Carol Krueger

Carol Krueger's background includes 17 years as a professional hairdresser and makeup artist, working with design, balance, color, texture and the constant challenge of communicating her ideas to others. Her fiber art has been shown in various venues around the country, and appears in both private and corporate collections.

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"My specialty is computer digitized machine embroidery. It allows you to take your motif and stitch it out numerous times using different threads. I could make an embroidered circle that was exactly perfect with a perfect half split circle inside, but I don't want to do that. I want to try to retain some of the handcraft of the piece. I think this is a challenge for many artists nowadays, using technology but not letting the technology sterilize or kill the work. So I try to strive for keeping some of the feeling of the handwork in the quilt even though I'm using this modern technology.

My background is as a hairdresser and makeup artist and when I left the industry of hairdressing, I found myself really drawn to something tactile. I attended an art quilt show and when I saw the combination of the designing and the sewing, immediately when I saw it, I said I gotta give this a go. This is really up my alley. I've been doing this art quilting for about nine years now and I find it really interesting. There's always a challenge and a lot of it is problem solving. You have an idea that you create in your head and then you're trying to figure out, now, how can I make this a reality. There's a lot of problem solving that goes on—technical things. Sometimes you're getting puckers in the fabric where you don't want it and those kind of things. It's a combination of the creativity of the artistic side and, of course, the problem solving of working with that medium. That's something that's an on-going process.

I've also been known to cut up pieces that are finished pieces. Sometimes if they're an older work and they haven't really gone anywhere, this is where my hairdressing comes in. I take a scissors to it and sometimes I just walk down in the studio and I say this one's gonna get cut up. There's something really freeing about that. And then sometimes those appear in other pieces and it kind of gives a new life to older work. I don't know too many artists who do that, but I am running into a few more that are in the 'let's cut it up if it isn't working' kind of thing.”