdalena Abakanowicz and Sheila Hicks.
The artworks showcased a wide range of scales, form, techniques, and perspectives, and introduced new and experimental textile processes. The DAFA program featured the six themes that this exhibit explored:
Christine K. Miller
Christine is a lifelong fiber artist with experience in weaving, sewing, basketry, embroidery, felting, dyeing, knitting, crochet, and fiber sculpture. She has been weaving for 50 years, and for the last 30 years she has been weaving with wire to create sculptural expressions. She teaches how to weave with wire as warp and weft in face-to-face workshops, through her online fiber studio, and in her newly published book Weaving with Wire: Creating Woven Metal Fabric.
Christine continues bringing fiber arts into the educational world with Visiting Artist programs and workshops. She is a retired visual arts educator with local, state, and national arts education recognition. She continues teaching in K12 programs as a visiting artist and also leads professional development workshops for art educators in school districts across the state of Texas.
Lu Peters
Lu Peters is an art quilter, wearable artist, and mixed-media fiber artist. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and juried local and national shows, and her art and writing have been published in many art quilting publications. She has curated and juried fiber art and mixed-media art shows in Dallas, Keller, Tyler, and Austin, Texas.
Lu is passionate about encouraging the global community of fiber artists through communication and education. She maintains a comprehensive website,
lupeters.com, which is an extensive resource site for fiber artists. Her current focus is viewing museum fiber art and fashion exhibitions in the US, Japan, and Europe with the intent of sharing with her fellow fiber artists.
She is an active member of Dallas Area Fiber Artists, American Sewing Guild Plano Chapter, The Quilters Guild of Dallas, and Studio Art Quilt Association.
Back by overwhelming demand is our el Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) mini-workshop, led by Lucy Miron. All were welcome to attend, including children!
El Día de los Muertos is a Mexican commemoration that celebrates the life of a loved one who has died. Typically, a small doll or photo is decorated and covered with trinkets that the person loved, and now you can do the same.
The $5 fee per person included the following:
Participants were asked to bring the following items in addition to the $5 fee:
For our October program, we explored of art, identity, and Orientalism with artist Chunyu Ashling Han, a Chinese-born artist, as she reimagined the "Odalisque" through a contemporary lens, challenging perceptions and inspiring dialogue on cultural representation and societal norms. Han shared her personal interest in the "Odalisque" topic and discussed how it has affected her own works and experiences as a multi-media and fiber artist. We watched her artistic processes in action through a video presentation and saw physical examples of her tufting pieces.
Additional highlights of the program included:
Following the presentation, the audience was invited to engage in a discussion on identity, cultural representation, and the ongoing impact of colonial legacies. We were encouraged to question and reflect on how art can serve as a catalyst for challenging societal norms and fostering cultural understanding.
Ashling Han
Art is like a slice of cells, revealing the intricate and expansive body of our world.
Ashling Han is a Chinese-American multidisciplinary artist, educator, and curator, whose practice harmoniously merges scientific rigor with artistic intuition. Poised to receive her Master of Fine Arts from the Maryland Institute College, Han's artistic journey is marked by a profound transition from a Bachelor of Biology Science from Chongqing Medical University in China to start art practice in the United States.
Since immigrating to America seven years ago, Han has adeptly employed ceramics, installation, fiber, video, sound, photography, and performance to investigate the intricate facets of the human condition. Her oeuvre delves into the nuanced interplay of life, culture, and the political tensions between China and the United States, highlighting marginalized voices and shedding light on underrepresented narratives.
Guided by her scientific background, Han's approach is characterized by a meticulous, research-based methodology that coexists with the intuitive spontaneity of artistic creation. As a perceptive observer, a newcomer, a woman, and an immigrant, she is profoundly influenced by the dichotomy between Eastern and Western cultures, striving to unearth commonalities through her work.
Han's art serves as a conduit for exploring societal dynamics, uncovering social issues, and articulating a resonant voice. Her practice is not only a reflection of her personal experiences but also an invitation for viewers to engage with the complexities of identity, culture, and social issues. Through her innovative use of diverse mediums, Han's work challenges audiences to contemplate the broader implications of her themes and contributes to a deeper understanding of our collective humanity.
