About Me

I am an Inspirationist.  I inspire the people around me try new things and to think about life from a different perspective.  In my workshops I make a safe place for people to explore, experiment and express themselves through the process of art making.
 
I have developed the concept of the 'Inspiraculum'.  This is a place to breathe, dream, explore, be inspired and to find one's self.  This place can be in my studio, kitchen or wherever I find myself inspired to create.  The word Inspiraculum combines 'spirare', to breathe in, to uplift the spirit and 'aculum', a protective structure. 
 
I have been designing and making original art quilts and fibre art since 1997.  I have shown my work in quilts shows and art galleries in the US and the UK.

Home

I live in a converted cider barn in Devon, England.  My nearest neighbours are foxes, badgers, deer, toads, shrews, voles, bumblebees and water striders. 

When I go outside in spring and summer it is as though I am walking through a series of green rooms whose walls are made of birdsong.  A pair of swallows nest over the front door.  Their arrival in late Spring heralds the beginning of summertime for me.  They gracefully swoop and glide around the farmyard, inscribing their aerial calligraphy across the blue sky.  I love to watch them play and quarrel and raise their young; its always very poignant when one day in late August they have suddenly departed. There is a forgotten apple orchard nearby.  I gather the windfalls in the autumn for eating and pie making.  On Old Twelfth Night (17th January) I wassail the apple trees with cider and toast.  I don’t know the traditional songs so I sing them a few Gershwin numbers!  The wintertime has a stark, spare beauty.  I love to see the beautiful bones of the bare trees and hedgerows and all of the stars on cold, frosty nights.  Over winter, a bat and its child sleep behind the hot water pipes in the basement.  In February, when the wild daffodils, violets and primrose re-appear it is like seeing long lost friends again.

Home is where my heart is.  The place may change, but wherever it is I am inspired by my surroundings.

Fibre Art

I have been a creative person all of my life.  My mother, Nell, encouraged me to appreciate nature and to be curious about the world.  Even though I had experimented with pastel drawing and acrylic painting in my 20s, I never thought of my self as an ‘artist’.  It wasn’t until I discovered quilting in 1996 that I ‘found my medium’.  I love the textures, colours and sensuality of textiles.  I am the sort of person who likes to bend the rules and try new things so since discovering quilting, I have naturally drifted over to the category of Fibre Artist. 
 
I took my first quilt class in 1996.  My first four quilts were quite traditional- a patchwork sampler, two water colour quilts and a jewel box quilt.  Then, in autumn 1997, I took an Open Studio class in California with Barbara Kennedy in which we learned to design and make an original art quilt.  I had just spent a really relaxing week camping in Utah and made ‘Dreamtime at Zion’.  The quilt captures the time in autumn when the harvest is over and the earth is settling down to rest – silently awaiting winter.  It’s a very peaceful quilt.  Barbara encouraged us to enter whatever quilt show was coming up, so I had it professionally photographed and entered it in 1998 World Quilt & Textile, which was in Pasadena, California that year.  And it was accepted!!.  Barbara was a great teacher and at the end of the class she said “I’ve taught you everything I know, now go out and make quilts”.

Inspirations

My main inspiration is Nature and the ebb and flow of the seasons.  From my father’s side, I have Native American blood.  I am named after Melindy Davis, my great grandmother who was a full-blooded Muscogee (Creek) Indian.  I surmise that my deep reverent love for the natural world comes down from that line. 

Living in the countryside, I am very aware of and inspired by the delicate nuances of season which I try to express through my artwork.  “Elegant Decay” is a quilt about the very end of autumn when all of the leaves are down, lying broken on the earth, rotting back into the soil.  There is such a rich, multi-layered beauty about that time.  “Splendid Profusion” is about the riot of new growth that occurs in late spring.  The quilting is a tangle of vines and budding leaves and moths, butterflies, spiders and snails abound.

I am a very visual person and am also inspired by art, architecture, photography and graphic design.  I go to art galleries and museums, craft fairs and quilt/fibre art shows whenever I can.  I find it immensely exciting and inspiring to see what other people create.  I also visit other artists’ websites to see what’s ‘out there’. I love to read and often play with words and write poetry.  In a recent quilt ‘The Forest Knows’ I have recycled a poem by David Wagoner.  Often, a line from a poem will be the beginning of a new quilt.  I am also a very feeling person and put my responses to literature, poetry, music and world events into my art.  I love to travel and am fascinated by everything about other cultures – homes, food, how people act and dress, the physical environment.