math girl

My former business partner and I had an incredible vibe when we worked together, always spouting off crazy creative ideas as if they were plucked from one another's brains. Yet we had VERY different approaches as to how those ideas should actually get from a paint can to a brush to a wall, and it was this pivotal difference that made our designs work. Her nickname was "Ran" for random and mine was "Pre" for precise. I was definitely math girl, crunching numbers like a mad accountant on the eve of April 15th. Love the ruler, the level and the calculator! And with fabric design, it's no different at all! If you don' t like being chummy with x- and y-coordinates, being wickedly precise to the thousandths decimal place or looking at art with a graph behind it all the time, then this is definitely not your gig! I happen to love making a flowing design sit 'precisely random' inside my bounding box and figuring, twisting and tweaking the whole thing until it's just a blend of energized harmony. My mouse hand is swollen, my fingertips are numb and my eyes are bleary, but it's all part of the process...these papers are only the tip of the iceberg!

Here's an example of a design I painted in a Designers' Showcase a few years ago (a worthy charity event) - you can see where precision and randominity come together to make it work. My sister and brother-in-law liked it so much that they had me re-create it in their powder room (which is what is shown here b/c I can't find the original showcase image):