Her works have been showcased in solo and group exhibitions across multiple galleries in Texas, Washington D.C., Maryland, and Pennsylvania. Additionally, she has received prestigious commissions for public sculptures from the Asian Arts & Culture Center. Han's exceptional talent has been recognized with the highest Merit Scholarship from MICA and the esteemed Eisenstein Zimelman Award.
Do you want to create using your own vision and get rid of those ‘but, you must’ or ‘you can’t’ voices? Suzie Diver explained her Rough Draft design process where you sew, add, subtract, and move whole sections around. Just like no one writes a finished essay without a rough start and many revisions, we can start and recreate as we work! The main takeaway was for every artist to experiment; learn, but don’t take the rules too seriously; and listen to what colors and shapes make YOU happy.
Suzie Diver
Suzie grew up surrounded by fabric – her grandmother worked in a fabric store and created all the family clothes. However, Grandma wasn’t much of a teacher and Suzie didn’t really start sewing until inheriting a sewing machine and watching many wonderful PBS sewing shows. In the next 20 plus years, Suzie developed a unique style that incorporates lots of triangles and prints, designed on the wall and edited as it is sewn. Like many fiber artists, she plays with an assortment of materials and wants to DO IT ALL.
Suzie’s pieces have won multiple awards and been juried into the Houston Quilt Festival.
Suzie lives in Arlington with a cat (Milo), dog (Lucy), and husband (Mike) who bakes and hopes to retire someday. She raised 3 wonderful boys, none of whom like to sew, crochet, or do anything crafty.
In the Let's Make a Face mini-workshop, led by doll maker extraordinaire Jami Roux, we learned how to create a simple human face that can be used on three-dimensional dolls as well as on other figurative fiber projects. Participants brought:
Our guest presenter was Jami Roux, a Dallas-based artist who has garnered a national reputation for her evocative, whimsical, and impeccably crafted dolls. Jami led us through the many meandering paths that led to her discovery of her calling and helped her find mentors to guide her career. She also detailed how she has been able to turn unforeseen challenges into rare opportunities, using periods of downtime and COVID isolation to learn from her fellow artists, to expand her range of skills and influences, and to produce new work in abundance.
From Jami Roux's collection, displayed at her July 2024 program.
From Jami Roux's collection, displayed at her July 2024 program.
From Jami Roux's collection, displayed at her July 2024 program.
Jami Roux
Jami Roux is an award-winning doll maker based in Dallas, Texas, whose work is known for its exuberant celebration of human diversity and emotion, as well as for its witty, whimsical, and impeccably crafted details.
Jami first rose to local prominence as an active member of the American Sewing Guild’s Plano Chapter, where she became a much sought-after teacher and later held the office of president. She found her true calling in dollmaking just over a decade ago, when, during a visit to the Houston International Quilt Show, she was mesmerized by a doll on exhibit. On her return home, she wholeheartedly embraced this new direction in her work, enlisting mentors from her ASG circle and learning everything she could about the artform. Eventually, she began submitting her dolls to national challenges—a step that proved invaluable to her evolution as an artist. The feedback she received from top doll artists helped her to refine both her technique and artistic vision, and encouraged her to continue producing new work.
Since these early days, Jami’s work has rarely been out of the spotlight. Her dolls have been shown every year at the Houston International Quilt Show, and her work is also a crowd-favorite at the State Fair of Texas, where her piece
Alicia
garnered the 2022 Best in Show award and
Dorothy
won a blue ribbon in 2023. Jami’s work has also been featured in numerous publications, including the Aug/Sept/Oct 2018 issue of
Art Doll Quarterly
and the Winter 2023 issue of
A for Artistic.
Jami remains an active member of the Plano Chapter of ASG, where she continues to present programs, and she is also a member of the Houston-based Material Girls Cloth Doll Club. When not preparing new work for competition, she loves to share her passion for dollmaking with others.
In this mini-workshop led by Connie Akers, we created a small pamphlet style book (approximately 4x6 to 5x7). This journal can be used to record summer activities (i.e., "What I Did This Summer”) and members were able to submit their completed work to a special members' challenge, to be held in October 2024.
That thing called the creative voice can be elusive. It took retirement for Carolyn Skei to get up to speed with art quilting — to begin making quilts that win awards and are juried into important exhibits. She had dabbled in sewing, fabric dyeing, photography, collage, and a host of other crafts, all while raising her daughter and working as a publications editor/director. But now all those pieces of the creativity puzzle have come together in an octogenarian’s adventure.
