Barbara Webster

Photography

I received my degree in music composition from the University of Tennessee, and wrote a lot of music, including the music for Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest. I also wrote the theme music for a television talk show in Charlotte, along with numerous slide show and small movie scores. I played for the modern dance classes in Charlotte for 10 years, and taught various music courses at Central Piedmont Community College. I left music to become a para-legal.

When desktop computers arrived on the scene I became a computer programmer and after teaching people to use the new "portable" computers at Queens Compute, ended up in desktop publishing in the corporate world. Along the way, I founded a non-profit corporation to do environmental education, serving as its executive director for four years. I edited and published a 16 page newspaper during that time. When I left the city and moved to the mountains in 1994, I made my first quilt. That quilt won Best First Quilt in the Asheville Quilt show and I got hooked.

Shortly after the introduction of digital cameras, the technology for printing photos on fabric began to improve. My husband bought a digital camera which I quickly adopted and at his suggestion started trying to get my images onto fabric. After struggling with dye sublimation, the best of the off-the-shelf technologies that I found, I finally abandoned it in favor of the method I currently use (Mimaki dyejet printer).

I have won many awards with my work, including an international "Best of Show" award in 2004 ("Quilt 2004" at The Festival of Quilts in Birmingham, England), and a first place in my category at the American Quilter’s Society Show in Paducah, KY. I have several public art commissions to my credit, the largest of which can be seen at the Burnsville Town Center in Burnsville, North Carolina, and my work can be found in numerous corporate and private collections. My work has hung in the US Embassy in Guatemala as part of the Art in Embassies program and is also sold in the New Morning Gallery and The Grovewood Gallery in Asheville, NC, The Design Gallery in Burnsville, and The Crimson Laurel Gallery in Bakersville, NC. I now do public and private commission work and teach, and am the Executive Director for the Quilt Trails Project of Western North Carolina.

I make art in the hope of inspiring awe and love for nature, the source of our existence. People will protect what they love. With my digital camera I try to capture what I see and what moves me and incorporate those images in my quilts. I want to show how beautiful and precious life is in all its manifestations, and how, if you look closely, there are always surprises. I want to encourage people away from the TV and into the woods and fields where something real is going on.

We cannot live without the beauty of nature. Recent research has shown that people heal faster and feel better when they are surrounded by nature or pictures of nature. ADD and ADHD children even calm down (American Journal of Public Health, September, 2004 research by Frances Kuo, University of Illinois). Clearly we need nature to remain whole and peaceful. I hope that my quilts will inspire people to reconnect and to protect and honor all life from the understanding we are all one.

A portion of my profits goes to organizations that help preserve wilderness or farmland or support organic farming.