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As a poet and artist, I have spent most of my adult life in the verbal and visual arts. During the 1980s, while living in Manhattan and pursuing a career in advertising and publishing, I worked in stained glass, creating abstract door and window panels of my own design. On retiring from publishing, I devoted several years to poetry, was named Poet Laureate of Bucks County, Pennsylvania (1990) and earned a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) from Vermont College (1991).

My poetry collection, Goldfinch and Memory, was published by Steamboat Press, Brooklin, Maine, in 2005. Some years ago I moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, with my husband, David Cost, who is also a poet as well as a visual artist specializing in monoprints.

It was here that I discovered tapestry weaving. Looking for a new creative challenge, I enrolled in classes in landscape tapestry and wool dyeing. I was quickly captivated by the slow, meditative process of working weft through warp, row upon row, by the friendly feel of wool in the hand (compared to, say, glass), and the seemingly endless variations of color and shade the weaver can achieve in the dye pot and on the loom. I have never looked back.

Living in northern New Mexico, I am, of course, influenced by contemporary Southwestern tapestry with its emphasis on abstract design,subtle gradation, and the use of hand-dyed yarns. My earliest tapestries reflect the strong colors, bold contrasts and essentially straightforward approach to design acquired years ago, working in stained glass. Since then, my work has grown and developed to encompass both pure abstraction and figurative imagery, subtle gradations of shade and hue in hand-dyed yarns, and deliberate manipulation of the varied textures and techniques unique to the art of tapestry.

Most often the idea for a tapestry comes in response to a striking image: the extraordinary effects of color and light in a photograph taken through a microscope, the awesome sweep of a desert landscape, or, recently, the play of light and shadow on the pure geometries of modern Mexican and New Mexican architecture. Whatever the subject, my goal is to create a sense of harmonious simplicity that viewers will find both energizing and serene.