In the program, Carolyn shared what she has learned about the artist’s path.
Carolyn Skei
This acclaimed Texas artist has been the subject of interviews in Quilting Arts magazine and Art Quilting Studio Quarterly, and she is the author of a number of articles about contemporary quilting. She also has been a Textile Talk presenter for Studio Art Quilt Associates (SAQA), and several of her quilts are currently traveling in SAQA global exhibitions.
Carolyn's work has been juried into Form, Not Function: Quilt Art at the Carnegie, Quilts = Art = Quilts at the Schweinfurth Center (NY), and Visions Museum of Textile Arts (San Diego). Twice her quilts have won the coveted Judge’s Choice award at the Dallas Quilt Show.
A native Texan, Carolyn retired in 2000 from a decades-long career at California State University, Fresno. She now gardens and makes art in McKinney, Texas. She is a devoted member of Dallas Area Fiber Artists.
In May we were thrilled to welcome back fiber artist Rebecca Shewmaker, who presented her new thread-painted landscapes, inspired by her recent visits to America's National Parks.
In this new program, Thread Painting Landscapes, we saw highlights from her latest series and learned the many fiber-art techniques that Shewmaker uses to infuse her landscapes with a painterly aesthetic. Based on the autumn foliage in Buffalo National River and Devil’s Den State Park, her new works are created using free-motion machine-embroidery, which enables her to achieve organic textures and stunning color gradations.
Rebecca Shewmaker
Rebecca Shewmaker uses sewing and embroidery techniques to create landscape paintings from fabric and thread. She holds a BA in Art History and Visual Arts from Rice University (2006) and MFA from Texas Woman’s University (2018).
She has been awarded artist residencies for the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild in New York, Zion National Park in Utah, and Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona, and she will be Artist-in-Residence at Glacier National Park in Montana June 2024.
Shewmaker has taught art classes and workshops for a variety of age groups at institutions across the Dallas-Fort Worth area, including Texas Woman’s University and the Amon Carter Museum of American Art. Currently, she is represented by Craighead Green Gallery in Dallas.
To see the archive of her previous program, click here.
Our Silent Auction of member artwork
raised more than $500!
Members enjoyed bidding on special fiber art created for this fundraiser benefiting our program funding.
I love to combine materials that are not necessarily paired together. The juxtaposition between opposites and creating a harmony between two materials has always inspired me. Taking the traditional craft of embroidery and putting a unique spin on it by embroidering through wood is the key theme through my work."
Nosheen Iqbal
On her hand-embroidered wood technique
In the April program we were delighted to welcome embroiderer Nosheen Iqbal, who guided us on a journey through the evolution of her art as an expression of her heritage and identity. Known for her adventurous combinations of materials and techniques, she often explores how fiber art functions as a pillar of art, culture, religion, and status.
Artist Statement: My Pakistani heritage and my journey in the creative industry plays a dominant role in how I play with color, pattern and texture. Pakistan has a rich history of pigment dyeing and embroidery techniques which varies in each province and dates back further than the Mughal Empire. The intricate and interlaced patterns found Islamic Art have always intrigued me. Taking these elements from classical motifs and morphing them into a new form of decorative art is the key thread in my work. Through the vibrancy of color, stitch and motif, textile work has long been a pillar of art, culture, religion, and status. In this collection, the notion of duality plays an important role. The way I converge Islamic geometrical forms and shapes with colored embroidery lines explores the way I purposefully build compositions. The juxtaposition of soft colored fibers stitched through solid wood signifies the fusion of global traditions and techniques. The overlapping colored fibers vibrates as you move around the pieces which creates a light and color play, a subtle nod to light rays on architecture.
Nosheen Saima Iqbal
Born in Surrey, England, she moved to Texas in mid-teens. She received a BA with outstanding portfolio award in Communication Design from the University of North Texas. After graduation, she worked for Fossil for over a decade in design and art direction and finally as a lead watch designer. She has also worked for brands such as DKNY, Armani Exchange and a collaborative collection with Opening Ceremony whilst still at Fossil. She is currently a multidisciplinary artist working in the fields of product design and development, illustration and graphic design.
Nosheen Iqbal's Pakistani heritage plays a dominant role in her choice of color, pattern and texture. Pakistan has a rich history of pigment dyeing and embroidery techniques which varies in each province and dates back further than the Mughal Empire. She is also heavily influenced by the intricate and interlaced patterns found Islamic Art. Taking key elements from the classical tradition, she elaborates upon them in order to invent a new form of decoration and design.
