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Upcoming Exhibits

Kerri Gallery, 861 Main St., Willimantic, Ct, May 26 through July 20, 2026

Duncaster Retirement Community, 30 Loeffler Rd., Bloomfield, CT, Month of April, 2027

About Fiber Artist Diane Cadrain

The natural world inspires my work by offering constantly refreshed images of arresting loveliness. Tolstoy said, “Love all creation…love every leaf.” In that spirit, I create images that combine fragility with strength and the evanescent with the eternal. The evanescent and the eternal appear, for example, in the sand ripples left by the departing water at low tide. Those ripples are always different, yet eternally the same.

Some of my fiber artwork is representational, focusing on landscape and encompassing two principal media types. One is an image painted on cotton, embellished with thread painting, backed with batting and backing, and finally quilted. The quilting adds dimensionality to the work. The other medium for my landscapes is needle felting, where a material called wool roving is used as if it were paint. This tactile and textured medium is then enhanced with hand embroidery.

In contrast to these representational works, some of my work is abstract, using watercolors and acrylic markers to display imagined images and colors.

In 2015, I retired from freelance work as a lawyer and writer specializing in employment law topics. Still, I’ve been sewing all my life, starting with hand embroidery and pin weaving, as taught by my grandmother at our home in Hamden, Connecticut. I learned machine sewing in the public schools of Hamden, Connecticut, and with that skill, I constructed my clothes and costumes. As a law student, I learned to knit, and later, in my early 30s, as a new mother, I began quilting. I took up felting in my 50s. My artwork now includes hand-painted fabric, thread painting, felting, knitted embellishments, hand embroidery, and beading.

In 2015, I retired from freelance work as a lawyer and writer specializing in employment law topics. Still, I’ve been sewing all my life, starting with hand embroidery and pin weaving, as taught by my grandmother at our home in Hamden, Connecticut. I learned machine sewing in the public schools of Hamden, Connecticut, and with that skill, I constructed my clothes and costumes. As a law student, I learned to knit, and later, in my early 30s, as a new mother, I began quilting. I took up felting in my 50s. My fiber artwork now includes hand-painted fabric, thread painting, felting, knitted embellishments, hand embroidery, and beading.

DIANE CADRAIN

FIBER ARTIST

West Hartford, Connecticut

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© Copyright Diane Cadrain. All rights reserved.

Located in West Hartford, CT, U.S.A.

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