Cathy Shanahan
Portula Valley, CA

Cathy Shanahan is a graduate of Stanford University .  She has taken art courses at Stanford, Pasadena City College , and Pacific Art Center .  Her quilt instructors include Katie Pasquini, Michael James, Nancy Crow, Ann Johnson, David Walker, Jane Dunnewold and Ned Wert.

Cathy's art quilts have been exhibited in Thirteen Moons Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico; QSDS Invitational 1999; Alegre Retreat Invitational VII, VIII, IX, X; Art Quilts: Elements 2004; Piecing a Quilt of Life, South Carolina State Museum, 2002. 

Cathy has had six one artist exhibitions in the Palo Alto/Menlo Park area of the San Francisco peninsula and has been featured in magazine articles by Quilter’s Newsletter, Winter 1997; Art/Quilt Magazine, Issue #7, American Quilter Winter, 1997; and Studio Art Quilt Associates, Fall 2001.

I live in the circles and cycles of the creative process.  It begins with the ups of inspirations and imaginings followed by the joys of problem solving and watching the piece develop.  Once I’ve had the inspiration and done the imagining, I have to start with a piece of fabric on my working wall.  From then on the work becomes a response to what happens on that wall.  Finally comes the construction, the feel of the fabric, thread, beads… all the tactile properties of this medium.  Here the process can become almost a chore, but the piece will sing to me, push me forward.  At this point the inspirations and the imaginings begin anew, bubbling and percolating in my mind.  And I’m on to the next cycle.

I want a viewer to be drawn from the far side of the room right up to where their nose almost touches my art piece.  I reward that person with surprises… and then I hope they smile.