Today's featured artist is a frequent participant in MMSA swaps. I love her art and have been following her blog, but didn't know much about her personally. It's a great story, Leslie. Thanks for introducing yourself to us. (and I have total art-room envy after seeing your pictures!)
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Hi all –
I’m Leslie.
I live in a small town about an hour east of San Francisco with Maggie
the rescued
dog, Mabel the rescued parking lot cat, Winston the talkative but mean
parrot, and
Steve the husband (neither rescued, mean, nor overly talkative). I have a
large vegetable garden and a few fruit trees. I read a lot and love to
bake.
During my life I have worked as (in no particular order): a
long-haul truck driver, a dental lab technician, a horse trainer (have ridden
all my life until a bad hip put me on the ground several years ago), a short
order cook, GM of an international import/export firm, a pharmacy clerk, and
currently as Admin – Fixed Operations of the 5 motorcycles stores my husband
owns with 2 other guys. Never a dull moment. And yes, I know how to ride a
motorcycle, just chose not to at this point in my life. But in my impetuous
youth, I sold my car to buy a bike and drove only that for about a year,
hauling around my laundry, groceries, bowling ball, etc, on the back seat.
I got my start in all things creative in 7th
grade Home Ec class when we sat down at sewing machines and turned out dorky
aprons. Then we made an A-line skirt (this was mid 1960s) and I was hooked on
sewing. Made all my own clothes for years and began to quilt to use up all that
leftover fabric. Learned to macramé in the 70s, then didn’t do much of anything
for a decade as I ran wild in the streets pretending to be a hippie. I never
sold my sewing machine, tho, and in the 80s I got seriously back into quilting,
eventually joined a guild, served as President (4 yrs), Vice Pres (2 yrs),
Quilt Show Chairperson (3 shows worth) and an active member until I moved from
the area in 2007. During all this time I also dabbled in beading, jewelry
making, pottery, knitting, crocheting, embroidery, spinning, and weaving – with
varying degrees of success and duration.
About 15 years ago I discovered crazy quilting and jumped in
with both feet. I loved it because it incorporated all those previous crafts I’d
tried out, plus a few more, and I could make use of all the stuff I’d
accumulated – beads, buttons, fabric, threads, ribbons, sequins, etc, etc. I
took classes with two of the biggies in CQ – Judith Baker Montano and Betty
Pillsbury. Taught myself to do silk ribbon embroidery and then taught it at
Michaels for a few years.
But eventually the arthritis in my hands became too painful
to do the tiny stitches that every crazy quilter worth their salt strives for,
so I didn’t do much of anything for a few years. We’d moved from San Diego
where we’d lived for 25 years to where we are now and I was unhappy and missing
my friends something fierce. I work full time and found it very difficult to
find friends of any sort, never mind artsy ones.
About four years ago I came across a collage online and the
irregular piecing reminded me of crazy quilting but required only paper and
glue. I tried it out and the rest is history. I now have the entire front room
(living room) of our house as my studio. It’s 16’x23’ and I use every inch. All
my art junk is in there, plus my computer and a large flat screen TV, so I
pretty much never leave it except to eat and pee.
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I do a lot of mail art, art journaling, collage, mixed
media, etc, and also a fair amount of digital stuff, working in Adobe Elements
11. The digital thing is just fascinating because the effects you can achieve
are limited only by your imagination, and unlike paper and glue, they aren’t permanent.
I’m currently on a mission to use up all my old family photos – the actual
photos – because I have scads of them and no one to leave them to. So if you
get mail art from me, it’s liable to feature a pic of me at five, or my mom at
12, or the family dog from 1960.
My mom died at 62 from breast then bone cancer, and her
mother died at 36 from breast cancer. They’re
often the subject of my journal pages because there are questions I have that
can never be answered. What was in that
salad dressing you used to shake up in an old jar and that I can’t replicate
for the life of me? Who is that woman in the old photo with Aunt Helen on the
cottage steps?
I post the vast majority of what I make on my blog, plus I
post freebie vintage images fairly regularly. Come visit me at
www.onewomanshands.blogspot.com.
I love MMSA and have really enjoyed receiving the wide
variety of art that the swaps produce. I’m always ready for a private swap, so
email me at maugreall at gmail.com.
Thanks for having me, Karen!
