Since retiring from Penland School of Craft as its director for a couple of months shy of 20 years, I have pursued interests long resting patiently aside my nonprofit management profession. Printmaking and drawing, creative and memoir writing, curating and jurying, swimming and walking, gardening and cooking have now risen in time consumption. Using what I know and staying connected to the arts continue to be fulfilling as I joined the cooperative Mica Gallery in Bakersville, NC, and serve on several boards - currently the UNC School of the Arts Advisory Council, the Community Foundation of WNC, and Wildacres Retreat. In 2022, I rotated off the American Craft Council and United States Artists boards and joined a planning effort for the 2026 Year of American Craft. Travel has always been part of my life and is how I best learn about the world and find inspiration for art and writing. Recent adventures include experiences in Puerto Rico, Scotland, India, France, Ecuador, Mexico, Costa Rica, and various places in the USA.

Aside from all we accomplished at Penland from 1998-2018 which brought me great joy, I am also proud of my years serving North Carolina’s visual arts scene through positions at the NC Arts Council. We created fellowship and artist project grants, started and then lost the state’s public art program, grew support for museums and contemporary art centers. This sixteen-year commitment involved a shift in mental orientation from being artist- and arts-centered in focus singularly to embracing deep connections with community, audience, and the public. It also provided me opportunities to learn about marketing and public relations when defenses needed to be mounted for particularly challenging works of art and public support for the arts in general.

I was given the Order of the Long Leaf Pine in 2017 and named Educator of the Year in 2016 by the James Renwick Alliance for my work at Penland; received the NC State University Distinguished Alumni Award in March 2014 for advancing the arts in liberal studies; and was honored by the UNC Chapel Hill Art Department when asked to give the May 2003 graduation address. The National Daughters of the American Revolution recognized my work with their Women in the Arts Recognition Award in May 2020.

In 2020, I curated an exhibition and wrote an essay entitled Narrative/Abstraction/ Iteration for The Bascom Center for Visual Arts in Highlands, NC (April – August 2020) and in 2019 wrote a catalogue essay, Cacophony Without Dissonance—Southern Strands: North Carolina Fiber Art, (July 2019) for the Blowing Rock Art and History Museum. I have served on juries for the SouthArts Southern Prize (2020), Monson Arts Residency Program (2019), the Society of Arts and Crafts Show (2019), the Smithsonian Women’s Show (2018), the Florida Craftsman Show (2018), and the National Endowment for the Arts State and Regional Organization panel (2018-2019). My work has been shown at the Cary Arts Center in 2021, the USCB Sea Islands Gallery in 2022, and I participate in the summer and winter Toe River Arts Studio Tours.

Last and most relevant to my work: meaningful hours were spent in the Penland Winter Residency in January 2018 and 2019 as well as in the numerous workshops in lithography (Deborah Chaney, Althea Murphy-Price, Aaron Coleman), in woodcuts (Keiji Shinohara, Yoonmi Nam, Annie Silverman) and monoprints (Stu Kestenbaum and Susan Webster, Kristen Martincic, Andy Rubin, Jan Serr.)

The subject or focus of my work is drawn from landscape and still life traditions, observation of the world closest to me, and a love of pattern. I feel most connected to myself when I am lost in the act of drawing.