About the Artist Gail Dufresne
I have been hooking since August 1984. My mother, Doris LaPlante, hooked for 38 years and my sister, Yvonne Wood has hooked for over 40 now.
I began as predominately a fine hooker and I love detail, but I have been working extensively with wide cuts and geometric designs more recently. I most like to play with color, and I find geometric designs to be best for that. I like to try new things but at the same time incorporate and build on what I have hooked previously. I love textures and I think they enhance and give a depth that cannot be achieved with solid wool. I love to use unusual materials such as boucle, angora, chenille, glitter glue and all sorts of ribbon.
My rugs have been in Celebrations VII, VIII, IX XII and XIII.
My "Sunflowers," a Jane Flynn design, went on to win the Celebrations VII
contest and appeared on the cover of the June/July/August 1998 issue of Rug
Hooking Magazine. My "Lizards and Ladders" game board, which appeared in Celebrations XII, was part of an exhibit at the Wadsworth Athenaeum in Hartford, Connecticut and both that piece and my Goat Hill goat were part if an exhibit at the Textile Center of Minnesota..
I was part of Linda Rae Coughlin's "Art" of Playing Cards project. I designed and hooked the Ace of Hearts. See
playing card rug photo gallery
for more details about this project and to see my card.
I have written several articles for Rug Hooking Magazine and am on Rug Hooking Magazine's Editorial Board. I was one of four judges
for Celebrations X.
I am a McGown certified teacher.
I have been teaching at camps and private workshops around the United States and
Canada since April 2000.
I teach at several camps. I have taught
specific classes for beginners, as well as classes on inch mats, sheep, sunflowers, sculpting, proddy, mixed media, optical illusions and
geometrics. I most often teach open classes where anything goes, and I find them to be the most challenging and fun and keep me hopping.
My approach to dyeing is free wheeling and unique, and my goal is to try to loosen up students so that they are not so uptight and tentative when dyeing. My favorite thing is to paint skies by hand and I wrote an article for the March/April/May 2005 issue about my method. My proddy sheep was on the cover.
I was the featured teacher and featured artist at Sauder Village in August 2004.
I wrote the dye section of Elizabeth Black's book, "Hooked On The Wild Side", published by Rug Hooking Magazine in 2004.
