I've always been fascinated with the ocean world. My first grade teacher, Mrs. Clarke, showed us reel to reel films of The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau and I remember being absolutely mesmerized. By the time I was seven, I knew I wanted to be a marine biologist. When I turned nine, I received a membership to Greenpeace for my birthday. I would spend Saturdays immersed in books at the library, filling notebooks and creating charts about ocean depth, salinity, decompression times and whale species.
I moved to Maine to attend the Maritime Academy but after awhile, I transferred to the University of Maine to study marine science. I was caught between the tug of adventure and the quest for knowledge. When my aunt who raised me died from cancer, I needed to drop out of school and get a job. I ended up joining the merchant marine in the deck department and I sailed the South China Seas.
Throughout this time, I was knitting. I started when I was nine or ten using an old Coats and Clark knitting pamphlet from the 50's. No one in my family was a knitter or a fiber crafter of any kind. I have no idea where that pamphlet came from or where I even heard about knitting. My aunt wasn't inclined to invest in my new found hobby so I sharpened two pencils and found some garden twine and I taught myself to knit. Now I see people watching videos online and it makes me so happy that their journey is at least a little easier to start.
It wasn't until I hit my late twenties or early thirties that I started to knit unusual things. I began playing around with crochet (also self-taught), and I crocheted a brain. I also knitted a digestive system, a Medusa hat (complete with snakes with beaded eyes), hand grenades and pies. As someone who has always had a bit of an oppositional personality, creating strange things out of beautiful fibers was a healthier way to scratch that itch.
I don't remember when I first saw hyperbolic crochet or how the Institute for Figuring was creating amazing coral reefs from fiber, I just know that when I moved to Washington State and started to walk the beaches, touch the water, examine the tide pools and play with the seaweed, I knew that I had to funnel my inspiration into my fiber art.
I do recall seeing a sign at an art supply store on Whidbey Island in Oak Harbor one day and when I went in, I found a 30 x 40 canvas for 50% off. Having never painted, I wasn't quite sure how I would incorporate my canvas into fiber art but I had just purchased a small rigid heddle loom at a fiber festival in Canada and weaving was starting to intrigue me. I decided to warp the canvas and weave a background with an ocean theme.
