Jenny Bowker
Jenny grew up in New Guinea, moved to Canberra as a teenager and worked as an electron microscopist at the Australian National University for thirteen years. She married a diplomat and lived in Syria, Western Samoa, Malaysia, Jordan, Israel, and Egypt.
Electron microscopy did not transplant easily. Jenny went back to ANU for a Bachelor of Arts (Visual) with a major in Painting and walked out and made a quilt - for fun. Fabrics are seductive, and she quickly
realised that anything you can do with paint can be done with textile.
Jenny now travels and teaches and has worked in many countries in the last five years, especially in areas not known for expertise in patchwork. She likes to use elements of traditional work in her quilts. Her themes connect her travel, her life in science, and her current interests.
Dianne Firth
Dianne has been involved in art and craft most of her life although quiltmaking has been her passion for the past twenty-five years. Starting with traditional bed quilts, she has moved to using the quilt medium as a vehicle to explore issues and express ideas.
Many of Dianne's works are informed by her training as a landscape architect and also from her observations of the relationships and interactions between nature and people. Using a process of abstraction, she likes to manipulate line, colour and texture to capture an idea, highlight an issue, or evoke a visual and emotional response in the viewer.
Dianne is head of the Landscape Architecture Department at the University of Canberra Australia, where her work includes teaching landscape design, history and theory. She is also an accredited member of Craft ACT and is involved with Ozquilt Network Inc, Canberra Quilters and the Quilters Guild of NSW.
Helen Gray
Helen was born in Tasmania, growing up in Launceston before studying in Hobart and teaching physical education in the island state. The move was made to settle in Canberra in the 1970s, pursuing a health and fitness career. Stitching was a constant alternative activity.
Early family life was rich in textiles and a natural continuation has lead to today's interest in making textile art. The rich environments of city, coastal and inland Australia have all provided the stimulation for her work expressed in stitch on marked cloth.
Beth Miller
Beth Miller has lived in Canberra for the last 33 years but grew up in Darwin where the weather was too hot and humid to consider sewing. It wasn't until she was in her late 20's that she learnt how to sew and discovered patchwork shortly after.
Beth joined Canberra Quilters and the Quilters Guild of NSW. Her early work was predominately pieced geometric designs, but in more recent
years she has concentrated upon hand and fused appliqué using the Australian landscape as inspiration. She has continued with pieced designs but prefers more contemporary quilt making.
Qualifications in design and screen printing help Beth to create bright and unusual fabrics using dye and paint. She also likes to use hand and machine stitch to create visual texture.
Beth teaches and exhibits her work both nationally and internationally.
Beth and Trevor Reid
Beth and Trevor have lived in Canberra for the past twenty six years, but grew up in Melbourne and surrounds. They have always had an interest in textiles which developed into a shared interest in quiltmaking. They put together their first piece of patchwork, a large hexagon bed cover made from old dress fabrics in 1972, but it was not until 1988 that patchwork and
quilting came into their frame of reference. They joined Canberra Quilters, made a sampler quilt and then began to experiment with techniques. From there they went on to make quilts that were a little bit different, sometimes together, sometimes individually. They still enjoy the process and now mix their dyed and painted fabrics with commercial. They like to use stitch as a visual stimulant and use the sewing machine to achieve this.
Trevor has a Bachelor of Arts (Visual) at Canberra School of Art and works at the National Museum of Australia, Beth works for an Australian Government Department.
