Betty Busby
Betty Busby continued her childhood obsession with craft by earning a degree in ceramics from the Rhode Island School of Design. She founded and operated a successful ceramic tile manufacturing firm in Los Angeles, which she sold in 1994. She moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico and changed her focus to fiber and mixed media art. Busby is a published fiber artist and teacher, and maintains a busy exhibition schedule nationally and internationally.
Hollis Chatelain
Hollis Chatelain, of Hillsborough, North Carolina, is an internationally recognized and award-winning artist specializing in textile painting. She has an educational background in design and photography, 12-years’ experience working with humanitarian organizations in West Africa, and over 35-years’ experience as a professional artist. Her work addresses challenging social and environmental themes.
Sheila Frampton Cooper
From Los Angeles, Sheila Frampton Cooper did creative work in painting, jewelry-making, and architectural photography before she began working with quilts. She often draws creative energy in working without patterns or sketches. Her inspiration flows from the natural environment—particularly the ocean—and her own imaginations. Frampton Cooper leads workshops internationally on techniques used in her improvisationally-pieced artworks. She has exhibited her work in the United States, France, Italy, England, China, and Japan.
Susan de Vanny
Susan de Vanny is a multi-media artist from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia who has worked in landscape and portraiture painting, fine photography, and fashion. She currently combines painting and design training with self-taught techniques to create elaborate, stitched textile art. Her award-winning art has been exhibited in Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Dubai.
Caryl Bryer Fallert-Gentry
Caryl Bryer Fallert-Gentry is an award-winning fine-art quilter, whose work has appeared in numerous national and international exhibitions, collections, and publications. Her honors include inclusion in The Twentieth Century’s Best American Quilts and selection to the thirty most influential quiltmakers in the world. Fallert-Gentry has lectured and taught in eleven countries around the world.
Ihor Gawdan
Ihor Gawdan lives in Ontario, Canada and began quiltmaking classes a few years ago. Already a wood crafter who built his own home influenced by the fantasy world created by J.R.R. Tolkein, he soon departed from the straight grid of quilts and incorporated fabrics and impressions from his travels to Africa and the Outback of Australia. His quilts employ collage techniques to form representations of places and their history.
Galla Grotto
Galla Grotto was born in Tver, Russia and currently lives in Creuse, France. Parallel to her work in interior and exterior design, journalism, television and fashion, she has pursued painting, graphics, collage, textiles, and decoration. Her work is driven by the pleasure and process of creativity.
Cas Holmes
Cas Holmes lives in Maidstone, Kent, UK and tutors at West Dean College. She combines reclaimed fabric and paper and found materials in her layered and stitched art. Holmes has studied in Japan and India and she exhibits her work internationally. She is author of several books for Batsford; her most recent is Textile Landscape.
Katalin Horvath
Katalin Horvath of Bournemouth, Dorset, UK, taught biology and chemistry to public school students, while carrying on a craft practice. Taught as a child in Hungary to crochet, knit, embroider, and weave by her grandmother, it was not until 20-years ago she discovered patchwork. Her enthusiasm for nature and its symmetry, shapes, colors and healing powers inspire her textile work.
MJ Kinman
After 25 years in the business and non-profit sector, in 2014 MJ Kinman began a full-time creative career. Noted for developing techniques to create large-scale, painted and quilted renderings of gemstones, Kinman’s award-winning art has been exhibited in galleries, museums, and national juried competitions and resides in private and corporate collections.
Susan Brubaker Knapp
Susan Brubaker Knapp is a fiber artist, designer, author, and teacher living in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Knapp begins with photographs and, working with fabric, thread, the techniques of wholecloth painting and fused appliqué, creates works in a realistic style.
Shizuko Kuroha
Born in Japan, Shizuko Kuroha lived in the United States for two years in the late 1970s. There she saw an antique quilt and immediately purchased materials to make a quilt of her own. She is known for combining traditional Japanese indigo and sarasa fabrics and manipulation of Log Cabin and mosaic patterns. She has operated a quilt school in Japan for more than 40 years, has students from around the world, and has published several books.
Kathy Nida
Kathy Nida is a middle-school science teacher in El Cajon, California. She is also a printmaker, quilt artist, and embroiderer. Her current work originates in dreams, a range of memories, and images of women. Nida translates these sources into narrative artworks combining fabric, beads, embroidery, paint, and ink.
Luana Rubin
Luana Rubin is the president and co-owner of eQuilter.com, an online fabric retailer in Boulder Colorado. Two-percent of all eQuilter sales go to charities focused on the environment and human rights, and they have raised $1.7 million over 20 years. Rubin has worked as a designer in the textile, garment, and quilt industries since 1980. She is a chairholder for the international trend forecasting organization, the Color Marketing Group.