Whether you are a first-timer or an experienced veteran of entering competitions, this workshop was designed to help you prepare your submissions to any show, including our own annual juried show and members' challenge.
The 2024 edition took place on March 9, 2024, at 10 a.m., and was hosted by seasoned show entrants (and winners!) Carolyn Skei and Kathi Jahnke.
In the Entry Skills Workshop, we learned how to to:
These topics are also covered in our Opportunities section:
Jackie Nixon-Fulton presented her inspiring and versatile techniques for creating marks that can be directly or digitally printed on fabric and paper.
In this program we learned the magic of mark making through the use of age-old and cutting-edge tools that include homemade brushes, found objects, Gelli plates, rubbings, apps on the iPad, and scanned images. There was a display of tools used to create abstracted marks, as well as fabrics and papers onto which marks have been applied. Examples of finished work which incorporate marks, as part of the design element, were also available to view.
Jackie Nixon-Fulton, MD
Jackie describes herself as a visual learner; therefore, it is not surprising that dermatology was her chosen specialty as a physician. She began a second career breeding and showing warm-blood sport horses when she and her husband retired to their ranch in Paradise, Texas.
Without the time demands of a practice and raising two children, she was also able to reconnect with her creative side, and became interested in quilting about 15 years ago. Her early quilts were always her own designs and were more modern and contemporary, but her quilting life was changed when, in 2019, she did “Sewing the Land” workshop with quilt artist Sue Benner, and discovered a whole new way to make quilts. Since then, she has taken multiple classes with Sue. Pat Pauly’s class on screen-printing with thickened dyes has also been a big influence on her more recent work.
Her quilts have been shown and won awards at the Quilters Guild of Dallas show, The International Quilt Festival, AQS Shows at Grand Rapids, Paducah, Virginia Beach, and Lancaster, PA. They have been featured in Modern Quilts Unlimited magazine. She has also exhibited in SAQA's Discovering Desert Diversity and, most notably, her quilt “No Peace Left” was chosen for 2023 Quilt National.
Embroiderer Carrie Noess taught us you how to create an unfinished heart design using trellis stitch and couched Japanese gold thread.
Supplies to bring:
We kicked off January's meeting with our annual exchange
of
artist trading cards,
hosted by the DAFA Board. Members brought ten (10) cards to trade, plus additional cards to swap with members. Measuring
2-1/2 by 3-1/2 inches, these cards are a great way to experiment with new techniques or to showcase one's own evolving style, and they serve as an annual record of our collective artistic explorations!
Laura R. Post
Laura Post earned an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design in Printmaking and a B.A. from Swarthmore College in Studio Art and Asian Studies. She is currently Affiliate Assistant Professor of Printmaking at University of Dallas. She previously taught at University of Texas Arlington and Indiana University, Bloomington. Post’s work redefines portraiture by expanding the boundaries of the print medium. This includes transforming the fibers of the paper from a passive substrate to be printed upon into an active participant in the creation of the work. Through grant projects and workshops, she engages the community to remove and process invasive plants, then creates large-scale pulp paintings and pulp-cast prints. This work started in Utah in 2016, continued in Indiana, and now continues in Texas through collaborations with the Fort Worth Botanic Garden, the Fort Worth Water Department, the Fort Worth Public Library, and the Arlington Public Library through her LRP Studio, LLC, founded in 2020.
Post has exhibited her work nationally and internationally, including at Wally Workman Gallery in Austin, Texas (2022), solo exhibitions at the Arts Fort Worth (2021), Arts Place Indiana (2020), Swarthmore College’s List Gallery (2019), and CR Ettinger Studio (2019). Her work has also been featured in numerous group exhibitions including Shanghai International Paper Art Biennale, Shanghai, China; Umbra: New Prints for a Dark Age selected by Alison Saar at International Print Center New York; twice selected for PaperWest: National Works on Paper Juried Exhibition at the University of Utah to name a few.
TO PARTICIPATE, email us at
Meeting Location
The Point Center for Arts & Education
Campus of CC Young Retirement Community
4847 W. Lawther Dr.
Dallas, TX 75214
Meeting Information
2nd Saturday of each month
Mini-workshop at 10:00 a.m.
General meeting at 10:40 a.m.