I make art with no preconceptions, and in no set format or media. Everyday my fingers fly, my mind creates. I look to the artists who came before me, and am inspired as I envision my own contribution. Some of what I do is painted, some is sewn, some is inked, embellished or woven. My work ranges from representational to non objective, and is always executed by hand. I am much more concerned with how my work appears when viewed in person than how it will translate through a photograph on a screen.
The only rule in my studio is that I choose to make art every day. I hope you enjoy taking a look, and please feel free to contact me by email or phone if you are interested in further discussion. Thanks!
WINNER! DIRECTOR’S CHOICE AWARD - Woodlawn Pope and Lehighey House 57th Annual Needlework Show and Sale - theme: Suffragettes
Silk and Crewel Wool Hand Embroidery and Beadwork on antique Mirror, Enamel, found objects (funnel, tubing)
According to the Alice Paul Institute (Mount Laurel, New Jersey), Alice Paul (b 1885, d 1977) was an American Feminist, Political Strategist and Suffragette leader in both Great Britain and the United States.
Practicing Quakers, Paul’s parents taught their children to believe in “gender equality and the need to work for the betterment of society...”. Although her family had wealth, Paul and her siblings were raised ”very simply...with responsibilities instilling the values of industry and perseverance...”
After graduating first in her High School Class, Alice Paul attended Swarthmore College, a co-educational institution founded on the principle of equal education for both sexes by her grandfather, Judge William Parry. Shortly after graduation, Paul went to Birmingham, England to study Social Work.
While overseas, Alice was swept up in the British Suffrage Movement, falling in with the Pankhurst women, a mother and two daughters at the forefront of the protests there. “Deeds Not Words,’ was their rallying cry, and this group demanded attention through “direct and visible measures, such as heckling, window smashing and rock throwing...”. Paul joined in, personally breaking more than 48 windows, and was arrested and jailed for her behavior.
While jailed, Paul organized hunger strikes. Authorities responded by brutally force feeding her and the other strikers by twice daily inserting a rubber hose into their nostrils and down into their throats, then flooding their stomachs with a medically unadvisable mixture of raw eggs and milk, poured through a funnel held above their immobilized heads.
After her final release, Paul returned home in 1910 and became a leader in the Suffrage movement in the United States. She was appointed head of the Congressional Committee in charge of working for a federal suffrage amendment, and moved to Washington, DC, organizing what she hoped would be an attention grabbing Women’s March down Pennsylvania Avenue to disrupt the inauguration of Woodrow Wilson. With no police intervention, the marchers were physically attacked by onlookers, which newspapers covered sympathetically to Paul’s cause.
In her effort to get a national amendment, Paul organized her followers as “Silent Sentinels,” who peacefully picketed outside the White House with Banners written to shame Wilson to make change. The women were attacked by mobs, arrested then jailed for “obstructing traffic.”
While imprisoned in the Occuan Workhouse, Paul and the other suffragettes demanded to be treated as political prisoners, and when that demand was rejected, they staged hunger strikes. Authorities responded with “brutality...suffragists, including frail, older women were beaten, pushed and thrown into cold, unsanitary and rat-infested cells.”
As one of the leaders, Alice was again forcibly fed raw eggs and milk twice daily, this time with the rubber hose inserted directly down her throat. This torture went on for 35 days until news of the treatment reached the press and public sympathy turned fully toward the women and their cause.
My portrait honors the sacrifices she and others made for my right to vote while challenging viewers to engage in a moment of self reflection while examining her experience.
Commissioned for Woodlawn Pope Leighey House in Alexandria, VA in celebration of 100 years of Women’s Suffrage in the United States