MEET OUR INSTRUCTORS!
Norma Ames • Norma has taught spinning for 25 years, both privately and through the Ventura County Handweavers & Spinners Guild. She has offered classes at The Learning tree, Moorpark Community Services and California Lutheran University's Community Service. She has also taught children's classes at Carnegie Library in Oxnard. Norma served as a judge for the Ventura Guild's Spinning Exhibition at the Ventura County Fair in 2004 & 2005.
Robin Atkins • Traveling widely to teach, lecture and research beadwork for nearly 20 years, Robin Atkins is a nationally known bead artist. She has authored four beading books, including One Bead at a Time, and numerous magazine articles. Robin enjoys all types of beading. However, she especially loves to sew beads on cloth. Currently her two passions are fabricating sculptural pieces and combining bead embroidery with bookmaking to create bead-embellished journals. She is excited to see the development of beadwork in the past two decades, as it has shifted from the world of craft toward the world of art. www. robinatkins .com
Toni Best • Toni has been a creator and advocate of basketry for over forty five years. Originally from the east coast – Virginia and North Carolina, Toni received her first basket training in willow and reed. Utilizing this medium in a variety of styles, Toni eventually extended her craft to coiled basketry fabricated from pine needles and raffia. Using these natural materials, Toni has expanded upon native designs and weaves basketry that echoes many American cultures while illustrating her own innovations and imagination.
Sharon Costello • Sharon is an accomplished fiber artist who has worked in hand-spinning, weaving, and knitting as well as having raised her own flock of naturally colored sheep. Once she discovered felt making, however, it quickly came to dominate her fiber fixation. These days, Sharon's work focuses on soft-sculpture dolls and one of a kind and limited-edition wearable art... hats, jackets, bags, boots, etc. She sells her work at her own gallery, Mill Cottage, and at juried crafts shows throughout the region. She has also completed special works for clients such as Celestial Seasonings Teas (a tea cozy inspired by their line of teas). www.blacksheepdesigns.com
Curt Dornberg • Curt has pursued books, “inside and out”, first as a Professor of English, then as a book worker and box maker. From early to late, he has been a weaver incorporating his weavings into books and boxes of his own design. www.curtdornberg.com
Nancy Finn • Nancy has been involved with textiles since she was seven years old. She has a BA degree in Textiles and Clothing. In 1990 Chasing Rainbows Dyeworks was born, generating hand-dyed spinning fiber and yarn. While developing some colors for a client, she devised a way to create approximately eighty color samples that go around the color wheel. This became the basis for a dye workshop which Nancy has been teaching for the last four years.
Deborah Jarchow • Deborah’s relationship with fiber and art has been ongoing ever since she was a child. When she discovered weaving in 1996, her love of fiber, texture, and color came together and she immersed herself in weaving as a full time pursuit. Since then she has created hundreds of garments and accessories for sale as well as exhibition in fashion shows and galleries across the country. Although she is known mostly for her success with handwoven rayon chenille, she makes many different one-of-a kind handwoven and handmade garments and accessories. She finds wonderful satisfaction sitting at one of her looms making a fabric that comes to life through the process of mingling individual threads and creating something pleasing to look at and touch. Since 2005 she has been very involved in helping to develop the fiber studio at Studio Channel Islands Art Center in Camarillo, CA, where she teaches and weaves. www.deborahjarchow.com
Brecia Kralovic-Logan • Brecia is a fiber artist in Santa Barbara, CA. where she is the director of her own studio pebble in the pond art studio. Creativity, color and texture have been her lifelong joys. Over the last 12 years she has taught as a fiber artist in residence in the Santa Barbara schools, teaching knitting as well as weaving, spinning, basketry and more. She was the founder and director of Vessels Fiber Arts Education Program., a nonprofit arts organization that supported fiber arts in the schools and community in Santa Barbara. Her fiber work has been exhibited nationally. She is currently writing a book on creativity and knitting. www.pebbleinthepondartstudio.com
Daryl Lancaster • Daryl Lancaster received her degree in Fine Arts in the 1970’s and has been actively working since then as a weaver/fiber artist. She spent 10 years as a production craftswoman, selling her handwoven clothing in craft markets and galleries throughout the United States. She travels around the United States teaching garment construction techniques to handweavers and surface designers. Daryl is currently the Contributing Features Editor for Handwoven Magazine, and has been writing her columns, essays, and features since 2000. Her current work reflects her desire to use garments as canvases, piecing together recycled fibers to create one of a kind wearables. A breast cancer survivor, Daryl uses her work as a vehicle to express who she is and the path that she has traveled www.weaversew.com
John Marshall • John is an American fiber artist specializing in the traditional Japanese techniques of Katazome (stencil dyeing) and tsutsugaki (cone drawing). He is internationally noted for his use of color and line to create truly unique one-of-a-kind art-to-wear, turning traditionally inspired aesthetics into contemporary treasures for daily life. As a teacher he is recognized for his ability to adapt traditional recipes and methods to suit local climates, resources, and temperaments; and for his ability to distill complex techniques into easy to understand steps. www.johnmarshall.to/
Judith MacKenzie McCuin • Judith is a nationally known teacher, master weaver, spinner, and fiber artist from Montana. Judith teaches as only she can--- with depth of knowledge honed by years of practice, patience, creative informality, personal and historical perspective, great humor, and hands-on expertise that demystifies any process. Classes with Judith are an experience in learning the story behind every fiber and process. Judith is a regularly featured author in Spin-Off Magazine. If you take any of Judith's classes you will experience the history of each process as it was performed through the years.
