Dedicated to Advancing Awareness & Education of the Fiber Arts

For membership inquiries, visit the Join page or contact us at membership@dallasfiberartists.org.

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Karen Zupanic currently heads the Heard-Craig Center for the Arts in McKinney, Texas where she has curated multiple exhibits over the past few years. Her photographic work for the Fashion Collection at the University of North Texas can be found on the UNT portal and her artistic analysis of several collections (“Musings on the Iris Van Herpen Collection”) is available as a lecture series.

Her “Celebration Among Friends” received First Place in the Art Club of McKinney 2012 Show, her “To Most Honorable Pink Moon” won First Place in the DAFA 2019 Show, and her solo gallery show at The Martin Place gallery, titled “The Vibrancy of Variation” featured Picasso’s papier collé technique in transformative kimonos.

“My subject matter tends to have an international focus with Asian influences being of primary interest. I have grown my Art Deco Kimono series and find that when all of them exhibit together, they create a very strong message for the power of transformation--transforming something plain and simple (i.e., the often overlooked) into something beautiful or breathtaking (i.e., that which has to be viewed, studied, and marveled at)”.

Karen received her Doctorate from the University of Dayton. Her multi-country research investigated the benefits of international art exchanges for small galleries and individual artists.

Cyndi is a mixed-media art quilter who incorporates her hand dyed and painted fabrics into her original fiber designs, and also pursues oil, acrylic, and encaustic painting. As an invited artist in the Plano Art Association CONTEXTURE: Fiber and Fabric invitational fiber show in 2015, she discovered DAFA and is now our VP of Fundraising.

She also brings her administrative and leadership experience to our Board of Directors as a lawyer who specializes in business/corporate law, estate planning, probate and guardianship and as an active volunteer in the Prestonwood Rotary Club, and Quilters Guild of Dallas.

Cyndi loves to travel, enjoys the outdoors, and collecting fiber art treasures!

Formerly a seasoned project manager and creative director in the fashion industry, Reneé Turner now uses her meticulous planning skills to orchestrate mixed-media portraits and facilitate Junk Journal classes for DFW Book Makers Group. 

An accomplished fiber artist, Reneé creates mixed-media portraits and art journals, which incorporate metal welding, jewelry making techniques, various mediums and textile-manipulation skills that she is learning with her membership in SAQA. 

Reneé is thrilled to have traded spreadsheets for textured fabrics, budgets for paint brushes, and marketing deadlines for exhibits. Her artistic journey is a testament to the power of embracing your passions.

Ava Nell Harris is a mixed-media artist with an emphasis on fiber and threads. She learned traditional embroidery as a child and garment sewing in her teen years. Most of her adult life she did counted cross stitch and garment sewing for herself and her son. After retiring as a university librarian, she decided to throw out the rules and patterns so she could explore the uncharted world of fiber art and mixed media.

She has experimented with creating fiber collages using fabric paint, rusted fabric, needle felting, photos, wooden stamps, stencils, self-created polymer clay stamps, paper, various types of thread and yarn, and even cat fur! At this point she is still exploring and developing techniques so most of her work is more samples than finished projects. But she loves the excitement of letting the piece decide where it wants to go and then follow it along with it. She discovered DAFA in 2022 and is inspired by the art and friendships she has found there. She is also a member of Studio Art Quit Associates.

Carrie Noess is a craftsman and embroiderer who enjoys the rhythmic process of stitching. To relax she enjoys cross stitching monochromatic alphabets. 

Her interest in embroidery grew out of her love of the Arts & Crafts Movement. Inspiration for her original work includes the Arts & Crafts and Art Nouveau movements, Charles Rennie Macintosh, William Morris, May Morris, Water Crane, and Frank Lloyd Wright. Carrie holds a Certificate in Hand Embroidery from the Royal School of Needlework, and she is currently studying (stitching) historic samplers and embroidered caskets.

She embroiders: blackwork, shaded blackwork, whitework: pulled thread, drawn thread, hardanger, broider anglaise, richelieu and trailing stitches, needlepoint, goldwork, Jacobean crewelwork, surface embroidery, needlelace, stumpwork, silk shading, tapestry shading, and samplers (cross stitch and specialty stitches).

