My name is Candy Glendening and I love color! Specific colors! I become obsessed with one, and although these obsessions change over time, they are quite powerful, and have driven me through this journey of learning as much about how to make a certain color as I possibly can (and I realize that my journey is never ending).
I love seeing the hand of the maker in whatever art form I am experiencing: the texture of paint from Van Gough’s hands, the sound of a live musical performance in a glorious symphony hall, the nooks and crannies found in a loaf of really good bread. Witnessing that the object of my focus was made one at a time, by a creator who cares about that creation is what makes my heart sing.
Hand dyed fabrics can have visual texture, variations in hue that give the cloth that one-of-a-kind-ness that says to me “this cloth was made to be just this color, someone wanted it to look like this, what they made from this fabric is a reflection of this care”. I am an art quilter, and this need to color the fabrics I use in my art, rather than what fabric designers and fabric store buyers offer for my selection is an integral part of my art. I truly respect the talent of artists who can take that commercial fabric and make it their own, but it is not for me.
I also am frugal! I have champagne tastes and a beer budget! 😉 And when I say budget, I am talking not only about money, but space and time as well. All three of these commodities are precious, and I don’t like to spend them without intent.
I’m a mom (to Liam who is 26 and Rose who is 22), a biology teacher to non-biology majors at the University of Redlands, and…an art quilter, struggling to fit all these hats on my head (note: none of these hats is that of a housecleaner!) I’ve begun merging my worlds by writing about what I do in various Art Quilting Magazines (40 articles the last time I counted!) and appearing on Quilting Arts TV (see here for details), I have a DVD out that traces my process from start to finish, another one all about my signature quilting style called Free Motion Machine Sketching, I teach Free Motion Quilting at the Redlands Sewing Center and I teach online dyeing classes, so I can share my love of color, and the skills to create it, with lots of fellow color lovers!
My goal is to fill life with color & pattern that makes people happy.