Page 6 - The Digital Cloth Holiday issue 2

A Designers Journey to Textiles

Andrea Poliquin Wotkyns
Graphic Arts - Illustration - Composite Art – Photography
Designer Andrea Wotkyns started early creating - in
high school as yearbook editor, and later with
layout and hand-sketched ad mock-ups for
businesses providing the foundation for an
artistic journey. Creatively, she has worked in silver,
hand-painted decorated leather jewelry, stained
glass, and folk-art painted decor before and during
a corporate job of 20 years while raising a family.
After the corporate years, in 1996, she jumped into
the graphics industry, attended the University of
New Hampshire and taught herself the art of
excelling at converting ideas to brands and
documents to help businesses and corporations, A Mischief of Magpies.
winning several awards in print and web design Purchase here
along the way. When clients brought their graphics
in-house late 90’s, she became inspired by artists
and reinvented her graphics business to promote
their work. During this same time Andrea owned a
boutique shop in NH for five years, and discovered
all too well the difficulty with demand and owning
inventory. She became intrigued by the new
on-demand technology in the retail and wholesale
industry.
Andrea has always been surrounded by creative
energy, starting in childhood with her mother who
was a weaver and silk screen printer. She loves
working in Photoshop and is an opportunist when it
comes to manipulating her photos of found objects
and nature images to create collages or composite Purchase here
paintings.
Using high resolution photos of original artist pieces,
they are carefully cropped to maintain the
original textile or painted textured surfaces. She
then makes design collections for home decor and
accessories by on-demand printing technology.
Today she wakes to art every day, meeting talented
creators through artists sites, local galleries, and
social media all over the USA and the world,
including Michelle Mischkulnig from Australia.
Michelle’s award winning textile designs are
created from hand-painted silks, threads, cords,
paper, fabric and found objects. Layers are built
up and machine embroidered (free motion needle)
while cutting, tearing, twisting and fraying. Each
textile piece evolves as it is being created and Purchase here
inspires experimenting.