Featured Member - Donna Chambers

Welcome to a new feature on our blog - Featured Member! One or more times a month we will be featuring a member of FiberArt NorthEast, showing examples of her work, and answers to a list of interesting questions that were posed to our group.

Our first featured member is Donna Chambers. You can find more of Donna's work on her website.

What is your favorite technique to employ in your fiber art and why?

I love working in raw edge appliqué .  Raw edge appliqué quickly pushed me to experiment with fabric Mosaics.  I use small squares, strips, rectangles and triangle bits of fabrics placing them as if they were ceramic tiles. It's very intense and the effect is powerful.  Once the piece is free motion quilted it takes on a painterly and a dimensional look.

What inspires you?

I am inspired  by many things.  Fashion, Fabric, Metallics, Color, Texture and  a real good challenge.

What skill, tool, or technique do you plan to master next?

I am currently taking a crazy quilt workshop. Can't wait to learn and experiment with the many hand embroidery stitches.

What other art media do you work in (past or present)? How does this inform your fiber work?

As a teenager I was blessed to work in the Ossining textile art studio of famed textile artist Vera Neumann of Vera Scarves. I know I got my color sense from her, she loved brights, texture, she always worked in groups and she always had a theme.  What I learned from her is priceless.

I am a professional goldsmith/jewelry designer by trade since 1980, I manufacture and sell to stores  throughout the the US.  My jewelry is also influenced by texture and color as well as  my fiber work plus metallics.

What advice to you have for someone just starting in fiber art?

I encourage those starting in fiber arts to play a lot in materials of all sorts, take workshops and get yourself involved with an artistic group of people and let it rip.