Terry Waldron - Anaheim, CA

1. How do you describe yourself? I'm an amazingly lucky person who has loved every single day of my professional careers, first teaching secondary English and art in public school, and, after retirement, being a full-time professional artist. I guess it's "the luck of the Irish!"

2. What is your creative process? planning, drawing, notes, etc. My creative process is all internal. I don't draw or make a plan that anyone else can see. I'm ready to go when I see it inside my head. I freely cut the fabrics impromptu. The fabrics seem to choose themselves. I guess that's the value of having much too much cloth in my studio!

3. What's your style? I'm a pictorial artist, but my pictures are the way I see the world, not necessarily the way the world really looks. Many times, my work is the way I WISH the world was...

4. How long have you been a quilt maker/fiber artist? I started making fiber art in 1994, so it's been 16 years now.

5. Do you listen to music when you make art? what kind? Jazz has always been my music since high school, but my best work is done when there is a Cary Grant or an Audrey Hepburn movie on TCM television. It puts me "in the zone!"

6. What do you do when you are blocked creatively? I don't get blocked! I actually have so many ideas that carving out enough time to do each piece as carefully as I like to do my work has been my problem.

7. Do you teach? What's your favorite part about teaching? When I was 4 1/2 years old I decided I wanted to be a teacher, and it happened! Now that I've retired from teaching school, I am as busy as ever showing my work and teaching my art techniques at guilds and conferences all over the country. Again, how lucky can I be!

8. Are there artistic endeavors that you have yet to do? Oh so many... But every day, it seems, there are wonderful opportunities coming my way, sometimes very small ones and occasionally big ones. It started when I sold 2 pieces to the new St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica where my brother was born so many years ago. Who would have thought that would happen? I will tell you about my other secret ambitions if and when they come true!

9. How do you balance your family life and art? If you know how to do that, PULEEZ tell me how it can possibly be done! Everyday one or the other has to be sacrificed to some degree.

10. What is the best part about what you do? For me the best part is the people that I get to meet on this journey. When I teach and see people find out that they are much more talented and able than they ever thought, that makes me glow. But that glow is simply the reflection from THEIR faces.

visit Terry's website in the right column under BTS Artists