Meet Our Teachers!

Christie Dunning

Christie works in a variety of media and techniques, including yarn, fabric, and wire. She makes one-of-a-kind artworks as well as woven wire jewelry. Christie received an A.A. in Business Administration from San Diego Mesa College, an A.B. in Art Education from San Diego State University, and an M.F.A. in Studio Art/Fiber, with a secondary emphasis in Textile Techniques in Metal from San Diego State University. Her work has been juried into local, national and international exhibitions. Christie has had work published in American Craft, Handwoven, FiberArts, FiberArts Design Book Five, International Textile Design, Shuttle Spindle and Dyepot, and Surface Design Journal.

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Daryl Lancaster

Daryl Lancaster, a hand-weaver and fiber artist known for her hand-woven, pieced garments has been sewing for more than 35 years. She gives lectures and workshops to guilds, conferences, and craft centers all over the United States and is the Contributing Features Editor for Handwoven Magazine.

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Sheila O’Hara

Since her graduation from California College of the Arts (CCAC) in 1976, Sheila has captured imaginary and humorous landscapes in her unique multiple warp twill weave structure on her AVL 16 shaft compudobby loom.  Her artwork becomes a palette from which she depicts everyday life from a new perspective. Her latest limited edition tapestries are handwoven on Jacquard looms in Berkeley including an 800 hook TC-1 and a 1728 hook AVL/TIS. These looms enable her to combine multiple weaves and create fine lines in stunning surface textures as she interprets photographs taken in her new country setting. Her work has been exhibited internationally and is in many private, corporate, and museum collections. Her informative and entertaining lectures and workshops have been given in Canada, Germany, Australia, and the United States.

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Rodrick Owen

Rodrick Owen has been making braids for 30 years. He began his training at the London College of Furniture, where he completed the City and Guilds "Creative Textiles" program, qualifying with distinctions in 1981. In 1984 he was awarded a Winston Churchill Fellowship to study Kumihimo in Japan. His work has been exhibited in numerous places including Japan, the American Crafts Museum in New York and the Textile Museum in Washington D.C. He is the author of two books - Braids 250 Patterns from Japan, Peru and Beyond (1995) on marudai braiding and his newest book Making Kumihimo, Japanese Interlaced Braids (2004) on takadai braiding. His textile work has developed from his research that began while at college, covering both Pre-Hispanic Peruvian Braids and Japanese Kumihimo.

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Sigrid Piroch

Sigrid Piroch is a textile artist with a wide range of fiber skills. She is Director of ARTS TUDIO, a teaching studio in western PA. Her enthusiasm for the creative process, focus on color and structure -- simple through complex- and charge to excellence result in her love of beautiful fabric. She is known for her commitment to historic research, textile traditions, conservation and the documentation of woven fabrics, manuscripts, patterns and equipment over the past 3 centuries in North America, Slovakia and SE Asia. This is Sigrid's 30th year as workshop instructor, juror and exhibitor, which has taken her to 4 continents, 11 countries and 45 US states. Check out her new book The Magic of Handweaving, The Basics and Beyond and her website at www.artsstudo.org for more details.

Rebecca Smith

Rebecca likes to allow a measure of spontaneity in her weaving, to encourage the artistic spirit that resides in her to make itself known without too much intellectual interference. Tapestry by its nature is not a very spontaneous art form, given the constraint of beginning at one end and weaving to the other, forfeiting the option to revise a section once the weaving has gone beyond it.  Tapestry weaving is traditionally approached with a very well laid out plan or design.  Weaving spontaneously, on the other hand, requires a willingness to let the image emerge, relatively unfettered by preconceived notions.

 

Sarah Swett

Sarah Swett spins, dyes, laughs, knits and weaves tapestries in her studio in Moscow, Idaho. Her work has been shown in exhibits all across America and in articles in a wide variety of magazines, including SpinOff, Interweave Knits, Fiberarts Design and American Craft. She has taught the art of tapestry weaving for guilds and at conferences since 1998, but has been a textile person all her life. As for why tapestry infiltrates her dreams, builds her biceps, thrills her to the bone and drives her to tears-- she cannot say. When she was seven she turned scraps of yarn into a magic carpet. She is still at it.

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Kathe Todd-Hooker

Kathe Todd-Hooker is a tapestry weaver, dreamer, writer, instructor, sometimes historian, and, co-owner of Fine Fiber Press. She has shown both nationally and internationally. Her work consists of mostly small format work (less then 15 inches square inches and 20 wpi). Many of the tapestries are in wooden boxes that suggest a hidden and locked history. She has degrees in Craft Design from OSAC (BA) and OSU (MAIS) and has been teaching tapestry and other topics for over 20 years. She is a native of the NW and an ardent student of myth and symbolism that often seeps into her tapestry imagery. Her has studied, Gobelin, Swedish, Navajo, British. Coptic, Middle Eastern and kesa tapestry techniques. She is the author of the book Shaped Tapestry and the Tapestry E-list Mom.

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Margaret Tyler

Margaret Tyler has been playing around with yarns all her life. She is an award-winning hand spinner and weaver, and teaches beginning and intermediate spinning nd weaving for the Grossmont Adult Education program in San Diego County. She has been spinning and weaving for more than 20 years and still delights in finding new and exciting things to share with her students. Currently, as part of the San Diego Creative Weaver’s Guild outreach program, she coordinates a sheep-to-shawl-like event at the Bonita Cultural Museum and at the Water Conservation Garden at Cuyamaca Community College.

Mary Zicafoose

Mary Zicafoose designs, dyes, and weaves tapestries and rugs from her studio in Omaha, Nebraska. She uses color boldly, drawing upon weaving techniques and archetypal symbols that are classic and timeless. Her work is characterized by large fields of saturated color, hard-edged rendering of symbols, and contemporary applications of weft-face Ikat tapestry. Mary received her BFA from St. Mary’s College, Notre Dame, IN. Graduate studies include the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Nebraska. Her textiles can be found in United States Embassies on three continents and in collections and corporations worldwide.