In 1983, following five
years of working as an activities leader in a home for seniors, I began
designing prints for textiles when I met Jeff Siegel, a textile
designer who was just then starting up a studio selling prints for
women's apparel, in mid-Manhattan's garment district. He taught me the
technique of painting on silk using a resist and dyes - and thus began a
career of 22+ years.
As Jeff's assistant and in-house designer I learned much about the inner workings of the fashion industry. My
patterns began selling regularly to top fashion houses and labels such
as Oscar de la Renta, Christian Dior, Bill Blass, Albert Nipon and Liz
Claiborne. This
was my dream job - until Jeff's tragic death a year and a half later at
age 29, a tremendous blow to me professionally and personally.
Jeff's
family who knew nothing about the business took over, and, naturally, it wasn’t the same. I
moved on to freelance successfully with Marilyn Kern Textile Designs,
then briefly owned a design studio, Printfolio, Ltd., with two partners
(it wasn't for me - too much business, too little painting).
Mid-career
I enrolled at F.I.T. (Fashion Institute of Technology) in NYC,
concentrated in designing prints for home dec, graduated summa cum laude
in 1993 with the top scholastic and textile design awards.
For a
couple of years I settled into a nice job with VIP Fabrics, a division
of Cranston Print Works (the oldest textile mill in the U.S.) as an
in-house textile designer for their over-the-counter fabrics, designed a
number of their top-selling prints, then continued with them on a
freelance basis when I moved out the city. Springs Industries and
Concord Fabrics also became clients.
The U.S. textiles industry
in the early 1990s began to undergo a slow collapse, a direct result of
international trade agreements and outsourcing. Thousands of textile
mills, manufacturers and design studios have closed to date, and
hundreds of thousands have lost their jobs.
The freelance work I
received gradually dwindled until I saw my last textile design project
in 2005, partly because I had not jumped on the CAD (computer aided
design) bandwagon (it was difficult to imagine painting with pixels
instead of paint). I had to reinvent myself.
In 2001, seeing the
writing on the wall, while still designing for VIP, I established
Christine Woods Decorative Art and began painting murals and faux
finishes. To date I've completed numerous residential and commercial
projects. I also began painting pet portraits.
The crash of 2008 struck a hard blow. It seemed wise to give digital designing a shot after all, so I enrolled in a tech
school that offered courses in the Adobe design programs.
I fell in love with
Photoshop and Illustrator and have become proficient in both programs,
am pursuing various applications including textile design, logo design
and photo refinishing (and am considering going for a degree in graphic design), in between decorative and other painting projects.
A few miscellaneous passions in no particular order: oil
painting, singing, playing music (fiddle, mando, guitar; Cajun,
old-time, bluegrass, folk), Cajun and contra dancing, gardening,
cooking, reading, PBS, cats, writing.
