Judy Coates Perez - Chicago, Illinois

1. How do you describe yourself? I am a mixed media textile artist.

2. What is your creative process? Usually when I make an art quilt it is not a spontaneous process, I spend a lot of time just thinking about the concept and how I best want to approach communicating the idea. I can think about an idea for a couple years before I am ready to start committing anything to paper. In the mean time I start collecting imagery to reference for illustration purposes and sometimes to evoke a particular aesthetic style.

3. What's your style? I like to make work that tells a story or expresses an idea. My preferred method is painting imagery on whole cloth and use the quilting stitch to add further interest to the over all design, but occasionally I diverge from this method to create a different kind of expression.

4. How long have you been a quilt maker/fiber artist? I think it would be around 25 years now.

5. Do you listen to music when you make art? I usually listen to audio books while I am painting and quilting, unless I am in a part of the process that demands a lot of decision making and then I prefer silence.

6. What do you do when you are blocked creatively? I don’t sweat it, if you put pressure on yourself to create some unique idea more than likely you will just draw blanks. I switch to knitting or play around with other processes. I don’t think there is an art medium or technique that I haven’t liked or found inspiration from doing.

7. Do you teach? Yes. I love meeting people and helping them learn new techniques that they can use to create their own vision. We all have so much to share with each other, there is no better place than being in a room full of people making art.

8. Are there artistic endeavors that you have yet to do? Of course, there is an endless list of new things to explore.

9. How do you balance your family life and art? My kids have grown up knowing that making art is an integral part of life. Most of the time we will all be creating work in our various preferred methods within fairly close proximity, it sort of feels like having parallel play when the kids were little.

10. What is the best part about what you do? I love the excitement of starting a new project and getting lost in the painting, it is my favorite form of meditation.

http://JudyPerez.blogspot.com/