Growing up in New Mexico, I’d never seen a real armadillo until we passed one dead on the side of the road while driving back from my sister’s graduation. I expressed great sadness for the poor dead baby armadillo. My sister, whose college years in Texas had provided many opportunities to see this familiar form of roadkill, laughed and said that it wasn’t a baby, it was an adult armadillo. With great indignation, I informed her that full-grown armadillos were about the size of cows. Despite the incredulity of everyone in the car, I continued to insist. Clearly, the children’s alphabet book that had informed my knowledge of armadillos was not a reliable scientific source. This quilt is a cheeky homage to something my family will never let me live down.
Materials: Recycled plastic jugs, vintage crochet doilies, light and electron microscopy photos, rubber stoppers, lace trims, paint, fabric, foam, felt
2021, 35” x 49” x 4”, Sold
Currently traveling with SAQA Global Exhibition Fur, Fangs, Feathers, and Fins
For more information about this piece, see my blog posts about it!
Knockout and knockin mice are genetically engineered to carry mutations in their genome to model debilitating diseases, critical since it is difficult to study many diseases in human patients. The scientific and medical advancements that have resulted from use of these models cannot be overstated. This quilt re-interprets my fluorescein angiograms--pictures of the blood vessels in the eye--from mice with diabetic retinopathy (top) and macular dystrophy (bottom), as well as their normal or wild-type counterpart (middle). We use these specialized mice to study the pathobiological mechanisms associated with these blinding retinal degenerations and to develop and test novel treatments. This piece is painted, beaded, hand and machine stitched, and features cutwork borders.
2015, 20 x 30, Sold
For more on the construction and design process for this quilt, you can check out my in process the related blog posts.
This piece depicts two critical retinal support tissues, the retinal pigment epithelium and associated vasculature (called the choriocapillaris). These two tissues are the first to degenerate in the blinding disease age-related macular degeneration.
2020, 20” x 20”, $400
For more information about this piece, see my blog posts about it!
The disc-laden photoreceptors of the vertebrate retina are responsible for sensing light and converting it to the chemical and electrical signals that are eventually perceived as vision by the brain. They are the first step in determining how we see the world.
Inspired by a transmission electron micrograph of murine rod photoreceptors captured by my friend Barb Nagel.
2014, 37 x 23, $500
For more information about the making of this quilt, check out the posts about it on my blog.
I am a cell biology researcher and professor so after my grandpa died in early 2020, my grandma gave me his early 1950s college lab notebook. It is remarkably complete, containing assignments, handwritten lab reports and drawings, and page after page of neatly labeled 70-year-old grass specimens. It was his favorite class, emphasized by the care with which his notebook was compiled and the decades it was kept. Right up until his death he could tell you the scientific names and characteristics of any grasses we encountered. This formal academic record fits so nicely into my rigorously documented research world, and is a physical reminder of a shared love of growing and caring for plants and flowers and trees. This piece is an assemblage of things from his notebook, coupled with new micrographs of his grasses I took on one of our lab scopes. Making this piece was a chance for me to immerse myself my recollections of him, to explore connections with someone who helped shape who I am.
37 x 57, 2021, $3500
For more on this project, take a look at the blog posts about it.
A sculptural quilt interpreting the protective layer lining our blood vessels.
2021, 48” x 48” x 18”, $5,000
For more on this piece, see my blog post about it.
Topography #2: Crest Trail
The flexibility of cloth and stitch lends itself well to creating motion and texture, and I'm interested in how the processes of layering and then taking away can create dimension and shape. Layer after layer is peeled away to expose what's underneath: organic openings that shift in shape, color, and depth. This piece began with hand painted cloth and a machine quilted base, and then are layered and/or cut away, and anchored with hand stitching. Each layer corresponds to a 160ft topo line from a USGS map of the White Mountain Wilderness in southern New Mexico. The region depicted was chosen in gratefulness for my favorite childhood hiking trail: Crest Trail #25.
2016, 42"W x 28"H x 4"D, NFS
For more information on this piece, please see the blog posts featuring it.
During an annular eclipse, there is often a ring of glowing sunlight visible even when the rest of the sun is blocked out. This unusal view of the sun's visible light makes me think of all the other invisible things we get from it including the solar wind whose charged particles lead to the formation of the auroras. This piece is very formal in its design, but aims to capture the sparkle, vigor, and energy we get from the sun.
42” x 31”, 2021, Sold
The Very Large Array (VLA) is one of the most powerful radio telescopes in the world. It is situated in the high plains of central New Mexico, in the Rio Grande watershed, an area uniquely suitable for astronomical observation. The VLA draws scientists from around the world, bringing new life, science, and diversity. It listens to intergalactic noise, to the sounds of black holes and pulsars and astronomical features unimaginable distances away from our home. Each image, each experiment, each picture tells us about the universe that we live in, about how our tiny planet fits into the greater macrocosm.
32"W x 48"H, 2017, Sold
For more about this quilt, please check out the blog posts about it.
I've always loved tree of life art and decided to make my nerdy biologist interpretation. This piece depicts a polar dendrogram. Dendrograms are used most broadly for hiearchical clustering, that is, to classify the relatedness of objects and the time or distance between different objects. They are widely used in biology, for example, in evolutionary trees to identify how closely species are related and how far back in time different groups diverged, or to classify genes or cell types, so are quite literally "trees of life".
2020, 56” x 52”, Sold
For more information on this piece, see the blog posts about it.
This quilt was designed to capture the symbiotic relationship between the yuccas of the high desert, sparkling in the crisp New Mexico sunshine, and the yucca moths that pollinate them. The yucca moth is tiny, living inside the blossom of the yucca, but is a critical part of the life cycle of the desert yuccas.
