Merry and Bright: Color and Stripe

Anne is a fiber artist, woodworker, and metalworker. She combines these media in varying degrees to create abstract sculpture and contemporary furniture. Color, pattern, and texture are the unifying elements in her mixed media creations. Her textile journey began at the age of 10 when her mom taught her how to sew for a 4H project. Anne earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Metalwork and Jewelry from Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, while also taking fibers classes. Her first job after graduating was in Loveland, CO, at a bronze foundry; her second post-grad job was in a yarn store in Denver. Eight years later, Anne began graduate school at Colorado State University, Fort Collins, in the Fibers program. While pursuing her Master of Fine Arts, she was weaving warp-painted cotton textiles and learned that Procion fabric dyes can also be used on wood. Intrigued, Anne designed and built a wooden coffee table to contain her handwoven fabric and dyed both with the same dyes. For the past 23 years, she has primarily been making colorful striped furniture with a more recent interest in sculpture. Anne lives in Fort Collins and is lucky to have both a woodshop and weaving studio in her home.

The daughter of an artist and a scientist. She began weaving as a teenager in Cambridge, MA. After high school, with a table loom and a footlocker of yarn, she explored the United States in her Volkswagen van visiting national parks and wilderness areas. Later she studied biology (BA) and psychology (PhD). Quilting became her passion in 1994. After years of creating original pieces, she began studying with world-renowned fiber artist Nancy Crow in 2007. Her work quickly evolved as she discovered that she had a unique visual voice. Lorenz has exhibited extensively throughout North America, as well as in Europe, Australia, and Asia.

Noelle is a mixed media artist living and working in Northern Colorado. After graduating from Colorado State University, Fort Collins, with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Drawing, she moved to Asheville, NC, to begin her career as a working artist. Now back in Colorado, she bridges the chapters of her life through an accumulated language of colors and marks learned during these times. Noelle’s work consists of public art projects, including murals and 3-dimensional installations, fine art paintings, label artwork, and both corporate and private commissions.

She grew up in a family of artists and being involved in the arts was always normal in her house. When she was a teenager, she realized making art was not just about what she was making, but how therapeutic the act of creating can be. Since then, she always turns to creating, it has become a completely ingrained part of her that continues to ground her through the dark and guide her in the light.