Susan McGehee • Susan McGehee is a weaver who has gone to the hard stuff. After many years as a fiber artist and weaving teacher, she began to completely use wire and metals in her work instead of fibers. The sculptural qualities of her pieces enhance both residential and commercial spaces. Teaching workshops, she has found pleasure introducing other weavers to another medium for their looms.
www.Metalstrands.com
Marilyn Moore • Marilyn began making baskets in 1978. She shows her work and teaches at national conventions and conferences. Her explorations of the vessel form have been featured in several publications, including Shuttle Spindle & Dyepot www.marilynmoore.net
Michael F. Rohde • Michael began weaving in 1973, with the intention of making a perfect rug; he is still trying to achieve this goal while occasionally teaching and selling the rugs he has made along the way. He exhibits his rugs in galleries and competitions, nationally and internationally. His work is in the permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, and is included in the US State Department Art in Embassies program. His work and writings have been published in Handwoven, Shuttle, Spindle & Dyepot, American Craft and Surface Design Journal. www.michaelrohde.com
Kathy Spoering • Kathy has been weaving tapestries for the past 20 years. Her work has been included in numerous exhibitions, both nationally and internationally, and has earned her both the HGA and the ATA awards for excellence in design and execution. Kathy Spoering's work can be seen at www.americantapestryalliance.org/AP/ArtistBio/Spoeringk.html
Bonnie Tarses • Bonnie is a textile designer specializing in one-of-a-kind and custom handwoven textiles since 1960. From the time she began her weaving journey, she was drawn to the color symbolism in all ethnic textiles. “I continue to be amazed by the fact that weavers of old attached special meaning to the placement of every thread.” In search of a set of personal symbols, Bonnie developed several techniques that have become her trademarks— Color Horoscope Weaving, Woven Words, and Easy Ikat (a twist on a traditional theme). www.bonnietarses.com
Jannie Taylor • Jannie has been a handweaver and designer for nearly 30 years. She teaches advanced weaving classes at the AVL Weaving School in Chico, CA. When she's not teaching, Jannie enjoys designing and weaving one-of-a-kind garments and scarves that clearly show her fascination with the interplay of color, fiber, and structure within a woven work. Jannie earned the Handweavers Guild of America award for "Outstanding Creativity and Craftsmanship in Weaving" and her work has appeared in Weaver's magazine.
Margaret Roach Wheeler • The spirit of her great-great-great-great grandmother Mahota flows through the contemporary Native American designs woven by Margaret Roach Wheeler, a Native American of Chickasaw-Choctaw descent. Wheeler has merged her fine arts education with her Native American heritage to weave contemporary garments based on American Indian costumes. She has also created “the Mahotans” an imaginary tribe of totemic structures and spirit figures, where each member is adorned in handwoven robes.
Wheeler’s weavings have been shown in museums throughout the United States and in HGA’s “Convergence”: fashion shows. She has received considerable recognition for her work. Recently her work has been chosen to be exhibited in ‘Changing Hands II’ at the Museum of Art and Design in New York September 2005-January 2006; the exhibit will tour the United States through 2008. Wheeler lectures and teaches workshops and seminars on Native American fibers and her unique style of weaving. www.ozarkartistcolonywheeler
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