Booth 703
(See map below)
About the Artist
As a Foreign Service Officer traveling the world I was exposed to many fiber-arts traditions and took classes along the way. I’ve always loved creating things — growing up in Africa, I made things using limited resources and my own imagination. My retirement from the State Department coincided with the onset of the COVID pandemic. With new-found time on my hands, I started experimenting with dyeing and felting in earnest and rediscovered my old creative passion and the unique joy of making and sharing art. After a while, though, with hundreds of scarves and other items accumulating in my home, my husband asked me what I was planning to do with all the stuff I’d made — so Mara Homemade was formed as a way of sharing my art with more people. I’ve found I feel a certain zen when handling and placing the fibers, a state of calm attentiveness that is guided more by intuition than by conscious effort. Along the way, often through trial and error, I learn more about my materials and techniques. I appreciate objects and manual skills more than words — I like to see the colors, feel the textures. It brings me joy to choose the materials, put things together, and see how they look. It’s positively addictive.
