Hello,  i am amber , and right now im am in a textile class and i am doing a project on a textile designer/artist and i was interseted in doing it on you.  but there is little information i can seem to find on you.  i was wondering if you can answer this befor the weekend, that you could answer some of my questions i have for you? i will also understand if you wish not too.  my questions are that i was wonder what (your basica)  where you went to school. your degree, why you chose that,  what is some of the history you have with the fashion world?,  why do you like to hand dye things,  what type of things do you dye?,  things like that and anything that you would also like to add.  i really like your work and think its really cool.  thank you for your time and i will understand if you would like not to do with this.

Some of your questions are answered on my web site, under "work". I am a molecular biologist, having received my PhD from Rice University in 1989. My dissertation (PDF) involved determining the mechanism by which, in the presence of oxygen and light, certain dyes and stains produce DNA damage and kill cells; this is called the photodynamic effect. The dyes I used in my graduate work are not related to the fiber reactive dyes I normally use, which are considerably safer to use.

I chose to study molecular biology, in what was then the Biology department at Rice (it has since been reorganized) because of my interests in molecular biology and biochemistry. My undergraduate degree was in biochemistry. I took a great many fine arts classes at the University of Maryland before settling on that course of study, intending at the time to get a degree in fine arts, instead, but my passion for scientific knowledge turned me away from that and toward the science degree.

When I took up dyeing as an art form, in my spare time while in graduate school, I was struck by how little information was available about the chemistry of the dyes in any form that was comprehensible to artists and craftsmen. At first I was frustrated by the different chemical properties of the different individual dyes, because I could see that they had a major effect on art made with them, and yet very little information was available concerning them. My scientific background enabled me to find and explain information that was otherwise useless to non-scientists. My web site developed as an ideal way to share the information I found. The more an artist knows about his or her materials, the more control there is over the work, and the better the results that are possible.

I'm afraid I have no history with the fashion world. Like most scientists, I have relatively little interest in fashion. What I care about is color and its use in art, especially art on textile fibers. I like to hand dye because I enjoy exploring color, and I do not like to be limited to the relatively small number of colors made available to us in clothing by the fashion industry each year. Most of what I dye are cotton and rayon garments for my family to wear, because I enjoy seeing my work in motion, rather than displayed static and lifeless on a wall or stored away.

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