Cindy Henry Studio

Sewing, quilting, and needlework have touched my life since early childhood, as my mother and grandmothers spent many spare hours with a needle between their fingers. I create work in paper, fiber, collage, and mixed media using traditional and contemporary techniques; including hand and machine piecing and quilting, painting, fusing; building up transparent layers of sheer fabrics. My background in graphic design and drawing are evident in my love of simple compositions and my adaptation of the stitched line as a drawing element in the work. I love working through processes that allows me to audition and accept or reject elements as I work, constantly adjusting the plan and almost always leading to a product that is dramatically different from—and usually more exciting than—anything I might have envisioned at the start. 

My image vocabulary comes from simple, universal shapes such as circle, square, and cross or icons in the built environment such as pier, bridge, house, or skyscraper. These forms have many associations for me as symbols of building up and tearing down a life. I work with these symbols to embed a narrative of personal meaning into my work as I develops abstract interpretations of familiar spaces or experiences.

The images I make have a sense of illusiveness—a delicate balance of strength and fragility, security and instability. They are built on associations with personal and shared experiences, which are fleeting and personal. Experiences consist of both real and imagined events and the circumstances that surround them. Experiences pass and become filed as memories that move in and out of consciousness. Our responses to them make up who we are and what our life becomes. My work is an attempt to capture and process experiences and memories, both painful and inspirational, sometimes as a way to hold on to them and sometimes as a way to let them go.