Vicki Conley lives in the mountains of southern New Mexico. She has been a creative person all her life and has recently retired from 42 years as a studio potter. She has been a fiber artist for about 20 years and is now also exploring surface pattern design and online teaching. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and was part of Quilt National 2017 and 2025. Vicki has an eye for interpreting the natural world and is best known for her original national park poster art quilts. She and her husband now travel extensively in their RV with their two dogs, always looking for the next inspiration. She enjoys bold graphic landscapes as well as abstract improvisational piecing.
You may have seen Vicki’s work in Machine Quilting Unlimited, Art Quilting Studios and Art Quilt Quarterly and she has articles in recent issues of Quilting Arts Magazine. She has also been a guest on both Quilting Arts TV and The Quilt Show with Ricky Tims and Alex Anderson demonstrating some of the techniques she uses in her national park art quilts.
Vicki is a Juried Artist member of Studio Art Quilt Associated (SAQA), the founder of the art quilt collective 4 Common Corners, has served on various global SAQA committees and is currently the regional rep for the SAQA New Mexico region.
You can see her work at https://www.vicki-conley.com/
Betty’s bio
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Rosanna Lynne Welter has roots in traditional quilting but quickly transitioned to textile art once she began exploring the exciting processes and techniques advancing the fiber arts movement. Just as she was emerging in the field, “life” put art on extended pause as she cared for elderly parents and earned a living. Eventually the long drought ended, the floodgates reopened, and her art began flowing again in 2018, moving her down an exciting new path. As a self-taught artist, her work is filled with naivety, dimension, whimsy, texture, and lots of thread.
Rosanna has competed and been juried into Utah exhibits locally (Brigham City Museum of Art, Springville Museum of Art, Salt Lake Community College, Bountiful Davis Art Center), regionally (Front Porch Gallery, Carlsbad, CA; Studio Door Gallery, San Diego, CA; Art Ark Gallery, San Jose, CA; Dona Ana Arts Council, Los Cruces, NM), and nationally/internationally (Sonoran Desert Museum, Tucson, AZ; Pacific Northwest Quilt and Fiber Art Museum, La Conner, WA; Detroit Zoo, SOFA [now Intersect Chicago], Navy Pier, Chicago in 2021 and 2022; Vision Gallery, Chandler, AZ; Long Beach Quilt Festival, Long Beach, CA; The Virginia Quilt Museum, Harrisonburg, VA).
Rosanna’s work is in private collections and has been published in multiple books and catalogs. Her early works were exhibited at Quilt National, International Quilt Expo in Innsbruck Austria, and the Musée des Tissue in Lyon France. She is also a past recipient of a Utah Arts Council/NEA Individual Artist Grant.
Currently, Rosanna is a member of Studio Art Quilt Associates (SAQA) where she is a Juried Artist Member and where she recently served on the CO/UT/ WY Regional Exhibition Committee. Locally, she served as Exhibitions Chair for the Utah Surface Design Group and now serves as Treasurer.
Rosanna, an Idaho native who has lived most of her life in Utah, is currently focusing on her daily art practice at her in-home studio in West Valley, Utah where she lives with her husband, 3 rescue dogs, and a rescue kitty.
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.
