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Laura McWhorter

craft    Fiber

email      Laura's Email

website   www.foundationsinfelt.com

It took Laura McWhorter a while to recognize that her lifeʼs calling was there in front of her all the time. It was only a few years ago that she realized sheʼd never gone more than a few weeks, usually no more than a day or two, without working with fiber in some way. And so the transition to a new career in fiber arts began.

Lauraʼs first exposure to fiber arts was being taught to knit at the age of 5 in South Africa by some very patient Norwegian nurses. Her first project was a hat using traditional 3-color stranded Norwegian patterns. Fast forward a few years to high school and a foreign exchange student from Germany, who taught Laura to turn her knitting into sweaters, and the rest is history.

Since starting to knit obsessively in high school, Laura has gradually added spinning, weaving, dyeing, felting, and many other skills to her fiber repertoire. She has learned both formally and informally through living history organizations, local guilds, and attending conferences and workshops throughout the country.

Though Laura has taken extended breaks from her engineering career, her fiber arts has always been with her. As she has matured as a person and as an artist, her calling has spoken more and more clearly. Lauraʼs decision to become a full-time fiber artist has been both difficult and easy at the same time, and she awakes now each day knowing she will create and teach and do what she loves.

Unlike traditional craft artists who often focus narrowly on one tradition, Laura has retained a bit of her “jack-of-all-trades” nature combining wet felting, hand-spinning, knitting, weaving, embroidery, beading, crochet, and other techniques into her pieces. Her work is influenced strongly by her exposure to historical and anthropological textiles and research. Her use of color stems from the qualities of color variation found in naturally-dyed and hand-made textiles, as well as the subtle and sometimes dramatic colors and patterns found in natural stones, wood grain, and other natural materials. Her design is influenced by the simple, functional ways that traditional designs evolve from the forms available to suit the needs of a culture.