Frances Oldham Murphy was born in 1950 in southeastern Idaho and lived in Rexburg, Idaho until 1969. Her mother, Mary Smith Oldham, was an attorney who took baby Frances to work with her at her law office.
Having grown up in a small town, Frances was understandably eager to get away after high school. She moved to Salt Lake City and attended the University of Utah, majoring in Anthropology. While there she also received an associate degree in business. She then returned to Idaho for several years, working as a legal assistant/paralegal.
In 1981, Frances quit her job and moved to Tucson, Arizona to attend the University of Arizona. She graduated with distinction in 1984, earning a bachelor's degree in Fine Arts with an emphasis on Photography. Frances believes that challenge and motivation are the components of a long life and that belief inspired her to leave friends, family and job and move to Tucson to study art.
Frances moved to Seattle, Washington in 1984 and worked as a paralegal for two large law firms specializing in commercial real estate lending. Her art training was never far from her heart, though. She purchased her own loom and began weaving in 1990. In 2002 Frances opened her own fiber art studio, Pupster Productions (a name inspired by her Airedale Terriers who liked to curl up at her feet while she worked in the studio).
Frances and her husband, Steve, moved to Surprise, Arizona in 2007 where they became involved with the Sun City Grand Drama and Comedy Club and later became founding members of the theater group, Compass Players. In 2008 Frances met fellow fiber artist and mentor, Betty Hahn, and began her true passion: art quilting.
Frances has long been inspired by the vivid colors, endless vistas, and extraordinary fragility of the Sonoran Desert. Its impact can be seen in all of her fiber art.
Anne Moats has been a closet art quilter for 10 years, but only recently had the luxury of indulging her inner artist. She spent her adult life as a scientist in Albuquerque, but now calls the southern Arizona town of Bisbee home. Most of her work is representational, depicting the landscapes and wildlife of her surroundings. The textures and 3-dimensional quality of art quilting and the love of fabric motivates her.
Diana Fox graduated from Regis University with a BA in Organizational Development and worked in a government setting for the majority of her career. She began as a traditional quilter in 1983, transitioned to art quilts in 2007, and has never looked back. She has studied primarily with Nancy Crow for the past 7 years, as well as many of the instructors at the Crow Barn in Baltimore, Ohio.
As an art quilter, Diana prefers to dye much of her own fabric for her creations and describes herself as a piecer. She has had numerous pieces juried into national shows and has recently hung a solo exhibition. Diana is a member of American Quilters Society, Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum, and Studio Art Quilt Associates.
Diana currently resides in Denver with her life partner Rick, a small fuzzy dog named Lewis, and two fat cats.
I grew up the “musical child" in a family of visual artists. I studied piano and admired everyone else’s paintings, pastels, and sculptures. The shock of my mother's early death, however, and my need to remain in some way connected to her, precipitated the amazing discovery that there was an artist in me as well. My frugal mother had taught me all she knew about sewing and instilled in me a love for fabric, so fiber/textiles was a natural choice as my medium when I was introduced to quilting and the Utah Surface Design Group (USDG) in the 1990s.
In my early quilting career, I was fortunate to be able to balance a full-time job (a necessity) while creating and showing my work in national and international venues, culminating in Quilt National ’99. I was also the recipient of a Utah Arts Council/National Endowment for the Arts Individual Artist Grant. I have only recently returned to fiber art after about a 15-year hiatus when I was commuting between states for work to support my family and caring for my elderly father (what a blessing, he lived to be nearly 98!). My work is in private collections and has been published in books and magazine articles. Since my reentry to the art quilt world, I have been juried into statewide all artists/all mediums art shows and regional and global exhibitions through Studio Art Quilt Associates (SAQA). Currently, I am Exhibition Chair for the USDG and serve on a SAQA Regional (Colorado/Utah/Wyoming) Exhibition Committee.
I live in a western suburb of Salt Lake City, Utah with my husband, our three rescue doggies, and our lone kitty. Now retired, I enjoy exploring multiple fiber art techniques and have also renewed my musical interests, splitting my days between art and learning a new keyboard instrument--the organ!
Nicole began sewing at an early age but found her passion in quilting with the birth of her first child in 1988. After seeing an exhibit of work by Nancy Crow in 1992, she realized that fiber-and specifically quilts-could be used to create art, and set herself on a path to create one of kind art quilts to be enjoyed on the wall. To date, she has created many commissioned works that are unique to each client’s needs and wants, while developing her own style of art quilts reflecting her daily life and inspirations.
Nicole’s work can be found in private collections all over that world including China, Argentina, Chile, Guatemala, and Germany, as well as locally in Santa Fe, Los Alamos, Albuquerque, and several states in the USA. As an example, two large quilts were commissioned for the United Church in Santa Fe, one titled “Adoration Point”, and the other “St. Francis and St. Claire” generally on display for church members for the St. Francis’s Feast Day in October each year. Several of her latest work focuses on the use of color, texture, line, among other design elements in nontraditional ways. She is especially inspired by color, nature (especially trees), the textures of every day life such as bark on a tree, marbles lying on a shelf, a little creature on a leaf, or the big vistas of her native Southwest. Some of her art quilts have a very specific theme, but the more successful pieces, she feels, are the ones that speak to each viewer differently. Hopefully, it will remind someone of a childhood backyard memory, a soft breeze in the forest, or simply inspire quiet contemplation.
More than anything, Nicole hopes that her work brings as much joy to the viewer as she had in creating it.
