Often I get this question, "When did you decide to become an artist Valerie?"
I suppose at some point I did have to make the decision to actually be an artist in this life, but honestly I feel I was born an artist. That may be a bold statement, but it's exactly how I am. I was born this way. I know it and have felt it all my life.
Very early in my life I began creating. I was a kid that just picked up pencils, crayons, or whatever I could find and manipulated materials. I created with clay out of the creek that I would gather myself. I drew in the dirt. I did whatever I could to use my hands to make something, anything. Sewing along beside my grandma, great grandma and mom gave me my first exposure to fibers.
Encouraged by my family to create I drew or painted my world around me. My grandmother put me in front of an easel with paintbrushes, oil paints and turp at age 4. Exposure to materials early on in my life made it a lot easier for me to pick them up when I got to school. I felt comfortable and did not hesitate in picking up and trying new ideas because of it. I won art competitions or placed in each show I've entered throughout my childhood and up through college because I was not intimidated to try. I knew how to manipulate the materials to create what I was seeing in front of me. or what was in my mind.
How do I continue to nourish this creative energy though? I've dabbled in many different mediums with many different tools in school through college graduate classes. Once I entered into grad school I had to choose my main focus as an artist. Many, many people thought I would pick painting as my concentration, but I did not. I picked weaving (textiles) and landscape drawing.
To this day I do not regret this decision. I feel a complete connection to fibers/textiles and I've always enjoyed drawing. The connection is to that I physically touch. I enjoy feeling materials and tools in my hands. I love smelling the newness of unwashed wool with the lanolin intact that is so very soft to hold. I feel the threads I pass through the shed of my loom as I throw the shuttle from left to right and back again. So it's a very hands on approach that I like and makes me feel good as I create. This is what keeps me coming back over and over again.
I am also drawn deeply to process. Not necessarily the beginning or end of a project/product, but the in between of it all - be it knitting, tatting, sewing, weaving. Watching the cloth grow with each move I make, each loop I knit, each pass of the shuttle, or each treadle I change with my feet to create a pattern. I feel most alive with this movement and somehow a part of me is in every single thread I pass. That's the connection that also makes me want to perfect a technique I am working on each time I set down to go about creating a new piece.
Some people never really know what they want to be in life. I am one who knew as soon as my feet hit the ground running. I believe this as a gift and feel an obligation to be committed to perfecting my art as I walk through this life. It's really as simple as this - I was born to create.
Her hands were strong and precise. Every stitch was perfect. Everything she touched seem so effortless. And when you are young you think it is effortless until you try to do what you see and realize that those hands are a work in progress. That those hands worked and worked until they got whatever they were doing right. It took years to perfect some things like the perfect stitches that she would quilt. All hand-pieced, hand-quilted quilts using clothing from years past. And nothing simple, no, not at all, but all very beautiful in their own accord. 