52 x 59, 2014, Sold
For more on this project, take a look at the blog posts about it.
This original design was part of a project to understand more about the ecosystems of the state where I live. It features one or more mammals from each order/superorder native to Oklahoma, spiraling in interconnected, overlapping rings.
2014, 62 x 62, Sold
For more about the making of this piece, check out the posts about it on my blog.
The clients who commissioned this piece were inspired by my piece "Ring Around the Mole" and were anxious to have me create a customized original design featuring animals living on and around their south Texas ranch.
2015, 57 x 57, Sold
For more on the construction and design process for this quilt, you can check out my in process blog posts.
I’ve always loved the artistic detail, the design aesthetic, and overall message of learning and knowledge presented in traditional natural history posters; those beautifully illustrated examples of all the different types of moths or chile peppers or flower life cycles. This piece is my interpretation of the natural history poster, and, in common with much of my work, draws on traditional quilt forms such as the mandala and free motion quilting, coupled with a graphic design approach to form and color. It’s part of an ongoing series to understand more about the state where I live, and features one or more mammals from each order/superorder native to Oklahoma spiraling in overlapping rings. My goal is to highlight the interconnected nature of our ecosystems and the urgent need to preserve diversity in the natural world, starting in our own backyards.
32"W x 48"H, 2017, $1000
I live in the southern Great Plains, an ecosystem that stretches throughout the central United States and into Canada. One of the biggest threats to native species and ecosystems in this area is invasive species. They arrive, usually due to human inadvertence, and then flourish, ruining habitat, competing for resources, and damaging native plants and wildlife. As people who love being outdoors, it is our responsibility to take care we are not transferring or enhancing the effects of invasive species. They spread through poorly cleaned watersports equipment, shoes and clothes from hikers, and escape from gardens and yards, among other ways. Educate yourselves on invasive species in your area and what you can do to prevent their spread. Featured on this quilt are eastern red cedar, European starling, southern pine beetle, grass carp, red imported fire ant, parrot's feather, and yellow sweet clover.
2019, 50 x 31, $1500
For more on the construction and design process for this quilt, you can check out my in process the related blog posts.
Coelophysis bauri, a carnivorous theropod dinosaur, is the state fossil of New Mexico due primarily to discovery of a large number of skeletons near Ghost Ranch, NM. Coelophysis had long been the poster child for dinosaur cannibalism until work published by Nesbitt et al. in Biology Letters (2006) demonstrated clearly that stomach contents from mature Coelophysis were not juveniles of the same species or even dinosaurs at all, but rather were unrelated early crocodylomorph archosaurs. In honor of Coelophysis’ “cleared name” I created this original art quilt depicting him in his modern-day home (in front of Chimney Rock) on one side and in a more Triassic setting on the other side. The quilt is made of commercially available fabrics of all types and embellished with twine, trim, wool roving, beads, polymer clay, dryer sheets, and paint sticks.
2012, 70 x 70, $3,000
For more info on this piece, check out my blog posts on it. And just in case you were wondering, the dinosaur's name is Seymour.
This piece was inspired by a photograph taken out my car window. For me, driving from where I live in Oklahoma, through the plains of west Texas and eastern New Mexico into the high southern mountains of my youth is like tripping back through time. The sun setting over the prairie reminds me that I'm nearing home.
2019, 26 x 38 , $650
For more information on this piece, check out my blog posts on it
This piece is inspired by views driving through the high plains of eastern New Mexico.
2020, 42” x 50”, $900
For more information about this piece, see the blog post about it.
The axis of rotation of Uranus is tilted over 90 degrees from its revolution axis, and its magnetic axis also has a large tilt relative to its rotation axis. I imagine Uranus as the crazy bouncy child, the one who brings chaos wherever she goes; the one who breaks all the rules and succeeds anyway. She is someone who opens our eyes to all the weird and wonderful different ways things can be.
2023, 43”H x 64”W, $1,000
For more on this piece, see the blog posts about it.
The Chinle formation is a Triassic-era geological formation that spreads throughout the 4 Corners region. In many parts of the Colorado Plateau its colorful stratigraphy is exposed in classic regional landscapes, forming stripey red rock formations against the clear blue southwestern sky.
2024, 40” x 30” x 3”, $600
I've always loved the romantic idea of cyanobacteria, photosynthesizing away in the far distant past to oxygenate an atmosphere too rich in carbonbon dioxide for most life to survive. These cylindrospermum are a kind of cyanobacteria most often found in slimy mats coating vegetation in shallow waters, probably most often prompting an "eww gross" from onlookers.
2023, 24” x 24” $500
For more information on this quilt, please see the blog post here.
Water and ice, critical for life on earth, and considered to be essential for life anywhere in the universe, have long been the focus of science. As of 2021, twenty different forms of crystalline ice exist throughout the universe (in addition to amorphous variants) in hugely varying environments. This piece is inspired by the ice/water phase diagram, with pressure on the x-axis and temperature on the w-axis. Each section is inspired by the crystal structure of that particular form of ice, with liquid water swirling freely at the top.
2022, 36”H x 38”W, $750
For more about this piece, see the blog posts about it.
Water and ice, critical for life on earth, and considered to be essential for life anywhere in the universe, have long been the focus of science. As of 2021, twenty different forms of crystalline ice exist throughout the universe (in addition to amorphous variants) in hugely varying environments. This piece is inspired by the ice/water phase diagram, with pressure on the x-axis and temperature on the w-axis. Each section is inspired by the crystal structure of that particular form of ice, with liquid water swirling freely at the top.
2022, 36”H x 38”W, $750
For more about this piece, see the blog posts about it.