Lila is a self-made crafter. She has never seen a craft she didn’t want to try. She has worked with embroidery and cross-stitching since she was a little girl. She enjoys sewing and made a lot of her daughters’ clothes when they were little.

Recently Lila has discovered the art of card making. Lila made felted Calla Lilies for a wedding along with other fun items. She has shared the love of crafting with the Girl Scout troops and day camps she led over 20 years. Lila was the Activity Coordinator for Newcomer Friends of Greater Plano in 2015. She also led a group called Handmade By Me from 2016 to 2018.

Nancy Tully is a mixed-media fiber artist whose work focuses on using recycled fabrics and materials. A skilled knitter for many years, her attention shifted to art quilts when she retired from a career in philanthropy in 2014. Of particular importance is the incorporation of hand stitching in her work.

An avid participant in Jane Dunnewold’s Creative Strength Training Course, Nancy’s work frequently reflects her understanding of her personal archetypes and the manner in which they are revealed in her artistic endeavors. As a self-taught artist, Nancy marvels at the ability of her heart and soul to find its way into her head and her heart. Currently, Nancy is working on a series of vessels that she has entitled Reflections of Self.

Nancy is also an active member of Studio Art Quilt Associates. Her work has been featured in several Creative Strength Exhibitions, and in 2022 her work was exhibited at Living Arts Tulsa in an exhibit Inspired by Archetypes.

The mini-workshop director is responsible for workshop coordination including coordination with the speaker and workshop attendee check-in.

Biography coming soon.

Kathi is a mixed-media fiber artist who enjoys creating art quilts based on digital manipulation of her photography. She is an artist member of SAQA and has contributed several works to their trunk shows and traveling exhibitions. Her work has also been featured in Quilting Arts and Cloth Paper Scissors magazines.

Prior to moving to Texas in 2017, Kathi lived in Westchester County, New York, where she was a member of Fiber Art Northeast and participated in numerous group exhibitions. Thrilled to have found a new creative home with DAFA, Kathi brings ten years of experience developing and directing visual arts programs including launching Art at Concordia and serving as the Director of OSilas Gallery at Concordia College in Bronxville, New York.

Lu Peters is an art quilter, wearable artist, and mixed-media fiber artist whose work has been exhibited in galleries and juried local and national shows and published in several 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 and maintains a comprehensive website, lupeters.com, an extensive resource site for fiber artists. Additionally, she is a former president of DAFA and a member of the Quilter’s Guild of Dallas and the American Sewing Guild of Plano.

Carol's foray into mixed- media art began when her mother introduced her to rubber stamp art in the 1980s, after earlier teaching her to sew. Thousands of rubber stamps and all manner of crafting materials later, she continues to engage in a variety of creativity adventures. Fabric, rubber stamps, paper, paint, beads, found objects—anything goes!

Carol has previously served on the Board as Secretary. She now looks forward to hearing members' ideas for fiber projects DAFA could undertake to support and enrich communities near and far.

The daughter of a commercial and fine artist, Carol has been working in and learning art forms for a half century. She studied art at several universities and taught art classes in New Mexico for 12 years before retiring to Texas in 2005.

Carol paints in oils and pastels and recently has begun learning watercolor techniques. She has worked in fiber art since her teen years learning to sew. She made clothing and quilts but never as art until joining Dallas Area Fiber Artists. When she first moved to Texas, she demonstrated New England style rug hooking at Chestnut Square Village in McKinney. Now her interest in “all things fiber” ranges from batik, eco dyeing, soft sculpture animals, journaling, collage with mixed media, to the exploration of unspun wool roving. She uses the roving to create needle-felted paintings. She constructs her own looms to weave wall hangings and uses a Navajo drop spindle to create and spin specialty yarns for them.

She has been a member of art organizations in three states and exhibited her work in art shows and galleries in Ohio and New Mexico. Carol has won awards for her paintings in The Belen, NM Art League, The Art Club of McKinney, TX and several from the Dallas Area Fiber Artists’ exhibits.