Vicki Conley is a fiber artist and studio potter who has lived in Ruidoso Downs, NM for almost forty years. Although her formal education is in the sciences, the creative spirit defines her. In 2004 she discovered quilting and quickly began designing her own fiber art, exploring color, form and texture utilizing myriad modern techniques. She has been a professional potter since 1982 and owns a gallery where she sells her art quilts and pottery. She balances her life between the business of making pottery and the joy and need to make quilts. She loves trying new techniques and materials, and usually explores themes in the natural world using her own travels and photographs as inspiration.
Betty’s bio
Art in one form or fashion has always been a part of the life of Michelle Jackson. Michelle graduated from The Fashion Institute of Technology and worked as a women’s lingerie designer in New York City. In 2004, she started combining her new love of quilting with fashion, creating wearable art patterns.
With a love of color and obsession to be more creative she moved quickly into art quilts. “This is where I feel at home; exaggerating color to capture moments and tell stories.” She says. “The most fun part of the design process is deciding what tweak of color to use to help people see what I want them to see, or feel what I want them to feel?”
Michelle appeared on the Quilt show with Alex Anderson and Ricky Tims in 2011. Her quilts have won numerous awards, have been published in many magazines and books and appear in national and international exhibits including, The Texas Quilt Museum, and SAQA Traveling Exhibits, one of which traveled to 4 continents. Michelle also teaches and lectures on the use of color and light to tell a story in fiber.
Shannon Conley is an art quilter and fiber artist in Moore, OK, whose work is informed by her experience as a biologist and biochemist. She runs a biomedical research lab at a large university and ideas from her pieces often arise from scientific research from her lab or others. Sometimes the link is obvious, such as pieces depicting biological specimens or topics, while other times the links is more indirect. She has been artistic her whole life, and has used art quilts and fiber art as her primary medium since 2009. She’s interested in exploring the connections between science and religion, and between the physical world and the way it's colored by our varying perspectives. Much of her recent work has focused on interpreting the diversity and interconnectedness of various ecosystems using fabric and stitching. She grew up in southern New Mexico, and retains a strong connection to the dry mountains and high desert, areas that frequently appear in her ecology and nature-inspired pieces. Though her practice originates with traditional techniques familiar from quiltmaking, these approaches are expanded to include the use of non-traditional fibers and fiber-like materials, as well as other media/design approaches including painting, dyeing, screen printing, sculpting, and cutwork/openwork.
Extensively trained in design and composition, Sandra Hoefner holds a BFA in painting from the University of Alaska, Anchorage and an MFA in drawing painting and mixed media from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. It is Interdisciplinary with Northern Studies.
Starting at the American Academy in Chicago, Hoefner has worked with the figure for over fifty years, and uses the expertise gained to create narrative figurative works using her characteristic rhythmic movement of the curved line.
New techniques available in working with photographic transfers to fabric have led to experiments with computer manipulated antique family photos. Hand batiked and dyed fabrics add a unique quality to her work.
Hoefner works sometimes in an abstract style, but always returns to the figure. She has exhibited nationally and internationally in the art quilt medium. She is a juried member of the Studio Art Quilt Association and belongs to the Front Range Contemporary Quilters, The Art Quilt Association (AQuA) and two critique groups.
Art is Debra’s language, and it speaks of how she is innately wired. As an inspirational artist, beginning with her career as architect now full-time muralist, artist, art instructor and designer, her introduction to fiber comes as an exciting extension adding depth to her work. The contents of her mother’s quilt shop became her toolbox and her solace as she used the notions and fabric that brought her mom such joy. With a brush and a pencil in hand, Debra takes her designs to a whole new level utilizing pieced reverse applique techniques and drawing with her needle. Her life’s work is a continued exploration which has its roots in a life lived overseas and the experience of a multicultural community. As a multimedia artist, Debra’s work and teaching style clearly represent a global influence. With each new project her journey begins with research and analysis of a subject which takes her design from concept to expression. Debra is a native Texan, now Phoenix-based artist who lives with her husband and little dog Astro.
Born and raised in Colorado, spending time in Utah and many years in California has given Bev Haring a broad exposure to the colors and textures of many landscapes as well as the impacts of many cultures. Her love of “old things” has led to a large collection of photos of aging objects and architecture that she uses to inspire new pieces of art.
Her time spent with her grandmother as a young child gave her the opportunity to learn to sew, knit and quilt at a young age, and she has said she has never met a fiber art she didn't want to try.
Beginning with small local shows, Haring has grown her exhibit reach to include shows from coast to coast in the US and in Canada. In addition she has served as a curator of several shows for Studio Art Quilt Associates and continues to increase her collector base.
Lynn B. Welsch started sewing at 9 years old and made her first quilt while in high school after seeing a quilt exhibit at the Kutztown, Pa. Folk Art Festival.
She earned a BS in Art Education in 1973 from the University of Southern Maine where her interest in fiber arts started. She began making traditional quilts in 1976 and art quilts in the early 1990s.
Lynn’s Art Quilt pieces have been juried into the Houston International Quilt Festival, the American Quilter’s Society Show in Paducah, Kentucky, a National Quilting Association Show, a Studio Art Quilt Associates national show, the Hoffman Challenge, and the Tims Art Quilt Studio Gallery.
In 2007, Lynn retired to Mimbres, NM and established her art quilt business, Mountain Spirits Studio. She is active in the New Mexico group of the Studio Art Quilt Associates, exhibiting and selling some of her work in many regional shows.
In the fall of 2011, her original design quilt Texas Triumph was included in the book Lone Stars III, Texas Quilts from 1986-2011 and in the book 500 Traditional Quilts by Lark Books in 2014.
